Industrialisation of British colonies

[K. A. Pital]

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

It doesn't. Should it? That wasn't the question I asked, neither the statement I made. I said that industrial development of all colonies was retarded relative to the metropole.

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.

"Rubbish statement"? Really? I'm not saying a certain settlement - a city - would've been richer without colonization, but it is quite possible that without foreign interference industrial development of Asia wouldn't be so seriously lagging behind. I'm looking at the bigger picture. Singapore may not necessarily become the industrial center it happened to be in reality - some other city might have taken its place - but it is all irrelevant. To see the real outcomes people would have to change too much of history.

However, it is true that colonial period growth in Asia was generally lower than post-colonial growth, on the average. Unless I'm seriously mistaken here. It may be false for Africa, but it is true for Asia. The very fact that Asia is for the first time in recent history expanding economically with such speed to actually restore its share of world production that it had before the Great Divergence indicates that independence has been overall a beneficial development for Asia, while its colonization, subsequent infighting and foreign conquests led to Asia's share of world production to decline massively.

I am not sure how one can concentrate on the minor aspects of whether city X or Y would be more developed in an alternative scenario and not notice the huge decline in Asia's share of world production which just somehow coincided with colonization and its massive expansion back to normal levels relative to population size after regaining independence. Colonialist apologists would of course try to paint this massive trend as a mere coincidence, but such huge coincidences on such a vast territory? Bullshit in my view. When foreigners that directly controlled ports and some key areas left Asia to its own devices and the infighting more or less stopped, key ports resumed operation under control of independent nations and Asian growth in general started accelerating.

[madd0ct0r]

If I was being pernickety Stas, wouldn't it be just as fair to say the great convergence dates not from reclaim independence, but from the end of the cold war and the end of 'communist' economics?
The decline following the west's industrialization only proves that industrialization was important - and I'd argue that measured by %pop engaged in agriculture, bits of Asia are still industrializing, and that's what's driving the convergence.

An interesting test case might be Germany - as it industrialized late in Europe, and didn't have an empire in the same way.

[Guardsman Bass]

Belgium might be another example. Belgian industrialization was already pretty far underway when it did acquire an empire in the late 1880s/early 1890s, the same as Germany.

Colonialist apologists would of course try to paint this massive trend as a mere coincidence, but such huge coincidences on such a vast territory? Bullshit in my view. When foreigners that directly controlled ports and some key areas left Asia to its own devices and the infighting more or less stopped, key ports resumed operation under control of independent nations and Asian growth in general started accelerating.

After 1850 in China, that's probably true. But China was already starting to have economic problems in the early 1800s even before the First Opium War in 1839 and the resulting concessions to Great Britain, and then it ripped itself apart in a massive civil war shortly after. Even if you assume an alternate scenario where the British and other foreign powers don't start carving out special concessions in China, the country was in for some ugliness and decline before things might have finally started to turn around.

[K. A. Pital]

If I was being pernickety Stas, wouldn't it be just as fair to say the great convergence dates not from reclaim independence, but from the end of the cold war and the end of 'communist' economics?

Would've been true, but the Second World declined to crap during that time. So doesn't follow. The share of WARPAC+Russia probably declined very severely.

An interesting test case might be Germany - as it industrialized late in Europe, and didn't have an empire in the same way.

Yes, but I am not saying an Empire is always necessary. What I am saying is that Empires held down the industrialization of the world under their control, heavily investing into metropole industries and leaving others barely able to scrape any industrial capital since the trade conditions were imposed on them from the center.

[Guardsman Bass]

What period are we talking about here? There's obviously India and parts of South and southeast Asia, but the big second wave of colonialism started in the late 1870s, by which time industrialization had been underway for decades in countries outside of Great Britain. Areas like Latin America and most of Africa had decades of contact via trade and business with Europe to take in technologies and borrow money to industrialize, and mostly didn't for internal reasons.

[mr friendly guy]

If I was being pernickety Stas, wouldn't it be just as fair to say the great convergence dates not from reclaim independence, but from the end of the cold war and the end of 'communist' economics?
The decline following the west's industrialization only proves that industrialization was important - and I'd argue that measured by %pop engaged in agriculture, bits of Asia are still industrializing, and that's what's driving the convergence.

An interesting test case might be Germany - as it industrialized late in Europe, and didn't have an empire in the same way.

