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 de- velopment 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 per- vasive landlessness among the rural population. Relatively homogeneous landowning peas- ants 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. Ecology and history have a fundamental impact on the course of economic develop- ment. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated how different ecological conditions and historical trajectories have interacted to forge different social and cultural sys- tems, resulting in major differences in development performance across economies. This article aims to shed light on this process, drawing on agricultural development experiences in Southeast Asia. Relatively high growth performance in agriculture in the past three or four decades has been counted as one of the factors underlying the "economic miracle" of this region (World Bank 1993). Yet economic performance has varied within the region. Variations in the recent agricultural growth perfor- mance reflect differences in the agrarian structure, which were created through dis- tinct colonial regimes under diverse ecological environments. As such, this study does not aim to conduct research for predicting the future course of rural development in