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Straight forward questions.

How industrialised did Britain's colonies become while the Empire was still ruling them?
What was the reason for their level (or lack of) industrialisation?
If some were more industrialised than others, what was the reason?

In the most general case, the colonies were never heavily industrialized. The British economic model was based essentially on the concept of exploiting the resources of the colonies for the development of the metropole. In general, the infrastructure of the colonies was rarely more sophisticated than was necessary for the administrative and military presences to operate and to extract the necessary resources. I think that is the short answer to the question.

The long answer is probably more nuanced, and I think also depends on what time period you are looking at. For example, what is now the United States was industrialized to some extent, but was independent by the time the Industrial Revolution really got into full swing in the early 19th century. British colonial policy and general economic structure varied from 1800 to World War II (as did technology, and other factors relevant to industrialization), so it is hard to make sweeping generalizations without at least some exceptions. For example, IIRC in the latter part of the 18th century there was a fair degree of investment in the West Indies colonies, but by the time of the American Civil War British focus was primarily on Africa and Asia.

This paper seems relevant. Though I haven't actually read it, so I can't vouch for its accuracy. Just came up on Google.

From what I gather from the paper, there seems to be some resistance towards industrialising the colonies primarily to "protect jobs at home".

It still doesn't explain how did industrialisation became identified as some sort of privilege that is exclusive to the Westerners.

This actually extended to the point where British interests deliberately de-industrialized some of the more long-settled and economically successful parts of their colonial empire, such as India. The East India Trading Company had a thriving business shipping cotton from India and selling textiles from British mechanical looms to India. There was little room in that business model for native cloth production in India- so the EIC proceeded to stamp it out to the limit of their ability.

At the time, India had been an exporter of cloth for something like two thousand years...

I wonder about the percentage of "industry" that can be directly traced to British forces. It may very well be that parts of the colonies were only industrialized to provide support for the British Army and Navy, the latter requiring a lot of technological know-how to repair and provision ships.

Britain shipped most of industrial manufactures from the metropole, so colonies never really had a chance to get high-added value products. The best they could get was some institutional framework and/or education, and this helped some of them (but not others). In most cases, the industry left by the British at the moment a colony got independence was laughable.

If people don't confuse industry with infrastructure, they can discover a very predictable pattern in British behaviour everywhere: a lot of infrastructure to keep a grip on the Empire and be able to ship goods and armed forces to crush any resistance, but precious little industry. Very smart - this left the colonies cripples that could barely resist Britain at a time when colonialism was seriously starting to be challenged.

Ziggy Stardust wrote:This paper seems relevant. Though I haven't actually read it, so I can't vouch for its accuracy. Just came up on Google.

That paper is not really helpful. It is not sourced, has no critical discussion of sources, lacks footnotes and adheres to several economic theories which are questionable.

For an example of the role of infrastructure in British imperialism, look no further than the Sudan campaign* in the 1890s. The progress of Anglo-Egyptian forces into the Sudan was pretty much governed by the progress of the railhead.

*(Churchill's account is interesting if obviously quite biased; he is a primary source on the part of it he experienced and had plenty of opportunity to interact with other primary sources).

Stas Bush wrote:Britain shipped most of industrial manufactures from the metropole, so colonies never really had a chance to get high-added value products. The best they could get was some institutional framework and/or education, and this helped some of them (but not others). In most cases, the industry left by the British at the moment a colony got independence was laughable.

If people don't confuse industry with infrastructure, they can discover a very predictable pattern in British behaviour everywhere: a lot of infrastructure to keep a grip on the Empire and be able to ship goods and armed forces to crush any resistance, but precious little industry. Very smart - this left the colonies cripples that could barely resist Britain at a time when colonialism was seriously starting to be challenged.

That's not strictly true........ Singapore in particular had a chemical and fuel industry, indeed, the only reason why oil is a critical component of our modern day economy is because of the British, well, Anglo Dutch Oil company legacy.

http://www.exxonmobil.com.sg/AP-English ... ry_sg.aspx

Of course, the reasons why we had such an industry is because of the spin off effects from maintaining a coaling and then oil refueling infrastructure for the trading and military ships.

Similarly, by the 1930s, there was a move to set up some industry in India and East Asian colonies due to economic pressures, one of the more historical ones is of course the Ford Motor factory where Perceival surrendered.

