Transformation with Industrialization in Peninsular Malaysia

From colonial times until the end of the 1970s the main driving force of the Peninsular Malaysia economy was the export production of primary products - first tin, then also rubber, and later, palm oil and timber, and finally petroleum. It was only in the 1980s that export-oriented industrial production took over as the leading sector, enabling Malaysia to become one of the world's most outstanding economic performers. The contributors to this volume seek to show not only how a small country with quite modest resource endowment has used a strong political will to mobilize these resources, their product and its own people, infused with foreign investment and new ideas, to achieve a most remarkable transformation, but also to show how the lives of ordinary people have been transformed in the process. Harold Brookfield is Emeritus Professor at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.