Business, Government, and the End of Empire

This study explores the relations between British businesses with interests in Malaya and the government authorities in Malaya and the United Kingdom between 1942 and 1957. It addresses questions which have long been at the heart of debates about decolonization. Did business and government work together to manage nationalism, and so ensure neo-colonial domination of the 'First World' over the 'Third World'? Or, alternatively, did decolonization represent the economic 'disengagement' of metropole from periphery, witnessing a divorce between British government and British business? Based on a wide range of official and commercial sources in the United Kingdom and Malaysia, the study examines business-government interactions concerning reconstruction, the Emergency, the transfer of political power, and the development of the rubber industry. The final chapter assesses the strategies of a trading firm in rapidly changing political and economic environments.