If you watch lectures from Hans Rosling, he also points out important stats like life expectancy, GDP per capita started improving dramatically after independence. So unless those periods just happen to coincide with technology improving life expectancy becoming available to all eg new vaccines, chances are its because those countries had better control of their own resources.

[Thanas]

Well, that is a valid assumption, considering largescale medicine like penicilin only became widely available after WWII, which would coincide with independence.

[K. A. Pital]

What period are we talking about here? There's obviously India and parts of South and southeast Asia, but the big second wave of colonialism started in the late 1870s, by which time industrialization had been underway for decades in countries outside of Great Britain. Areas like Latin America and most of Africa had decades of contact via trade and business with Europe to take in technologies and borrow money to industrialize, and mostly didn't for internal reasons.

Latin America and Africa never produced such a substantial share of world total production as Asia did, it seems. So for them it was not a matter of decline, but perhaps even a matter of improvement (it is well known that LA-Europe trade brought some countries in Latin America to a rather high level of development by the end of XIX century). Latin America's share actually improved. This graph here has all the regions. So the start of "new colonialism" in the XIX century totally decimated China, India and Africa. Africa though was already on the decline.

There's really no excuse to be had for what is happening here. Or rather what has happened.

[Lolpah]

But was it colonialism itself that did that? Colonial powers certainly made the situation worse by selling opium and waging wars, but China was suffering from overpopulation and massive corruption even before the Opium Wars.

Edit: I'm of course talking only about China. For other parts of the world I agree.

[Guardsman Bass]

I think China was coming off of a pretty prosperous period of growth and expansion in the 18th century, which shows up in Stas's bar graph up there as a greater Chinese fraction of world GDP. They basically had about 40 years at the beginning of the 19th century before the First Opium War to try and play industrialization catch-up like other rivals to Great Britain were, but either failed or had no desire to.

Some of that is understandable. China had a lot of relatively cheap labor, so there were less incentives to adopt steam-powered labor-saving machinery to replace the existing labor-intensive machine set-ups they already had. This has more detail on that, including some pictures of a labor-intensive water pumping machine that was used in the Yangzi Delta.

China was also much farther away from Great Britain, and not as deeply integrated into a transnational economy as the other European countries that did recognize the significance of British manufacturing and try to get their own industrial projects going by any means necessary. That probably inhibited any sense of urgency on China's part, and also slowed the transfer of industrial technology.

[K. A. Pital]

You forget to mention that key Chinese ports and main cargo routes in Asia were controlled by foreigners, as far as I gather from maps. To such an extent that by the end of the XIX century greater powers were literally ripping China apart taking vast swathes of land.

[Guardsman Bass]

Yes, by the end of the 19th century. I'm talking about the time period before the First Opium War and the resulting concessions, which snowballed after the Taiping Rebellion then ripped China apart.

[K. A. Pital]

Yes, by the end of the 19th century. I'm talking about the time period before the First Opium War and the resulting concessions, which snowballed after the Taiping Rebellion then ripped China apart.

I think that perceiving history from a "missed time" point is bound to create some wrong impressions. China had time before the First Opium War? Indeed it had. But China was growing (albeit not as fast as during 1700-1800) in the 1800-1850 period. The decline accelerated rapidly after the middle of the century. The unequal treaties can explain a lot here. After all, even if China was not having a fully-fledged industrial revolution, it clearly had productivity advancements since it could support 200 million more people with the same or even slightly improved living standards during the expansion in the 1700-early 1800s period. I personally think that the political actions of the West were precluding China's rise more than anything else.

Compare this with Japan. Even though the Japanese Empire was, during the early 1800s, in a very similar position to China (agricultural, industrial and population movement advancements), it had a greater degree of sovereignity and thus could implement a consistent industrial policy that, eventually, gave it a place among industrial powers at the beginning of the XX century. The only difference between Japan and China is the lack of "unequal treaties" and foreign control of Japanese trade, ports and stuff like that.

It is never late. The Meiji industrialization and the German industrialization in Europe, even the industrialization of the Russian Empire in 1890-1914 prove that latecomers too can enjoy industrialization benefits. However, since China was reduced to a colonial, semi-sovereign status by the 1870s (generally considered to be the years when "latecomder" modernization started), it could not implement a similar nationwide policy.

In fact, after 1949 China's economic growth stood, on the average, at an impressive 4% year, later upgraded to 8-10% year during the Deng reforms that gave it a typical New Industrial Country state-capitalist model which has already proven its efficiency in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and partly Malaysia. Chinese economic growth only picked up after it fully regained control over its territories and its sovereignity, too.

