 Over 500,000 settlers had moved from the Netherlands to this "second homeland", and the East Indies possessed abundant valuable resources, the most important of which were the rubber plantations and oilfields; the islands were the fourth-largest exporters of oil in the world, behind the United States, Iran, and Romania.The "Koninklijke Marine" had only one seagoing armored ship stationed in the East Indies, the coastal-defense ship (ex-).As this ship was considered to be "of little remaining combat value", three light cruisers (, and ), a few destroyers, and a large submarine fleet were charged with the main naval defense of the islands.