Industrial and Occupational Change in Peninsular Malaysia, 1947–70

Abstract

Only a couple of decades ago, the prospects for socio-economic development in the Third World seemed much brighter than at present. The economic theories of the 1950s and early 1960s, at least those of the North American variety, prescribed more capital investment (from domestic and foreign sources) which then would lead to a “take-off” into sustained economic growth. Political theorists advocated Western political development as an irreversible step which would lead to modern democratic societies. Other social scientists suggested that the spread of modern values — “modernity” — to the developing world would solve the basic problems of underdevelopment. Those days of simpleminded theories were buoyed by the short-term euphoria of the decolonization process. If the political leaders of the newly-independent states were determined to achieve development, as indeed they were, it seemed possible that these strategies would lead to progressive social and economic changes.