The Saga of Siti Mariah by Haji Mukti is a window into the workings of cultuurstelsel, a forced cultivation system imposed by the Dutch colonial government in the Dutch East Indies around the 1830s to the 1870s. Embedded in the pages of the book are the lives of Dutch sugar barons, the indigenous elite, European officials, and Chinese middlemen who became rich under the system, intersected by Javanese peasants who suffered under its yoke.