Discuss the Process of Deindustrialisation Durning the Colonial Period
1. Introduction
Much of the debate about the de-industrialising impact of colonial rule focused on the experience of India. Even though recent studies offer a different understanding of industrialisation and underdevelopment in India (Roy 2004: 233-34), the belief that India suffered ‘de-industrialisation’ and that the experience can be extrapolated to other Asian countries, including Indonesia.
There are several problems in any quantification of the production and consumption of cotton textiles during 1825-1940. Firstly, until the 1930s no statistical data are available on domestic production in Indonesia, whether of raw cotton, ginned cotton, yarn, cloth, bleached cloth, dyed cloth or garments, and even in the 1930s these were incomplete. Most of this activity took place in the household and in small scale industry and was not subject to systematic statistical reporting.
Secondly, most of the relevant statistical data relate to the core island of Java. For example, foreign trade data until 1874 refer to Java only. Hence, to include the rest of
Indonesia in the estimates, we have to extrapolate the case of Java largely on the basis of relative population numbers. But even for Java, most of what we know about the domestic cotton industry is of a qualitative nature only. Statistical data on workshops and their employees are at best incomplete.
Thirdly, even the foreign trade data relating to yarn, cloth and garments are difficult to work with. Key sources like CKS and CEI contain readily available data, but in aggregated form. They do not disaggregate the many different types of textiles that were traded, their quantities, and their unit prices. For that purpose the original trade statistics are required, which were not available for this paper.
The general impression is that cotton spinning and weaving declined throughout the
19 century. It is difficult to establish a starting point of this process, as cotton textiles had long been
Much of the debate about the de-industrialising impact of colonial rule focused on the experience of India. Even though recent studies offer a different understanding of industrialisation and underdevelopment in India (Roy 2004: 233-34), the belief that India suffered ‘de-industrialisation’ and that the experience can be extrapolated to other Asian countries, including Indonesia.
There are several problems in any quantification of the production and consumption of cotton textiles during 1825-1940. Firstly, until the 1930s no statistical data are available on domestic production in Indonesia, whether of raw cotton, ginned cotton, yarn, cloth, bleached cloth, dyed cloth or garments, and even in the 1930s these were incomplete. Most of this activity took place in the household and in small scale industry and was not subject to systematic statistical reporting.
Secondly, most of the relevant statistical data relate to the core island of Java. For example, foreign trade data until 1874 refer to Java only. Hence, to include the rest of
Indonesia in the estimates, we have to extrapolate the case of Java largely on the basis of relative population numbers. But even for Java, most of what we know about the domestic cotton industry is of a qualitative nature only. Statistical data on workshops and their employees are at best incomplete.
Thirdly, even the foreign trade data relating to yarn, cloth and garments are difficult to work with. Key sources like CKS and CEI contain readily available data, but in aggregated form. They do not disaggregate the many different types of textiles that were traded, their quantities, and their unit prices. For that purpose the original trade statistics are required, which were not available for this paper.
The general impression is that cotton spinning and weaving declined throughout the
19 century. It is difficult to establish a starting point of this process, as cotton textiles had long been