It was on behalf of sugar that the liberals in the Netherlands, calling their policy the Ethical Policy because they wanted to pay the Netherlands’ debt to the Indies accrued in the days of the Culture System, waved the banners of education, emigration, and irrigation for the Indies, and prosperity for the Natives. But in reality it was done in the interests of sugar. Education: to produce the literates and numerates and technicians needed for the sugar industry. Emigration: to move more Javanese off Java, providing much-needed labor in Sumatra and opening up more land for canefields in Java.
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