Local Malay and Batak populations could not be coerced into coolie labor

Evidence

The European planters, for their part, saw an extraordinary opportunity for profit in the 1870s, stymied by a lack of labor to do the work. The thinly populated region made up of Malay fishermen and farmers under local sultanates, shifting swidden cultivators of ethnic Batak origin, could neither be coerced nor cajoled to work as coolies for the estates. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1078