Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and conventions
- Geographical definitions
- Introduction
- Part One Themes and beginnings
- Part Two Development as a staple port, 1900–1939
- 3 Trade, finance and development
- 4 Ocean-going shipping, the port and regional transport
- 5 Immigration, population and employment
- 6 Rubber: boom and spread of a twentieth-century staple
- 7 Rubber, industrialization and the development of Chinese banking
- 8 Petroleum and tin: the twentieth-century boom commodity and a staple in decline
- 9 The distribution of manufactured imports
- Part Three Staple port and rapid growth, 1947–1990
- 12 Conclusion
- Appendix tables
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Trade, finance and development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and conventions
- Geographical definitions
- Introduction
- Part One Themes and beginnings
- Part Two Development as a staple port, 1900–1939
- 3 Trade, finance and development
- 4 Ocean-going shipping, the port and regional transport
- 5 Immigration, population and employment
- 6 Rubber: boom and spread of a twentieth-century staple
- 7 Rubber, industrialization and the development of Chinese banking
- 8 Petroleum and tin: the twentieth-century boom commodity and a staple in decline
- 9 The distribution of manufactured imports
- Part Three Staple port and rapid growth, 1947–1990
- 12 Conclusion
- Appendix tables
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Singapore developed in response to changes occurring outside it and independent of its existence. The point was made in chapter 2 that the chief factors underlying this development were a growing world demand for the primary products of Malaya and Netherlands India and the shipping links available to Singapore by virtue of its strategic position on the primary world east–west shipping route. These factors were equally important during the first four decades of the twentieth century.
Since trade as an engine of growth depended on rubber and petroleum after 1900, this study now turns to an examination of their expansion and role in Singapore's economic development. The focus cannot be exclusively on these two commodities, however. The traditional trades of tin, tropical produce and rice, although no longer the dynamic elements in growth, were important to it, for as well as continuing to demand infrastructural services and providing a fund of experience on which Singapore could draw, their still high volume and value made growth a matter of building on an existing foundation of trade rather than of having to start anew.
The present chapter analyses why trade centred on Singapore, how it was financed and what its principal development implications were. Sections I and II consider the course of Singapore's trade and the main volume, value and development features of primary commodity exports to the West.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Economic Growth of SingaporeTrade and Development in the Twentieth Century, pp. 71 - 119Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994