ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that economic development passed through a number of phases since first European contact. It remains to examine the logical possibility of this providing a schema of growth for other small societies. The Tolai were very fortunate in their pre-conditions of growth: their environment provided them with abundant and extremely fertile soils, and they were blessed with an excellent natural harbour in Blanche Bay. The initial approach of economists, in the surge of interest after World War II in the problems of growth of low income economies, was to assume that any barriers to growth that might exist are economic ones, and that the process of economic growth is adequately dealt with by economic analysis alone. The Tolai case study illustrates the crucial part foreign contact — in particular a foreign administration — plays in the sphere of economic development of small-scale societies.
