ABSTRACT
MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES WESTERNERS in South East Asia found their most profitable fields of enterprise in commerce and in the extractive industries where the abundant natural and human resources could readily be organised into new combinations. But a major development in any hitherto backward area must proceed on a wide front. It has been shown that the growth of the extractive industries called for heavy investment in plants for preparing natural products for export (e.g., sugar factories and tin smelters) and in public utilities (e.g., railways, power stations, irrigation works, ports and harbours). These plants and installations depended in turn on the presence of manufacturing establishments concerned with producing, repairing and servicing the equipment used in them, and until very recently the secondary industries, whether controlled by Westerners or Chinese, were largely composed of undertakings of this character. This applies equally to Indonesia and Malaya. Yet although both countries relied upon imports from the West for a high proportion of the manufactured goods they consumed, the degree of dependence differed. In Indonesia considerable quantities of consumption goods in everday use were produced by peasant families in their spare time or in small workshops, run by Indonesians or Chinese, without assistance from powerdriven machinery. In Malaya, on the othet hand, cottage industries never occupied a prominent place in the economy, largely because in that sparsely peopled land there existed, throughout the modern era, ample opportunities for remunerative work in the primary industries.
