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Twentieth-Century Malayan Economic History: A Select Bibliographic Survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Wong Lin Ken
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Extract

More than a decade ago, when Singapore was still part of Malaysia, the author wrote, at the invitation of the Journal of Economic History, a bibliographic essay on the economic history of that country. It turned out to be an exploration into the possibility of writing a general economic history of Malaysia. It concluded that the nineteenth century was better studied than the twentieth, and that certain states, periods, and sectors of the economy received greater attention than others. The conclusion then was that a general economic history of Malaysia was not feasible.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1979

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References

1 Ken, Wong Lin, “The Economic History of Malaysia: A Bibliographic Essay”, Journal of Economic History (henceforth JEH), 25 (1965): 244–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 There has been no historical in-depth study on the Malayan Customs Union proposed by the Straits Governor and High Commissioner Sir Cecil Clementi in 1931 and 1932, but all general works covering the trade of Malaya in the inter-war period touch upon the subject including the author's recently published article, “Singapore: Its Growth as an Entrepot Port, 1819–1938”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (henceforth JSEAS) 9 (1978): 50–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Articles and studies, published and unpublished, on the formation of Malaysia and the separation of Singapore are numerous. See, for instance, Yew, Lee Kuan, The Battle for a Malaysian Malaysia (Singapore, 1965)Google Scholar; Sopiee, Mohamed Noordin, From Malayan Union to Singapore Separation: Political Unification in the Malaysia Region, 1945–1965. (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Malaya, 1974)Google Scholar; Anderson, Robert Allan, “The Separation of Singapore from Malaysia: A Study in Political Involution” (Ph.D. diss., American University, 1973)Google Scholar.

3 See Silock, T.H., The Commonwealth Economy in Southeast Asia (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1959Google Scholar). There has been no in-depth historical study on the evolution of the system.

4 Parker, William N., “From Old to New to Old in Economic History”, JEH 31 (1971): 11–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Cameron, Rondo, “Economic History, Pure and Applied”, JEH 36 (1976): 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See Mills, L.A., “American Historical Writing on Southeast Asia”, in Historians of Southeast Asia, ed. Hall, D.G.E. (London: Oxford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar. Emerson's book has been reprinted by the University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1964. For general study of the export economies, see Levin, Jonathan V., The Export Economies: Their Pattern of Development in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

7 Cameron, Meribeth E., “Outstanding Recent Books on the Far East”, in Far Eastern Quarterly (1944–45): 367, 369, 373.Google Scholar

8 These works will be noticed in the later part of the paper except those on education, which interested readers may wish to consult: Philip Loh Fook Seng, Seeds of Separatism: Education Policy in Malaya, 1874–1940 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975); Rex Stevenson, Cultivators and Administrators: British Educational Policy towards the Malays, 1875–1906 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975); and Martin Rudner, “Education, Development and Change in Malaysia”, in South East Asian Studies 15, no. 1 (1977): 23–62.

9 Present-day readers might find Li Dun Jen's British Malaya: An Economic Analysis (New York: The American Press, 1955) more appealing than Mills' work, as it is unreservedly anti-imperialist. It covers the years 1895–1938, with the inter-war years occupying the greater part of the work. Despite a disclaimer in the preface to pass moral judgement, the author's own viewpoint pervades the whole book, removing it from the category of books one can conscientiously recommend, to general readers. This is not to defend British rule or to say it was not open to criticisms or moral objections (British policy on opium, for example), but much of what the author has said has not been supported by documentary or statistical evidence, e.g., statements like “the healthiest sections of Malaya were still the least developed areas, such as Kelantan, which the modern economy had barely touched” (p. 83). In any case, despite the claim of the sub-title that the work is an economic analysis of British Malaya, the book, as the author has averred in the preface, “is not intended as a general description of the economic development of Malaya”, but is a study of “imperialism at work”.

10 In this work, the meaning of “Malaya” is somewhat elastic. Wrote Lim Chong Yah in the preface (p. vii): “For some purposes, whether or not Malaya includes Singapore is inconsequential, for others, the distinction is of vital importance. Where necessary Pan-Malaya is used in this study to refer to Malaya including Singapore. What is said of Malaya can also, more often than not, mutatis mutandis, be said of Singapore, as the two economies have been very closely interwoven right from the early days with Singapore as the city-port and Malaya as the hinterland.”

11 For some critical reviews, see Economic Journal 84 (1974): 1047–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Journal of Development Studies 11 (1975): 247–48Google Scholar; and Asian Affairs 6 (1975): 244–45Google Scholar. Quotation from a review article by Jackson, James C. in Cultures et Development 7 (1975): 357–67.Google Scholar

12 There is a Ph. D. thesis in progress in the London School of Economics, with the tentative title, “The Economic Development of Singapore, 1900–39” On Penang, the interested reader is recommended to consult P.P. Courtenay, “Penang: The Economic Geography of a Free Port”, a Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of London. The historical geographical part of the work covers the period 1786–1959, and is probably the only substantial study of a historical character made on Penang.

13 In pre-war Malaya, industrial development was insignificant; whatever small progress that had been made was mainly in Singapore, for which see parts of Jack Shepherd, Industry in Southeast Asia, and K.L. Mitchell, Industrialization of the Western Pacific, both published in New York by the Institute of Pacific Relations, in 1941 and 1942, respectively.

14 By the early 1970s, Singapore's total imports and exports were about double its gross domestic products, showing its continued extreme reliance on external trade.

15 This is not to say that there has been no industrial development in Malaysia. It has been noted that by the mid-1970s, “industry has taken over the role of the growth engine from the traditionally loading primary sector”. Kasper, Wolfgang, Malaysia: A Study in Successful Economic Development (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1974), p. 9.Google Scholar

16 From 1931 to 1941, international tin production was governed by three successive agreements. The first post-war agreement was signed in 1953, and enforced on 1 July 1956.

