Ecology, History, and Development : A Perspective from Rural Southeast Asia

The process by which different
ecological conditions and historical trajectories interacted
to create different social and cultural systems resulted in
major differences in economic development performance within
Southeast Asia. In the late 19th century, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and Thailand commonly experienced
vent-for-surplus development through exploitation of unused
lands. Nevertheless, different agrarian structures were
created. Indonesia s development was mainly based on the
exploitation of tropical rain forest under Dutch
colonialism. It resulted in the bifurcation of the rural
sector between rice-farming peasant proprietors and large
plantations for tropical export crops based on hired labor.
In the Philippines, exploitation of the same resource base
under Spanish rule resulted in pervasive landlessness among
the rural population. Relatively homogeneous landowning
peasants continued to dominate in Thailand, where delta
plains that were suitable only for rice production formed
the resource base for development. These different agrarian
structures associated with different social value systems
have accounted for differential development performance
across the three economies in the recent three decades.