Much of Java became a Dutch plantation, making it a profitable, self-sufficient colony and saving the Netherlands from bankruptcy and helping it become a thriving and modernised bourgeois society.
[1] The Cultivation System, however, brought much economic hardship to Javanese peasants, who suffered famine and epidemics in the 1840s, attracting much critical public opinion in the Netherlands.
[2] Tens of thousands of laborers from China, India, and Java were brought to the Outer Islands to work the plantations where they suffered cruel treatment and a high death rate as "coolies".
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.
Concern over the welfare of indigenous populations in the Indies resulted in Queen Wilhelmina proclaiming in 1901 a new benevolent "Ethical Policy", intended to bring progress, prosperity and improved education to the natives.