In Singapore's case, its industrial develoment was greater than that of other colonial territories, but it was mostly a legacy industry from military needs (which I mentioned). Also, by industrial capabilities and general life level Singapore was damn poor pre-independence. It wasn't anywhere near any of the metropoles. As for the move to set up some industry in India/East Asia/etc. a lot of this had to do with industrial processing: some resources required localized factories for their extraction/production to become economical. After all, Ford went as far as to set up Fordlandia in the middle of nowhere. Didn't mean North American companies or government officials really wanted South America to industrialize and become their competitors.

However, what stands true is that no over-arching plan to industrialize colonies or bring them on par with metropoles never existed. Unlike the plans to build extensive infrastructure for raw material extraction and the transportation of goods.

Is there an accepted theory explaining why the modern industrial paradigm of moving jobs overseas to low wage countries didn't hold true during colonial times? Was it because industrialists could still squeeze the peons back home to their heart's content, was it simply too difficult to move factories overseas, racism, a deliberate economic stratagem, or something else?

Siege wrote:Is there an accepted theory explaining why the modern industrial paradigm of moving jobs overseas to low wage countries didn't hold true during colonial times? Was it because industrialists could still squeeze the peons back home to their heart's content, was it simply too difficult to move factories overseas, racism, a deliberate economic stratagem, or something else?

The whole concept of "low wages" back in the days of colonialism didn't really mean much. Labour supply was plentiful in the metropole. Also - this labour was, at least partly, educated to work on the machines. Colonies were non-industrial, deeply agrarian societies with scant few urbanites and even less of those urbanites belonging to what we'd call industrial proletariat today. Most of the expenses that were born by the capitalist were capital expenses, not labour expenditures - even at home.

Creating an industrial plant in the colony also meant cessation or huge reduction of exports (back in 1914, one plant could often be enough to supply a huge area with a given industrial good; this held even more true for the colonies, where urban areas were few and far between) - inevitably hurting the economy of the metropole and the pockets of capitalists there. Considering that higher profits were hardly a given, labour costs being generally low, risking the destruction of home industries for a very uncertain profit prospects across the ocean, which also depended on the ability to keep the land... I'd say the capitalists and the semi-protectionist officials who implemented this policy worked in their own best interest.

Remember, quite a few colonial possessions already removed the yoke in the 1800s; counting on the long-term perpetuation of the colonial order was not a risk many were willing to take. In the end in many British colonies the American capitalists and not the British went to set up first real heavy industry plants.

but it should be noted the british did ship huge amounts of labour, predominatly indian, to other colonies to improve productivity. (such as coffee farms in africa)

Thanas wrote: That paper is not really helpful. It is not sourced, has no critical discussion of sources, lacks footnotes and adheres to several economic theories which are questionable.

That will teach me to post papers without vetting them. It was just the only relevant seeming thing that came up in a cursory Google search and it looked like it was from an academic source. My bad.

Stas Bush wrote:In Singapore's case, its industrial develoment was greater than that of other colonial territories, but it was mostly a legacy industry from military needs (which I mentioned). Also, by industrial capabilities and general life level Singapore was damn poor pre-independence. It wasn't anywhere near any of the metropoles. As for the move to set up some industry in India/East Asia/etc. a lot of this had to do with industrial processing: some resources required localized factories for their extraction/production to become economical. After all, Ford went as far as to set up Fordlandia in the middle of nowhere. Didn't mean North American companies or government officials really wanted South America to industrialize and become their competitors.

However, what stands true is that no over-arching plan to industrialize colonies or bring them on par with metropoles never existed. Unlike the plans to build extensive infrastructure for raw material extraction and the transportation of goods.

I'm not sure how you derive Singapore being poor pre-independence. It was a city with over 1 million souls with a relatively high level of GDP and wealth for the elite residents. Its no London but the level of population was enough to catapult it into the top 30 cities, hell, New York had only 7 million people at this point in time. I mean, just how many cities had a civilian airport at this point during the 1930s?

Furthermore, while the initial starts for the coaling station was driven from military needs, the petrochemical industry had everything to do with POLs being needed for ships on trade. It serviced the maritime industry, which was decidedly civilian.

Singapore and Malaya was an outlier example of Britain colonial progression though since economic trends leading to some industrialization of the colonies took off faster and quicker here than in South Africia or India.

Siege wrote:Is there an accepted theory explaining why the modern industrial paradigm of moving jobs overseas to low wage countries didn't hold true during colonial times? Was it because industrialists could still squeeze the peons back home to their heart's content, was it simply too difficult to move factories overseas, racism, a deliberate economic stratagem, or something else?

