VII. Foreign Investment in India and Indonesia, 1920–1960

Abstract

Discussing the issue of foreign investment in colonial economies, such as those of India and Indonesia, in the first half of the twentieth century gives rise to a number of problems. In addition to the obvious difficulties of data collection there are also complex conceptual and definitional issues. The aim of this paper is to set out what we know about the quantities and performance of foreign investment in the two economies, and to use this information to draw more general conclusions about the economic history of the two areas. In analysing the material only those lines which seem to offer a genuinem comparative perspective will be followed. We are interested in those aspects of the history of foreign investment in India which can tell us something about the history of foreign investment in Indonesia, and vice versa. It is convenient to split the subject into two time periods, 1920-38 and 1945-60.