Economic history/Asia (Continued from front flap) LegaciesColonial “Th e great strength of this book lies in its com- Of related interest parative nature. Th e author off ers a balanced and great variety of economic and social policies elegantly nuanced conception of a complex his- pursued by the various colonial governments Colonial torical reality that will be a lasting contribution and the diversity of outcomes. to scholarship on the modern economic history of Lucidly and accessibly written, Colonial Th e Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia Southeast and East Asia.” Legacies will guide readers through the argu- A New History legacies —J. Th omas Lindblad, Leiden University ments and literatures of comparative co- Edited by Norman G. Owen lonialism for many years to come. It will be of 2005, 568 pages, illus., maps It is well known that Taiwan and South special interest to those concerned with the Paper isbn: 978-0-8248-2890-5 Korea, both former Japanese colonies, dynamics of development and the history of achieved rapid growth and industrializa- colonial regimes. tion after 1960. Th e performance of former “Th e single best guide to post–1800 Southeast Asian history.” European and American colonies (Malaysia, —Anthony Reid, Th e Historian Anne Booth is professor of economics at the Development Asia andSocial Economic inEast andSoutheast Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambo- School of Oriental and African Studies, “Th is is the best introductory text on Southeast Asian History Economic dia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) has been University of London. that this reviewer had come across in many years. Th e book less impressive. Some scholars have attributed itself is the embodiment of ‘unity in diversity,’ the leitmotif of the diff erence to better infrastructure and greater access to education in Japan’s colonies. Southeast Asia.” and Social Anne Booth examines and critiques such —Contemporary Southeast Asia arguments in this ambitious comparative “A signifi cant update to the eminently successful In Search of study of economic development in East and Southeast Asia from the beginning of the Southeast Asia of almost four decades ago. Highly recom- Development twentieth century until the 1960s. mended. Useful as a textbook and for reading at all levels.” Booth takes an in-depth look at the —Choice in East and nature and consequences of colonial poli- “Th is work represents a substantial step forward for a collabo- cies for a wide range of factors, including the rative project now forty years in the making. No other growth of export-oriented agriculture and the Southeast development of manufacturing industry. She textbook on Southeast Asia comes even close to it for its evaluates the impact of colonial policies on detail and coverage of historical themes and events.” the growth and diversifi cation of the market —Itinerario Asiê economy and on the welfare of indigenous “An attractive, accessible, and authoritative modern history.” populations. Indicators such as educational enrollments, infant mortality rates, and crude —Royal Society for Asian Aff airs death rates are used to compare living stan- dards across East and Southeast Asia in the 1930s. Her analysis of the impact that Japan’s anne e. Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and University of Hawai‘i Press later invasion and conquest had on the region Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888 and the living standards of its people leads booth to a discussion of the painful and protracted transition to independence following Japan’s defeat. Th roughout, Booth emphasizes the www.uhpress.hawaii.edu (Continued on back flap) Colonial Legacies Colonial Legacies Economic and Social Development in East and Southeast Asia Anne E. Booth University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu © 2007 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Booth, Anne. Colonial legacies : economic and social development in East and Southeast Asia / Anne E. Booth. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 - 0 - 8248 -3161-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Southeast Asia—Economic conditions—20th century. 2. Southeast Asia—Social conditions—20th century. 3. Southeast Asia—Colonial influence. 4. East Asia—Economic conditions— 20th century. 5. East Asia—Social conditions—20th century. 6. East Asia—Colonial influence. I. Title. HC441.B64 2007 330.95’041—dc22 2007006545 An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBN for this book is 9780824878412 (PDF). More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The open access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Designed by Paul Herr Contents Acknowledgments vii A Note on Terminology ix CHAPTER 1 1 Introduction CHAPTER 2 18 Economic Growth and Structural Change: 1900 –1940 CHAPTER 3 35 Agricultural Expansion, Population Growth, and Access to Land CHAPTER 4 67 What Were Colonial Governments Doing? The Myth of the Night Watchman State CHAPTER 5 88 International Trade, Balance of Payments, and Exchange Rate Policies: 1900 –1940 CHAPTER 6 112 Growth and Diversification of the Market Economy CHAPTER 7 131 Changing Living Standards and Human Development v vi Contents CHAPTER 8 148 The Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere: 1942–1945 CHAPTER 9 164 The Transition to Independent States CHAPTER 10 196 Conclusions Bibliography 205 Index 233 Acknowledgments his study is the result of several years of work, and I am grateful to the TSchool of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for providing me with a supportive research environment. A year’s sabbatical leave in 2001, part of it spent at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, allowed me to begin the thinking and background reading for what has turned out to be a more ambitious project than the one I had initially contemplated. I am also grateful to the Leverhulme Foundation, which awarded me a major research fellowship for two years from October 2004. This freed me from most of my teaching and administrative obligations, and allowed me to concentrate on writing. A project of this kind inevitably requires long hours in libraries, and I am happy to acknowledge the assistance I have had in London from staff in the SOAS library and the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics. In addition, I have spent valuable time in the libraries of Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Menzies and Chifl ey libraries at the Australian National University in Can- berra, and libraries at the National University of Singapore and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. I am grateful to the staff of all these institutions for their patient help. I would like to thank my colleagues in the History and Economic Devel- opment Group in London, on whom I have tried out some of the ideas that eventually found their way into this study. I have also benefi ted greatly from seminar presentations in London, Norwich, Canberra, Singapore, Leiden, Madison, and Tokyo. I have had valuable comments from, among others, Gregg Huff, Jean-Pascal Bassino, William Clarence-Smith, Janet Hunter, Chris- topher Howe, Stephen Morgan, and Howard Dick. Comments from two pub- lisher’s referees were also very helpful in preparing the fi nal version of the manuscript. I cannot blame any of these people for the result, but I am very grateful for their help. I am also grateful to the editor of the Economic History Review for permis- sion to draw on my article to appear there in 2007 in Chapter 4 of this study. vii A Note on Terminology n this study, the colonies in East and Southeast Asia will usually be referred Ito by the names that came into popular use in the postcolonial era rather than by the names that were in use before 1945 or their offi cial names in more recent decades. Thus what was the Netherlands Indies will be referred to as Indonesia, and the island of Taiwan will be referred to as Taiwan rather than Formosa or the Republic of China. Thailand will be used in preference to Siam (the offi cial name until 1939). Korea will be used rather than Chosen and Burma rather than Myanmar. The term “British Malaya” refers to the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States (Selangor, Pahang, Negeri Sembilan, and Perak), and the Unfederated Malay States (Johore, Trengganu, Kedah, Per- lis, Kelantan, and Brunei). During the 1950s, all these territories were often referred to as the Malayan Federation. The term “Malaysia” is used to refer to the modern state of that name, which includes all parts of British Malaya except the island of Singapore and Brunei as well as the former British protec- torates of Sarawak and Sabah (formerly North Borneo). Throughout the study, the term “Southeast Asia” will be used to refer to the region now covered by the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In 2006, these were Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thai- land (the original fi ve member states) plus Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma (Myanmar). East Asia refers to China (including the Hong Kong SAR), Taiwan (Republic of China), North and South Korea, and Japan.