No surplus labour in the colonies would be my guess. India and some other were exceptions to this, but they served as markets for British manufactures, not competitors.

South Africia required labour for the mines and labour in Malaya and Singapore were scarce.

With regards to Singapore development pre WW2....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallang_Airport

Wikipedia is wrong in citing Kallang as the chief fighter airfield. It took on that role primarily because the rapidity in invasion caused the main fields at Tengah to be overrun, otherwise, Kallang was always and primarily a civil aerodome.

And lastly, there's always Opium Hill.
http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_622 ... ml?s=Opium Hill,

Yup. Singapore was a narcotics runner in the 19th century, we took the opium processed from India and sold it onwards, making such a high profit that at one point, it came out to 49% of our revenue.

The opium factories were generally suppressed after the British changed their minds, but its history lives on in our name. Bukit Chandu, Opium Hill is named for the existence of one of said opium factories.

PainRack wrote:I'm not sure how you derive Singapore being poor pre-independence.

Like this:

Singapore's PPP GDP per capita was below world average in pre-independence time. Needless to explain that colonial metropoles were way above world average at the time. This is considering Singapore was the most developed territory of all British-controlled territories in SEA. The GDP/capita changes between late 1930s and 1960s look pretty flat to me on this graph*, too:

* In 1950-1960 there was a doubling of the real (inflation-adjusted) total Singaporean GDP, but since the population grew 1,6 times, the per capita growth was far less impressive obviously.

PainRack wrote:I mean, just how many cities had a civilian airport at this point during the 1930s?

In the metropoles? I think quite a few.

PainRack wrote:Singapore and Malaya was an outlier example of Britain colonial progression though since economic trends leading to some industrialization of the colonies took off faster and quicker here than in South Africia or India.

And yet, despite this, their GDP was kept decidedly below world average.

Note that once proper, independent strong governments with a generally similar state-capitalist model were established in South Asia, the trends that were imposed by colonialism and Euro-American world domination started changing rapidly. The Great Divergence could no longer be maintained and the great Convergence started, here a nice illustration:

Siege wrote:Is there an accepted theory explaining why the modern industrial paradigm of moving jobs overseas to low wage countries didn't hold true during colonial times? Was it because industrialists could still squeeze the peons back home to their heart's content, was it simply too difficult to move factories overseas, racism, a deliberate economic stratagem, or something else?

Moving jobs overseas only works when it's cost-effective to split up your manufacturing supply chain for products, instead of integrating it together as much as possible (as was common with manufacturing in the late 19th century/early 20th century - see some of Ford's giant factories). More reliable and organized shipping as well as logistics technologies really helped to make outsourcing possible in the later 20th century.

Siege wrote:Is there an accepted theory explaining why the modern industrial paradigm of moving jobs overseas to low wage countries didn't hold true during colonial times? Was it because industrialists could still squeeze the peons back home to their heart's content, was it simply too difficult to move factories overseas, racism, a deliberate economic stratagem, or something else?

The moving of jobs in general follows the change of cost of transportation in comparison with the change of cost of production. If economies get more efficient faster than transport cost fall international trade falls and vice versa.

The colonies were never developed because the ruling elites had no interest. Industrialization may have been better for the economy as while, but this would mean industries would have to compete for workers leading to increasing wages. And the already established companies trading in raw material did not want that.
For example, the homelands in South Africa were established on the worst places so Africans were forced to work on farms and in mines on the territories of whites. And they didn't receive education that would have increased their productivity so they had no other jobs they could choose.

Using data from 1940 to 1960 is going to lead to a misleading conclusion as the colonies repaired themselves from WW2 and the Malayan Emergency halted development.

GDP PPP is also less useful due to the huge rich poor gap in the colonies as well as the large population and labour intensive work force.

If you note the graph, the GDP of Malaya and Singapore leaped during the 1930s, which incidentally was when industry was first located in Malaya and Singapore, as a result of the rubber boom in the 30s. The shift in rubber as a raw product led to secondary processing and then the oil industry boom, from both palm oil and oil refining.

Its also odd that you used the great convergence as proof that Singapore was poor before, because the fact will remain that Singapore was nothing more than a backwater port and fishing village. The Malayan states were richer but even here, they paled compared to the Javan empires. Yet, in the 1930s, the GDP of these two colonies would surpass the Dutch colonies even though both colonies had focused in the sale of cash crops. The difference rested in the 'beginings' of industry in these two colonies compared to the Dutch.

