The island of Temasek had largely been…

The island of Temasek had largely been abandoned and forgotten in the past two centuries, as the fortunes of the Johore Sultanate rose and fell.

By 1722 a vigorous seafaring people from the island of Celebes (modern Sulawesi, Indonesia) had become the power behind the throne of the Johore Sultanate.

Under Bugis influence, the sultanate has built up a lucrative entrepôt trade, centered at Riau, south of Singapore, in present-day Sumatra.

Riau also is the site of major plantations of pepper and gambier, a medicinal plant used in tanning.

The Bugis use waste material from the gambier refinng process to fertilize pepper plants, a valuable crop, but one that quickly depletes soil nutrients.

By 1784 an estimated ten thousand Chinese laborers had been brought from southern China to work the gambier plantations on Bintan Island in the Riau Archipelago (now part of Indonesia).

In the early nineteenth century, gambier is in great demand in Java, Siam, and elsewhere, and cultivation of the crop has spread from Riau to the island of Singapore.