Description:
ABSTRACT:
"In the history of Burma's political economy, few groups have been so roundly vilified
as the Chettiars. A community of moneylenders indigenous to Chettinad, Tamil Nadu,
the Chettiars operated throughout the Southeast Asian territories of the British
Empire. They played a particularly prominent role in Burma where, alas, they were
typically demonised as rapacious usurers, responsible for all manner of vices
concomitant with the colonial economy. Not least of these was the chronic land
alienation of the Burmese cultivator.
The purpose of this paper is to reappraise the role of the Chettiars in Burma. Finding
that their role was crucial in the dramatic growth in Burma's agricultural output during
the colonial era, the paper disputes the moneylender stereotype so often used against
them. Employing modern economic theory to the issue, the paper finds that the
success of the Chettiars in Burma lay less in the high interest rates they charged, than
it did to patterns of internal organisation that provided solutions to the inherent
problems faced by financial intermediaries. A proper functioning financial system
could have provided better solutions perhaps for Burma's long-term development, but
Burma did not have such a system, then or now. Easy scapegoats for what went
wrong, the Chettiars merit history's better judgement."
Source/publisher:
Macquarie Economics Research Papers, July 2005, no.12/2005.
Date of Publication:
2005-07-00
Date of entry:
2008-05-05
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English