This article identifies two phases of rapid South East Asian economic growth and argues that both were linked to new opportunities in the global economy. During the first phase, stretching from the 1870s to 1929, South East Asia grew through vent-for-surplus trade in resource-intensive primary commodities. Just four of these – rice, rubber, tin, and sugar – accounted for most exports. In a second phase, under way by the early 1970s, a shift in factor endowments from surplus land to abundant labour attracted foreign multinationals in search of cheap labour and manufacturing for export, mainly to advanced economies. Through both phases of globalization-induced growth, trade served as its engine, but in neither did this lead to technical change becoming the chief source of expansion. Even in Singapore, low TFP growth is a chronic problem, while wealthier South East Asian countries like Malaysia and Thailand are in danger of being stuck in a middle-income trap.

Chapter 8 focuses on food, living standards and population movements in principal urban areas: Rangoon, Bangkok, Singapore, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Surabaya, Saigon-Cholon, Hanoi and Manila. This chapter constructs the first set of World War II population data, and analyzes population trends and fluctuations in Southeast Asia’s main cities. Food scarcity and ways to cope with this and continuously declining Japanese rations are assessed. Some Singapore residents kept chickens and ducks which they fed on the city’s two-inch cockroaches trapped in the sewers at night. Outside central Singapore, grass verges, said once to have been neatly cut, were largely replaced with stringy papaya trees and tapioca plants around which lalang (coarse grass) grew unchecked. Urban cats and dogs, although not always easily caught, afforded an obvious source of high protein. These animals disappeared in sufficiently great numbers to qualify as endangered species.

Chapters 4 and 5 quantify Southeast Asia’s wartime economic collapse. In every country except Thailand wartime output drops created probably modern economic history’s greatest macroeconomic collapse (chapter 4). Per capita GDP fell by at least a half in most countries and trade to a fraction of pre-war levels. Chapter 5 describes similar contractions in transport, public utilities and manufacturing. The chapters explore a macroeconomic crisis that brought shortages or the unavailability of new clothing, soap and many basic manufactures. Southeast Asians suffered hunger, famine and an extreme deprivation of material goods.

Chapter 9 appraises the use of Southeast Asian labour by the Japanese. Subjects discussed include forced labour, Japan’s policy of enslaving comfort women and the recruitment of workers for Japanese armed forces. Construction projects, including the Thailand-Burma railway, relied heavily on forced labour and took an enormous death toll among workers, both Southeast Asian and Allied prisoner.

Chapter 7 focuses on food, living standards and population movements in rural areas and outside the main cities. The chapter assesses aspects of the standard of living such as real wages and increased mortality but pays particular attention to the changing wartime availability of food in rural Southeast Asia. Famine claimed 1.0 million lives in Tonkin and North Annam in Vietnam and 2.3 million in Java. These great wartime famines are deciphered in detail greater than ever previously.

The 7 December 1941 attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor by Japan was a gamble. Japan was already entangled in a long-standing, probably unwinnable war in China, which since its outbreak in mid-1937 had cost 185,000 Japanese dead and billions of yen. Pearl Harbor opened a second military front and dangerously committed Japan, with a relatively small population and limited economic capacity, to a full-scale Pacific War. For Southeast Asia, the war brought three and a half years of Japanese occupation from the end of 1941 until Japan surrendered unconditionally on 15 August 1945. During this period, GDP in most Southeast Asian countries fell by half; 4.4 million civilians died prematurely; severe shortages of food and goods affected almost all Southeast Asians; and many lived in fear of draconian military rule. The present book explores why and how this happened.

Chapters 4 and 5 quantify Southeast Asia’s wartime economic collapse. In every country except Thailand wartime output drops created probably modern economic history’s greatest macroeconomic collapse (chapter 4). Per capita GDP fell by at least a half in most countries and trade to a fraction of pre-war levels. Chapter 5 describes similar contractions in transport, public utilities and manufacturing. The chapters explore a macroeconomic crisis that brought shortages or the unavailability of new clothing, soap and many basic manufactures. Southeast Asians suffered hunger, famine and an extreme deprivation of material goods.

Chapter 6 examines how Southeast Asians tried to cope with wartime deprivation. The unavailability of almost all basic goods led to the appearance of whole ranges of substitutes. The chapter looks at many of these substitutes. For example: in Malaya, spoons and forks were fashioned out of sheet aluminium salvaged from the wreckage of downed Zeros and Flying Fortresses. Burmese villagers obtained parachute cloth, literally from the skies, and found it useful. One guerrilla unit in Leyte in the Philippines had to compensate for the lack of a printing press, printing papers and ink with which to print their own currency. They utilized wooden blocks made by local engravers and ink concocted by a resident chemist, and printed on wrapping paper, grade three notebook paper or whatever other paper could be scavenged.

An Epilogue traces the main legacies for Southeast Asia of its wartime occupation. For most of the region, occupation resulted in revolution or civil war and often a fundamental societal shift, opening the way for post-war social and political transformations. Recovery to pre-war levels of per capita GDP was slow for several countries. Only by the 1990s did the long-term trajectory of an outward-looking, export-oriented Southeast Asia reassert itself.

Chapter 10 sets out an overall accounting for both Southeast Asia and Japan of the war’s costs and benefits. The chapter arrives at an approximate total of Southeast Asian civilian loss of life due to the occupation and indicates the extent of wartime physical damage to the region’s cities and infrastructure. Similar data for Japan afford a comparative yardstick. Japan realized few of the natural resource benefits or other material gains which, before the war, control of the Southern Regions was expected to generate.