Cultivation System
Liberals said the benefits of economic expansion would trickle down to the local level. However, the resulting scarcity of land for rice production, combined with dramatically increasing populations, especially in Java, led to further hardships. The world wide recession of the late 1880s and early 1890s saw the commodity prices on which the Indies depended collapsed. Journalists and civil servants observed that the majority of the Indies population were no better off than under the previous regulated Cultivation System economy and tens of thousands starved. Some unconfirmed sources also state as that mostly rich Non-indigenous people (such as European and Chinese) and rich Indigenous Nobles who profitted under this system yet leaving the non-wealthy indigenous people unable to gather capitals and their standard of living not any different than Java War.