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Conferentie Dekolonisatie - Abstracts

The reorientation of business: capital and labour

In the late colonial period the local economies in the colonized territories of Asia and Africa rested to a large extent on foreign (largely metropolitan) capital and business, and migrant labour. The concomitant regime change(s), the shifts in international economic relations and markets, the withdrawal of colonial capital, and the issue of migrant labour, all put great pressure on the functioning of these local economies. A process of reorganization and reorientation took place. New sources of capital and labour had to be found, while technological expertise had to be developed from scratch. The former colonial enterprises retained their dominant position and were most reluctant to transfer their companies to the new regimes. The aim of this theme is to address the question of how local economies in Asia and Africa and the people involved coped with these processes of change during the long decolonization period.

Indonesianisasi as the economic manifestation of decolonization:

a digression on methodology

Thomas Lindblad and Jasper van de Kerkhof

IIAS (International Institute for Asian Studies), The Netherlands

This contribution discusses the theoretical underpinnings of a scientific study of the shift in the control and management of the economy from foreign, particularly Dutch private enterprise to national subjects and institutions following the achievement of Indonesian independence in 1945. This transfer of authority in business, commonly labelled indonesianisasi, culminated with the nationalization of remaining Dutch corporate assets in 1957/58. It is conceived as a long-run process with roots in the late-colonial period that needs to be studied in the wider context of a fundamental reorientation in Indonesian economic development Our contribution starts out by defining indonesianisasi as the economic expression of a wider process of decolonization and emancipation from the onetime colonial power. Special attention is given to strategic decision-making on the part of both Indonesian institutions and Dutch private firms reacting to the changing environment. The theoretical and methodological considerations are supplemented by examples from the empirical research that is presently being executed.

In Search of New Economic Opportunity:

The Indigenization of Economic Live in Yogyakarta a Year After the Recognition of Independence

Bambang Purwanto

Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia

Yogyakarta was the area where Republiken received tremendous support from the local people during the process of decolonization. Yogyakarta was also a special territory where both traditional leaders Sultan and Adipati still retained their authorities, and a place where many private companies invested their capital in plantation business, especially tobacco and sugar during the Dutch colonial period. Besides their traditional agricultural live, the emergence of highly capitalized private companies brought many local peasants and migrant workers involved in the plantation sector and prevented people from using the land properly. At the same time, a group of local entrepreneurs emerged in certain communities. However, 1930’s economic depression of the 1930’s, Japanese occupation, and Indonesian revolution caused significant social, political, and economic changes within the society. Decolonization process and the strengthening individual role of Sultan by the name of Republiken and his own traditional authority to some extent also had created different atmosphere in economic live of Yogyakarta.

This paper will be focused on economic live of people in Yogyakarta a year after the recognition of Indonesian independence in December 1949. The situation caused some tensions within the society, where people were struggling to find their proper portion in indegenization processes. Some Chinese and Dutch properties were taken over by local people during the revolution, but soon after the recognition of independence they tried to get them back by using different manners. The Chinese, for example succeeded to regain their business complex in Lempuyangan area, but they were not allowed to return to Bantul and Kotagede. Meanwhile some Dutch warehouses and factories were seized during the war, but ironically different group of Republiken supporters and Indonesian government had to compete each other in controlling those economic sources after the war.

Simultaneously, native entrepreneurs began to restructure their business. Among the traditional batik producers, for example, some have left behind their old way of production and replaced it with semi-mechanized textile factory in early 1950’s. Some successful gold, silver, and cloth craftsmen emerged suddenly from nowhere at Kotagede, and some old merchants started to diversify their business under the shadow of nasionalisasi idea. Market was growth everywhere, and people began to leave their special market day, hari pasar , and do business everyday instead, except for livestock market. Moreover, the declining of tobacco and sugar plantations, and destruction of sugar factories during Japanese occupation and war provided more opportunities to the local peasants working in their lands in one side but caused joblessness on the other side. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of plantation activities and radicalization of labour union after the war created new problems on land control and labour relation in rural areas. Thus, it created an early type of urbanization in Yogyakarta. All of those will be studied mostly through collective memory of local people and newspapers published in that period.

W. Arthur Lewis's Tenure as Ghana's Chief Economic Adviser, 1957-58: Debates over Reorienting Capital and Labor and Impact of his Policies on the Peoples of Ghana

Robert Tignor

Princeton University, USA

This paper will explore the 14-month period of time when W. Arthur Lewis, the noted West Indian development economist and future recipient of the Nobel Prize for contributions in economics, served as Ghana's and Kwame Nkrumah's first economic adviser. It will briefly trace Lewis's background as a PhD from the London School of Economics, the Stanley Jevons Professor of Political Economy at Manchester University, frequent consultant to the British Colonial Office during the 1940s and early 1950s, and author of two famous works on economic development: "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour," published in the Journal of the Manchester Society in 1954, and The theory of Economic Growth, a full-scale book published in 1955 and generally regarded as the authoritative text in the field at this time.

Lewis went to Ghana brimming with confidence and eager to show that his theories relating to economic development could spur the economic progress of that territory in decolonizing Africa, Ghana, that seemed by all accounts to have the best prospects for political and economic success. Lewis knew the country well, having associated with Gold Coast students and intellectuals during his London days and having written an authoritative report on Gold Coast industrialization at the behest of the rising nationalist party, the Convention Peoples Party, in 1953.

