Economic Transformation

1. ECONOMIC
TRANFORMATION

2.  There was a European impact on the societies of
Southeast Asia and this impact had enormous
consequences.
 One of these many consequences was the
economic transformation of the region.
 The colonial powers placed the interests of the
indigenous population above their own.
 This chapter’s concern is to provide an outline of
massive economic change that SEA experienced.

3.  Colonies were seen as essential elements in the
economic pattern that required the supply of raw
materials to the industrial countries of Europe.
 Southeast Asians were expected to play an
uncomplaining role in the process that enriched
their colonial masters but offered little reward to
them.
 For most European colonisers questions of equity
simply did not arise.

4.  Rubber and oil palm plantations
 The expansion of rice-growing, the Mekong River
delta
 They did expansion of areas under
cultivation, introduction of new crops and
plantation products, and establishment of new
infrastructure.
 WHO BENEFITED FROM THIS
TRANSFORMATION?

5.  Southeast Asia could supply many materials that
became, during 19th, essential to the needs of modern Europe
and American.
 TIN from Malaysia and Indonesia could help meet the industrial
to the development of fast-running factory machinery.
 RUBBER, particularly from Indonesia, Malaysia and French
Indochina, could help meet the multiple needs of societies that
expected constant improvement in a range of items from motor
car tyres to surgical equipment.
 COPRA played a major part in the vast expansion of the soap
industry.

6. RUBBER
 Mostly as the result of British efforts, the possibility
of growing rubber in SEA was discovered, some
1880s.
 Vast areas of the Malayan Peninsula, of Java and
Sumatra, and of Vietnam and Cambodia were
brought under rubber cultivation.
 By the beginning of the 1970s rubber plantations
accounted for nearly 65 % of all cultivated
land, with 1/3 of the agricultural workforce
engaged in the plantation industry.

7. RUBBER
 Initially, large investors controlled the rubber industry and
the benefits to Southeast Asians themselves were
limited, even in the field of labour.
 It was from 1920s onwards the small holder began to play
an important part in the production of rubber.

8. TIN
 From 1870s onwards, the establishment of British political
control over the Malay states enabled the rapid expansion of
already existing Chinese tin-mining enterprises.
 Greater technological efficiency
 Large Western firms
 Before WWII, Malay’s tin-mining industry remained in the
hands of non-indigenous groups, Chinese and European.

9. RICE
 Rice is the most important export crop of all in SEA and to
grow, the indigenous peasant was absolutely necessary.
 Rice had been imported from SEA before the onset of full-
scale colonial advance in mid 19th, but the exports were
small.
 In general rice was not grown for export.
 An increasing world market in 19th, rice-growing area
capable of developing rice surpluses were the Mekong
River delta region, the Chao Phraya River, and the
Irrawaddy River delta in Burma.

10. RICE
 Rice had been exported from SEA before the onset of a full-
scale colonial advance in the mid 19th, but it was very small.
 An increasing world market, it provided the stimulus for
rapid expansion of those SEA’s rice-growing areas such as
the Mekong River delta, the Chao Phraya River, and the
Irrawaddy River delta in Burma.
 Small number of Vietnamese landowners and the Chinese
rice merchants and Indian moneylenders and Burmese
landlords played major role in participating with the
Europeans.

11.  The development of copra plantations
 A range of other crops include tobacco, coffee and sugar.
 Oil industry was produced in Burma, Sumatra and Sarawak
and Brunei.
 Many other changes include the region’s infrastructure like
roads, railways, bridges, dams and ports.
 The expansion of the infrastructure, roads, canals and
other forms of communication was so essential to modern
economic life.

12.  There were a major growth in the size of the rural population while
the economic changes profoundly affected the life of the rural
population.
 The development of cities provided one instance of the broad
impact of general economic change. Example, Bangkok and
Yogyakarta the population numbered some 10,000.
 Singapore, Malay fishing settlement in 1819, with less than 200
residents.

13. During the years between mid 19th and the
outbreak of the Second World War, Southeast
Asia’s economy underwent greater change that
at any time in the region’s entire history