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The Frustrations of Development: British Business and the Late Colonial State in Malaya, 1945–57

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Nicholas J. White
Nicholas J. White
Affiliation:
Liverpool John Moores University
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Abstract

The article reassesses the economic role of the late colonial state in Malaya. It seeks to dispel the view that the colonial government served British business interests, and that broad-based development policies only followed independence in 1957. Rather the developmentalist orientation of the state began earlier in the 1940s, and was not fully in accordance with existing economic interests.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 103 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1997

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References

1 This article is a revised version of a paper read at the Anglo-American Conference of Historians, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 28 June 1995. I am grateful to Drs. David Anderson, Sarah Stockwell, and Lawrence Butler for their incisive responses and comments. Further discussion of business-government relations in late colonial Malaya can be found in my forthcoming book Business, Government, and the End of Empire: Malaya, 1942–1957 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar

2 Morgan's work is a vast 5 volume undertaking published by Macmillan and, despite its neglect of Malaya, provides an authoritative background to many of the issues discussed in this article.

3 Rudner's most important articles discussing the decolonization period are “Rubber Strategy for Post-War Malaya, 1945–48”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1, 1 (1970): 23–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Malayan Rubber Policy: Development and Anti-Development during the 1950s”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 7, 2 (1976): 235–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Financial Policies in Post-War Malaya: The Fiscal and Monetary Measures of Liberation and Reconstruction”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 3, 3 (1975): 323–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Draft Development Plan of the Federation of Malaya, 1950–55”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 3, 1 (1972): 63–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Development Policies and Patterns of Agrarian Dominance in the Malaysian Rubber Export Economy”, Modern Asian Studies 15, 1 (1981): 83–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Some of these papers have recently been published collectively with a new introduction and conclusion as Malaysian Development. A Retrospectivé (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

4 Rudner, Malaysian Development, p. 2.

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10 T 220/52, Wilson-Smith, to Gater, 2 Oct. 1945.Google Scholar

11 Sel RC 170/47, “The Commercial and Industrial Development of Malaya. Paper from the Director, Industry & Commerce, Malayan Union”, ca. January 1947, p. 2.

12 Ibid., p. 3.

13 Ibid., p. 3.

14 The Commissioner-General's office developed from Lord Killearn's Special Commission in Southeast Asia which presupposed a high-level of state intervention in the economic reconstruction of the area; particularly in relation to the rice shortage of 1946–47. See Remme, Tilman, Britain and Regional Cooperation in Southeast Asia, 1945–1949 (London and New York: Routledge/LSE, 1995), pp. 44–53, 112–13.Google Scholar

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23 List of members in CO 852/510/29.

24 CO 852/588/10, Memorandum by Pedler, 10 Aug. 1944, and Minutes by Cohen and Caine, 11 and 14 Aug. 1944.

25 Ibid., Minute, 29 Aug. 1944. See also Butler, Lawrence J., “Economic Development and the ‘Official Mind’: the Colonial Office and Manufacturing in West Africa, 1939–51” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1991), pp. 204–219, 237–45.Google Scholar

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27 Butler, “Economic Development and the ‘Official Mind’”, chs. 4–5.

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29 The Draft Development Plan of the Federation of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer, 1950), Part II, Tables B(I) and B(II).Google Scholar

30 Ibid., para. 39 and Part I, ch. Ill, para. 284, 436–48.

31 CO 717/165/2, Enclosure in Hone to Paskin, 16 Oct. 1948.

32 For the genesis of this project see Rubber Growers’ Association Council Minutes (hereafter RGACM), 54, 6 Sept. 1943.

33 The New Malaya and You (London: Lindsay Drummond, 1945), p. 84.Google Scholar

34 CO 852/919/4, Memorandum of 27 Jan. 1947, in Pyke to Clauson, 17 Feb. 1947.

35 For an authoritative account of “Groundnuts” see Morgan, David, The Official History of Colonial Development. Volume 2: Developing British Colonial Resources, 1945–51 (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 226–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 RGACM, 58, 7 Jul. 1947, Report of Malaya Committee, App. B. “Planting and Replanting”.

37 CO 852/919/4, Minute by Lewis, 9 Oct. 1947.

38 Ibid.

39 For the specific provisions of these two schemes see Rudner, “Rubber Policy During the 1950s”.

40 E.g., Chairman's Address to United Sua Betong Rubber Estates, 8 Jun. 1955.

41 BT 258/52, Note by Fisher, Nancy, 23 Aug. 1957, “Visit to Malaya and Singapore, July 1957”.Google Scholar

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43 Federation of Malaya, Federal Legislative Council Proceedings, 27–28 Jan. 1954.

