Four Colonies and a Kingdom: A Comparison of Fiscal, Trade and Exchange Rate Policies in South East Asia in the 1930s

Abstract

In the latter part of the 1990s, several of the major economies in South East Asia underwent one of the worst economic crises in living memory. It is thus not surprising that economic historians with an interest in the region are re-examining the experience of the 1930s. One crucial difference between the crisis of the late 1990s and that of the early 1930s is that the latter was preceded, and in large measure caused, by problems in the world economy. When the industrial world fell into a severe economic depression in the early 1930s, most parts of Asia were affected, mainly through falling export receipts which in turn affected colonial budgets. A second difference was that most parts of South East Asia in the 1930s were still under colonial rule, and had little autonomy in framing or implementing economic policy. Only Thailand remained nominally independent, but even there the influence of foreign, especially British, economic advisers was considerable. Given the very different economic interests which the colonial powers (Dutch, French, American and British) had in their South East Asian colonies, and given the widely differing nature of the economic links between colony and metropole, it was to be expected that the impact of the 1930s slump, and the policy responses which it provoked, would vary. This indeed turned out to be the case.