[PainRack]

I think its safer to argue that the gains of colonialisation was unevenly concentrated in the metropoles, with some states like India being a huge loser.

As pointed out, Malaya and Singapore did become richer colonies, especially the Straits Settlement under British rule than their counterparts in Indonesia. Java in particular suffered a decline, precipitated by Raffles sacking of their court and the resulting wholesale collapse of native rule in favour for Dutch rule but in Malaya, the shift from non resident to Resident Malay states was significantly less disruptive than what happened in Java.

Combine this with economic developments of the 30s, the Malayan states, in particular, the Federated Malay States enjoyed significantly more economic growth than the Dutch East Indies which propelled them to their current economic status. Whereas before colonisation, the Malayans were in general poorer.

[K. A. Pital]

I think it's a matter of the Dutch keeping their colonies in a worse state than the British kept theirs. It is hard for me to judge how successful they could've been as states if they remained independent, too. Strait of Malacca was quite important and would've still been important even if Malaya retained independence (or formed several separate states). Like I said, Japan is a good example - even being extremely resource-poor it still managed to industrialize and did it better than most colonial holdings out there.

[PainRack]

I think it's a matter of the Dutch keeping their colonies in a worse state than the British kept theirs. It is hard for me to judge how successful they could've been as states if they remained independent, too. Strait of Malacca was quite important and would've still been important even if Malaya retained independence (or formed several separate states). Like I said, Japan is a good example - even being extremely resource-poor it still managed to industrialize and did it better than most colonial holdings out there.

Japan was also wealthy and technological enough that it fielded the largest musketry armed army in Asia before the Samurai reversed that.

As for how successful they would have been as states, we can guess, since Malaysia was never an entity, it would have remained as individual states, relatively weak and susceptible to the influence of Siam in the north. Even if Perak tin mines did boom, the rubber industry would never have taken off, given the Federal investment it required. Hell, even in 1930s, we can guage the relative wealth of the Malayan colonies based on their status as Straits Settlement(Crown colonies), Federated Malay States or Unfederated Malay States.

As for keeping their colonies in a worse state than the British...................... despite Indonesian opinion, its really hard to argue. The Dutch in the East Indies were less racist, less disruptive than the British overlords(especially when we compare Raffles rule over Java). Both sides spun off control of the communities to locals as much as possible, provided as little services as needed..... the real difference was that the Dutch focused on cash crops for the Dutch East Indies whereas the British developed Singapore for trade and after the increased British control in Malaya, the cash crops economy led to secondary industrial development. Even if we ignore Rubber, there's also the development of the palm oil industry in Malaysia which had its roots in Chinese plantations founded during colonial times.

[PainRack]

With regards to Mr Friendly Guy question, we can answer that industrialization in the Straits Settlement was due to the need to keep them profitable.

Its reputation as an entrepot trade led to Indian opium being processed in Singapore for subsequent sale to China.

Subsequent years would see the development of plantations and failed projects, until Rubber became a hit in the 1930.

As the world shifted to coal, Singapore also became a coaling station which along with the maritime trade established a naval service industry. Expansion of warehouses, quays and etc led to secondary industries such as the development of tobacco. Finally in the 30s, the POL industry was first set up in Singapore and the establishment of oil refineries. The explosion of the rubber plantations and increased centralized British control in the form of the Federated Malay States led to more roads, in particular, the two coastal highways being built, which drove exploitation of the Malayan hinterlands. Since sale of bulk goods were prohibitively expensive, this also led to further processing for rubber and other agricultural products such as palm oil.
These were mainly 'secondary' industries.... factories built up to provide processed goods and materials as opposed to high value consumer products.

Still, as the oil industry shows, these did represent significant outlays of capital and high end industry.

[PainRack]

Sadly, the factoids about Singapore GDP due to trade can't be photographed but I like to share with you some photos I took during a Singapore Heritage exhibition.

https://www.facebook.com/eugene.tham.10 ... 495&type=3




It turns out that my assertion re industralisation being import subsitution was wrong, since it occurred post WW2 and not in the 30s as I initially assumed it was.

My apologies to Stas Bush for my mistake.

[K. A. Pital]

Thanks for the info bits, PainRack. It is interesting.

[PainRack]

The rest were mostly post WW2 materials... As this was a Singaporean heritage exhibition,it focused more on local brands or MNCs that made it big in Singapore as opposed to brands like Ford.