I will then discuss Lewis's formulas for promoting Ghana's economic development, his work on Ghana's Five-Year Plan, his establishment of Industrialization and Agricultural Development Corporation, which were supposed to promote effective cooperation between the private and public sectors and facilitate the implementation of the Five-Year Plan. I shall then look at the difficulties that Lewis encountered in his dealings with the political leaders in Ghana, notably Kwame Nkrumah, who wanted quicker and more showy results and who also felt the need to use economic projects to solidify his own hold on power, especially through using Lewis's projects to dispense patronage to his supporters. I shall conclude by discussing the conflicts that led to Lewis's resignation as chief economic adviser at the end of 1958, even before his two-year contract had expired, and I shall use this opportunity to assess the impact of Ghana's overall strategy of economic development during the Nkrumah years on the lives of common people. In significant ways, Ghanaians were worse off materially in 1966, when Nkrumah was overthrown, than they had been in 1957, when the country achieved its independence. Was this because Lewis had made the wrong economic choices as several scholars have argued? Was this a failure of development economics, as Tony Killick claims? In other words, what went wrong?

Decolonizing money: the shift from stable monetary standards to managed currencies in the Philippines and Indonesia, from the late 1930s to the 1950s.

Willem Wolters

University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

In the last decade of colonial administration both the Philippines and Indonesia had relatively stable monetary systems, indirectly linked to the gold standard, although in a weakened form after the United States and European countries abandoned the strong link to gold and adopted a managed currency system in the years between 1931 and 1935. Characteristic of the gold standard arrangement was that a number of more or less automatic mechanisms limited the money supply and money creation through credit. In the late 1930s these systems came under increasing pressure and changes would have been inevitable, if the Japanese occupation had drastically changed the course of events. After the War a large number of states adopted the Bretton Woods agreement in which the dollar remained tied to gold, whereas other countries maintained a more or less fixed exchange rate with the dollar. The newly independent countries, the Philippines and Indonesia, also adopted a managed currency system. In both countries a newly established Central Bank took on the task of managing the money supply. As a result governments in both countries faced similar difficulties. On the one hand there was the need to control the money supply and to prevent rampant inflation, in order to protect the buying power of the population. On the other hand, the vastly expanded tasks of the new governments required increased government expenditures. In both countries the government could not resist the pressure to increase the money supply, thereby causing inflation. This paper will place financial and monetary developments in both countries within the context of the changing world order during the years before and after the Pacific War, and compare monetary policies of the two governments.

Social capital and identity change of poor Chinese migrants in the post-colonial Hong Kong society

Sam Wong

University of Bradford, United Kingdom

Hong Kong reverted to China in 1997, thus marking the end of the 150-year British rule. The process of decolonisation has brought the rise of an indigenous Hong Kong identity which resulted in deep mistrust of both Chinese and British governments. The financial crisis and economic recession following the Handover have also created local citizens strong resistance to the outsiders, especially to the poor Chinese migrants from the Mainland who are regarded as a welfare burden.

More than 50,000 Chinese migrants settle in Hong Kong annually. The majority are middle-aged women and young children who come for family re-union. Studies have shown that migrants have suffered severe discrimination from local people which has caused deep concern. The government has also conducted research to look into the extent of ‘ethnic discrimination’.

The objective of this paper is to examine how the formation of strong Hong Kong identity during the process of decolonisation now impacts on the livelihoods of the poor Chinese immigrants. The focus is on how the anti-migrant sentiment affects migrants’ identity formation, cross-border social networking behavior and group participation. This paper is based on my 12-month ethnographic research in Hong Kong in 2002 which has involved more than 80 male and female migrants. Various research methods, such as interview, participant observation and focus group, are combined.

My research suggests that migrants’ responses are diverse and complex. Three types of identities are formed – Chinese, Hongkongese and Hong Kong Chinese. The first type of identity suggests that migrants use Chinese identity to react to the hostile environment and set a clear-cut dichotomy of ‘we-ness’ and ‘they-ness’. This group of migrants is likely to seek support from ethnic friends in Hong Kong and on the Mainland by paying regular visits to their hometowns in China. The side effects are that migrants are further excluded from the mainstream society and the maintenance of strong bonding with ethnic friends in China may also aggravate migrants’ poverty problems.

Migrants of Hongkongese identity show more positive feelings towards Hong Kong people but blame migrants from poor backgrounds for arousing feelings of discontent among local people. This group is more willing to make friends with the locals, but it faces rejection. They need to make a lot of adjustments and have to play down their own cultures. My study shows that migrants feel obliged to work harder to demonstrate their capabilities.

The final group of migrants has mixed identities who do not regard Chinese and Hongkong identities as incompatible. They see the local and ethnic friends both in Hong Kong and the Mainland serving different needs. They keep flexibility in using their mixed identities to handle varied circumstances and to maximize social resources. The worry is that they may fall into a dilemma when conflicts arise over Chinese and Hongkongese values. They also face time constraints on maintaining both networks and conflicts between migrants and the locals. This sometimes forces them to choose either Chinese or Hongkongese identity.

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