17 From 1948 to 1956, William Fox was the Secretary-General of the International Tin Study Group and, subsequently, until his retirement in 1971, the Secretary of the International Tin Council in London.

18 On the origin of the rubber industry, Drabble has filled in the details without changing what is already known of the main outline. Keong, Voon Phin, Western Rubber Planting Enterprise in Southeast Asia, 1876–1921 (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Malaysia, 1976)Google Scholar also covers the growth of the Malayan rubber industry for approximately the same period, but the story is told in the wider context of the growth of the rubber plantation industry in Southeast Asia.

19 One can think of many areas for Ph. D. level researches, e.g., the role of the revenue farms in the growth of Chinese enterprise in Malaya, Chinese contributions in the entrepot trade of the Straits ports, especially Singapore, the compradore system on which one likes to see a work similar to Yen-P₼ing Yao, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China: Bridge between East and West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).

20 King's and Drake's works have been critically reviewed in these respective articles: (1) Wilson, P.A., “Money in Malaya”, MER 2, no. 2 (1957)Google Scholar, and (2) Chung, N.H. Paul, “A Note on Finance Development in Malaya and Singapore: A Review Article”, MER 15, no. 1 (1970)Google Scholar. Sheng-Yi, Lee, The Monetary and Banking Development of Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1974)Google Scholar has a substantial historical section which adds little to what is already known, and its chief value lies in its emphasis on the recent past, the mid-sixties to the early seventies.

21 Jackson, R.N., Immigrant Labour and the Development of Malaya, 1786–1920 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya, 1961Google Scholar) is a somewhat sketchy work and despite its title covers almost wholly the pre-First World War period, excluding also the war years.

22 See Wong, “The Economic History of Malaysia”, p. 255–57.

23 In addition, interested readers may wish to read Wilson, H.E., “The Evolution of Land Administration in the Malay States: A Survey of British Inspired Changes”, in JMBRAS 48, pt. 1 (1975): 120–33Google Scholar, which gives a sketch of the evolution of land tenure in Perak. Hai, Ding Eing Tan Soo “The Rice Industry in Malaya, 1920–1940” (B.A. Hons. Academic Exercise, University of Singapore, 1963Google Scholar) is a short critical study on the rice industry, while Hwa, Cheng Siok, “The Rice Industry of Malaya: A Historical Survey”, JMBRAS 42, pt. II (1969): 130–44Google Scholar, sketches the growth of the industry up to the mid-1960s. One of the most effective means of extending the areas for rice cultivation was irrigation. This is the subject of Short, D.E. and Jackson, James C., “The Origins of an Irrigation Policy in Malaya: A Review of Developments Prior to the Establishment of the Drainage and Irrigation Department”, JMBRAS 44, pt. 1 (1971): 78–103Google Scholar. Fredericks, L.J., “The Impact of the Cooperative Movement in Colonial Malaya, 1922–1940”, JMBRAS 46, pt. II (1973): 151–66Google Scholar, sketches the origin and comparative impact of the co-operative movement among the Malay smallholders, the urban salaried workers, and the Indian estate labour force. Hill, R.H., Rice in Malaya: A Study in Historical Geography (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar is an excellent monographic study on the history of ricecultivation in Malaya before the First World War, providing the necessary background to the studies on rice cultivation mentioned in this paper. Voon, P.K., “Malay Reservations and Malay Land Ownership in Semenyih and Ulu Semenyih Mukims Selangor”, Modern Asian Studies 10 (1976): 509–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar deals with the results of the Malay Reservation Acts in two mukims from the 1890s to 1968, concluding that “in retrospect, the establishment of Malay Reservations was, to a large extent, successful in preserving Malay landownership in rural areas” (p. 523).

24 Ungku Aziz's general theory of poverty has not been stated in one work, but can be derived from five of his papers and publications: namely (1) “Poverty and Rural Development in Malaysia”, KEM 1 (1964): 70–96; (2) “Poverty, Proteins and Disguised Starvation”, KEM 2 (1969): 7–48; (3) “Agricultural Development and Economic Development in Malaysia” (Paper presented at the Tokyo Conference on The Structure and Development in Asian Economies, 9–14 Sept. 1968); (4) “Fundamental Obstacles to Rural Development with Special Reference to Institutional Reforms” (Paper presented at a conference at the University of Stockholm, 22–25 Sept. 1969); (5) “Financing Agricultural Production and Marketing” (Paper presented at the SEANZA Central Banking Course at Colombo, July 1968). The last three papers are available in mimeographed form as Ungku Aziz, A., Three papers on Rural Development (Faculty of Economics & Administration, University of Malaya, 1969)Google Scholar.

25 Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes, The Adventures of Don Quixote (Bungay: Penguin Classics, 1972), p. 600.Google Scholar

26 International Affairs, 48 (1972): 655. See also Adelman, Irma, “On the State of Development Economics”, Journal of Development Economics 1, no. 1 (1974): 3–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Nafziger, E. Wayne, “A Critique of Development Economics in the U.S.”, Journal of Development Studies 13 (1976): 18–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a somewhat radical explanation of the failure of Western, especially American, orthodox theories of economic development.

27 See Firth, R., Malay Fishermen: Their Peasant Economy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1946), pp. 312–13.Google Scholar

28 Hidy, Ralph W., “The Road We are Traveling”, JEH 32, no. 1 (1972): 13–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Cited from David Lim's letter to the author, dated 31 May 1978, in which Lim made some helpful critical comments on the original paper submitted.