Download or read book The RGA History of the Plantation Industry in the Malay Peninsula written by D. J. M. Tate and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During this period the industry evolved from an amateurish affair, centred on the cultivation, mainly in Chinese hands, of spices and pepper, sugar and tapioca, into a highly sophisticated and professional one, the mainstays of which were the rubber tree and the oil palm. The period also saw plantation agriculture evolve from an industry whose contribution to the Peninsula's economy was peripheral into one which, for the greater part of the twentieth century, formed its mainstay.