There was a book I read as a kid, "Poor Malays Speak Out" It's about subsistence farmers in the 70s being pushed to poverty with the agricultural revolution in

There was a book I read as a kid, "Poor Malays Speak Out" It's about subsistence farmers in the 70s being pushed to poverty with the agricultural revolution in Malaysia. The Malays grew progressively poorer, where a dream job was working as a laborer on some of the new plantations. Most people saw it as a political work - rich ethnic Chinese buying out poor Malays. But I saw it as a story of technology. It's a slice of time where tech actually put people out of jobs. Some saw it as an example where the rich become richer. But the money went from the rich, to the people who built and maintained the machinery, regardless of ethnicity. Even looking back several centuries, colonists were those with superior technology. A ship filled with soldiers with guns could take control of an entire country.