The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century

The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century. By W. G. HUFF. Cambridge: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xxi, 472 pp. $24.95 (paper).

Histories of Singapore are few and economic histories of the island republic nearly nonexistent. Thus, this volume by W. G. Huff, lecturer at the venerable University of Glasgow, is welcome. The book is further welcome in that the author undertakes theoretical applications which have been rarely attempted by the authors of the "workman like" histories and other studies of Singapore and Malaysia published in recent years.

The author traces the twentieth-century economic history of Singapore and applies to it two traditional and interrelated models of economic development. The models are "staple port" and "vent for surplus." Both are used to show how trade can contribute to economic development; specifically, in the case of Singapore, how the rapid expansion of exports of primary products or staples, mineral and agricultural, led to a high rate of capital formation and economic growth. The staple port or...