In particular, the tin mines of Perak and the Rubber boom, which led to secondary processing, the creation of the coastal roads, railways, transport infrastructure in Malaya to handle the agriculture and mining output also facillated the set up of secondary industries, from tires to canning. We saw the beginning of light industry in the two colonies, from biscuit tins and the emergence of oil refining in Singapore so as to facillate the trade coming out of Malaya to the rest of the world.

It gets even more weird because the oil? It came from the Dutch East Indies..........

PainRack wrote:Using data from 1940 to 1960 is going to lead to a misleading conclusion as the colonies repaired themselves from WW2 and the Malayan Emergency halted development.

It is true. But it is also true that the period from 1940 to 1950 pretty much fell out, I wasn't observing it. The 1930s and 1950-60 period are the ones that are important. Civil war is a sign of poverty, too - these things don't happen when people are well-fed and well off in general.

PainRack wrote:If you note the graph, the GDP of Malaya and Singapore leaped during the 1930s, which incidentally was when industry was first located in Malaya and Singapore, as a result of the rubber boom in the 30s. The shift in rubber as a raw product led to secondary processing and then the oil industry boom, from both palm oil and oil refining.

I know. I also noted that Singapore and Malaya were outliers compared to many other places. But even an outlying example in colonial development proves the general trend of severly lagging industry development in the colonies. At least it wasn't deliberate de-industrialization and subjugation, as it happened with India.

PainRack wrote:Its also odd that you used the great convergence as proof that Singapore was poor before, because the fact will remain that Singapore was nothing more than a backwater port and fishing village. The Malayan states were richer but even here, they paled compared to the Javan empires. Yet, in the 1930s, the GDP of these two colonies would surpass the Dutch colonies even though both colonies had focused in the sale of cash crops.

I am not saying that certain urban centers were relatively rich in pre-colonial times, but Asia as a whole had a much greater share of world production than during the ugly colonial abberation period. Thankfully that's coming to an end.

Stas Bush wrote: I am not saying that certain urban centers were relatively rich in pre-colonial times, but Asia as a whole had a much greater share of world production than during the ugly colonial abberation period. Thankfully that's coming to an end.

I'm sorry, but I still don't see how the Great Convergence has anything to do with regards to industrialization. Again, pre colonialisation, the Javan empires were relatively richer than Malaya and Singapore. During colonization, the Dutch East Indies was richer at first, until industrialization and trade shifted Malaya and Singapore forward in the 30s.

Its.....just irrelevant.


Singapore and Malaya were outliers in colonial development, but zoom in close enough, each and every single regional colony was an aberration. Canada. Australia and New Zealand. India. The Gold Coast.......

The important thing is using the difference to explain 'why'. Unfortunately, that's a much harder question to answer. Canada industrialization took place in the context of WW2 and the demands for war material.
The unique nature of Australia modern economy, as that of an advanced agricultural and mining economy must reflect the context of colonial trade, when only high value, durable and relatively light weight goods was profitable, hence wool and etc. The disruption of said industries on her fragile ecosystems also reflected how the distortion of global trade affects economies and environments.


Given the context of Mr Friendly Guy question, answering why Malaya and Singapore were outliers in this aspect probably will help explain why most colonies didn't have a higher level of industry and etc.

PainRack wrote:I'm sorry, but I still don't see how the Great Convergence has anything to do with regards to industrialization.

Um... the Great Divergence does? A huge gap was created between the industrialized countries and all non-industrial ones? And kind of coincidentally after decolonization the scales started swinging in the opposite direction - slowly at first, but faster and faster now.

So, just HOW does it answer the question of why Malaya and Singapore received more industrial development than the Gold Coast or India?

You can't appeal to the past because Malaya and Temasek were relatively poorer compared to their Javan neighbours. Well, Malacca was the only settlement which rivaled their Javan counterparts.

This even though both the British and Dutch focused on agricultural cash crops for sale. Their greater wealth compared to the Dutch rested upon their economic trends during colonization.

You can't just claim colonial possessions were poor during British era, thus,the British held back their economic potential and sabotaged it as can be seen by their success post colonialisation. That's a rubbish statement for Malaysia and Singapore. Temasek was nothing more than a fishing village after the Thai came back and attacked the port. Malacca was well off, but its poorer than their Javan counterparts. Perak was nothing more than some rival Malay princes and the north of Malaya was swinging between Malay control and Siamese influence.