Most of the islands of the archipelago belong to the great equa torial forest-belt. In its economical aspect the vegetation, whether natural or cultivated, is of prime interest. The list of fruits is very extensive, though few of them are widely known. These.
however, include the orange, mango, mangosteen, shaddock, guava and the durian. The variety of food-plants is equally notable. Not only are rice and maize, sugar and coffee, among the widely cultivated crops, but the coconut, the bread-fruit, the banana and plantain, the sugar-palm, the tea-plant, the sago-palm, the cacao tree, the ground-nut, the yam, the cassava, and others besides are of practical importance. The cultivation of sugar, rubber, kapok, palm oil and coffee owes its development mainly to the Dutch; and to them also is due the introduction of tea and chinchona (quinine). They have greatly encouraged the cultivation of the coconut among the natives, and it flourishes, especially in the coast districts, in almost every island in their territory.
The oil is largely employed in native cook ery. Pepper, nutmegs and cloves were long the objects of the most important branch of Dutch commerce; and gutta-percha, camphor, dammar, benzoin and other forest products have a place among the exports. (For details concerning flora and fauna, see separate articles, especially JAVA.) Inhabitants.—The majority of the na tive inhabitants of the Malay archipelago belong to two races, the Malays and the Melanesians (Papuans). As regards the present racial distribution, the view ac cepted by many anthropologists, following A. H. Keane, is that the Negritos, still found in the Philippines, are the true abor igines of Indo-China and western Malaysia, while the Melanesians, probably their kinsmen, were the earliest oc cupants of eastern Malaysia and western Polynesia. At some date long anterior to history it is supposed that Indo-China was occupied first by a fair Caucasian people and later by a yellow Mongolian race. From these two have come all the peoples—other than Negrito or Papuan—found to-day from the Malay peninsula to the farthest islands of Polynesia. A rather recent Hindu strain is evident in Java, strongly in parts of Bali, in some dis tricts in Sumatra. and others of the western islands. There are many Arab and Indian settlers, and slight inter-marriage exists hetween these and the Malayans. The Chinese form, from an economical point of view, one of the most important sections of the community in many of the more civilized districts. Chinese have been established in the archipelago from a very early date: the first Dutch invaders found them settled at Jacatra ; and many of them, as, for instance, the colony of Ternate, have taken so kindly to their new home that they have acquired Malay to the disuse of their native tongue.
There is a vast field for philological explorations in the archi pelago. Of the great number of distinct languages known to exist, few have been studied scientifically. The most widely distributed is the Malay, which has not only been diffused by the Malays themselves throughout the coast regions of the various islands, hut has also been adopted by the Government of the Dutch East Indies as a lingua fiance. The most cultivated of the native tongues is the Javanese, and it is spoken by a greater number of people than any of the others. Among the other languages which have been reduced to writing and grammatically analysed are the Balinese, closely connected with the Javanese, the Sasak (Lom bok) and allied Sumbawanese, Sumbanese, Rottinese and Timo rese languages. The commercial activity of the Buginese causes their language to be fairly widely spoken. (K. G. J.; E. E. L.) The history of the Malay archipelago before the arrival of the Portuguese under Diego Lopez de Seguiera off Sumatra in 1509, is mainly tradition and speculation.
The Portuguese found the coast people of Sumatra and Java much more civilized than the natives of the interior or of the smaller islands.