This is a straightforward history of the modern plantation industry in Peninsular Malaysia, from its origins on the new British settlement of Penang in the 1780s till the days of the Mahathir era 200 years later.

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.

This book deals not only with the introduction of crops, but also with immigration and settlement, issues of land legislation, revenue and taxation, the politics of rival professional organizations, the labour movement and trade unions, the development of the industry into an adjunct of colonialism, up to the time when the industry was Malaysianized under the New Economic Policy.