44 For the historic antagonism of the Cornish firms to government-directed cartelization, see Hillman, “Malaya and the International Tin Cartel”.

45 Federation of Malaya, Federal Legislative Council Proceedings, 27–28 Jan. 1954; see also statement by Sir Fergusson, Ewen, Chairman, Straits Trading Co. in Financial Times, 7 May 1953 and BT 161/30, Enclosure to Kiddle, Malayan Chamber of Mines to Fergusson, Ministry of Materials, 11 Mar. 1953.Google Scholar

46 Federation of Malaya, Federal Legislative Council Proceedings, 27–28 Jan. 1954. Old Market Square was Kuala Lumpur's financial centre.

47 E.g., Financial Times, 17 Dec. 1956. “Company Meetings: Sungei Besi Mines and Ayer Hitam Tin Dredging. Mr. G.W. Simms’ Statements”.

48 See White, Business, Government and the End of Empire, ch. 3.

49 MU 12271/47 Pt. VI.

50 Federation of Malaya, Federal Legislative Council Proceedings, 26 July 1950 cited in White, Nicholas J., “Government and Business Divided: Malaya, 1945–57”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22, 2 (1994): 262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, BARLOW 4/8, Enclosure in Letter to F.H. Williams, Kuala Lumpur, 27 Mar. 1947.Google Scholar

52 Stubbs, Richard, “Counter Insurgency and the Economic Factor: The Impact of the Korean War Prices Boom on the Malayan Emergency” (Singapore: Occasional Paper 19, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Sel Sec 742/51, Memorandum by Melliar-Smith, P.L., 6 October 1955.Google Scholar

54 Address at Malayan Chamber of Mines AGM, The Times, 10 Sept. 1953, cited in White, “Government and Business Divided”, p. 263.

55 The Times, 10 July 1951, Letter from Frank Ascoli.

56 Letter of August 1951 in CO 537/7265.

57 Drabble, J.H., “Politics of Survival: European Reactions in Malaya to Rubber Smallholders in the Inter-War Years”, in The Underside of Malaysian History, ed. Rimmer, P.J. and Allen, L.M. (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

58 See CO 717/206/4 and CO 717/204/1, Minutes by Mackintosh, Anus, 23 and 28 Aug. 1951.Google Scholar

59 Rudner, “Rubber Policy During the 1950s”, p. 247.

60 The present article's findings are supported by P.T. Bauer, who argues that there were “drastic changes” in official policy towards the rubber industry in the years between 1948 and 1957. These began with the lifting of the ban on the new planting in 1947, and were manifested in the “complete turn around in the direction of officially sponsored research” reflecting “recognition of the significance of the smallholdings well before political independence”. As a result, Bauer argues, rubber production was higher than ever by 1960. “Post-War Malayan Rubber Policy: A Comment”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 4, 1 (Mar. 1973): 133–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 See Times, Financial Times, Manchester Guardian, and Daily Telegraph, 1 Oct. 1954; Economist, 2 Oct. 1954; CO 1030/57, “Comments by RGA on Report of Fact Finding Mission”, n.d.

62 Federation of Malaya, Federal Legislative Council Proceedings, 27–28 Jan. 1954.

63 Indeed, Malaya's acquiescence to the Geneva scheme of 1953 was largely the work of Oscar Spencer in league with Colonel H.S. Lee, the leading Chinese tin miner who went on to become the Federation's first Finance Minister in 1956.

64 See White, Business, Government and the End of Empire, ch. 4.

65 In an otherwise admirable study of the administrative, economic, political, and social aspects of the guerilla war, Stubbs, Richard has probably underplayed the “economic card”. Hearts and Minds in Guerilla Warfare. The Malayan Emergency, 1948–60 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

66 Sel Sec 1068/51, “Memorandum, 10 May 1951”.

67 Rudner, “Rubber Policy During the 1950s”, p. 245; see also his “The State and Peasant Innovation in Rural Development: The Case of Malaysian Rubber” and “Malayan Quandary: Rural Development Policy Under the First and Second Five-Year Plans”, in Readings on Malaysian Economic Development, ed. Lim, David (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 321–31, 80–88.Google Scholar

68 Studies which have emphasized the power of British capital in this period include Puthucheary, James, Ownership and Control in the Malayan Economy (Singapore: Donald Moore for Eastern Universities Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Jen, Li Dun, British Malaya. An Economic Analysis (Kuala Lumpur: Institut Analisa Sosial, 1982; first published New York: The American Press, 1955)Google Scholar; Jomo, K.S., A Question of Class: Capital, the State and Uneven Development in Malaya (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988).Google Scholar