マレーシア商品作物栽培業の発展とイギリス商社

This paper tries to analyze how British overseas trading companies historically became involved in and transformed large scale plantation farming in Malaya. This is an attempt to understand empirically the strategic role of foreign enterprises in commercial agriculture and distribution in a devel-oping economy. In the late 19th century, when plantation rubber suddenly experienced a rising demand as raw material for automobile tires, such British trading companies as Guthrie, Harrisons & Crosfield and Barlow embarked upon the control of agricultural rubber production by utilizing their financial and personal ties both in London and in Malaya. The trading companies played an intermediary role in publicly incorporating new and reorganized Malayan plantation companies in the UK stock market. The trading companies introduced the Managing Agency System as a means of control and management of the plantation companies. In this unique arrangement trading companies became responsible not only for the final products but for production management. As a result, trading companies, with little equity holding, eventually controlled the strategic decision making of the plantation companies. At the same time, plantation companies subsequently came to consist of sleeping holders. Between the world wars, responding to the changing situation of international markets, the British trading companies acted as the major factor in developing and reorganizing the Malayan plantation industry. When the international overproduction of rubber became evident and its prices became depressed, several prominent figures in the trading companies, serving as the representatives of the entire British interests, became actively involved in the making of international cartels. By doing so they secured a fixed share of international rubber exports. In order to overcome the stagnation of rubber production the trading companies initiated oil palm growing into some plantation companies under their control. To sustain the growth of this new product, the trading companies took such key actions as the introduction of improved production and distribution facilities and the intensifi cation of research and development. Since Malaysian independence in 1957, the British trading companies have gradually modified their strategies by reacting to changing policies of the local government. The newly founded government encouraged small scale farming of rubber and oil palm by the indigenous people, although the government, too, regarded those two products as the major agricultural exports. In the long run, the government tried to attain full control over agricultural production and distribution in the country. This gradually deteri-orating situation forced the British companies to take various defensive moves in their relationships to Malaysian commercial agriculture. The large trading companies attempted overall rationalization by transforming the Managing Agency System into tightly owned and controlled parents-subsidiary relationships, while selling off inefficient plantations to Malaysian people. Small and medium sized trading companies merged together into large ones. By so doing they tried to strengthen both their market power and negotiating ability with the local government. Because of these two moves by the British trading companies, concentration within the plantation industry significantly increased. Despite all of these moves by British companies, the Malaysian government succeeded in controlling the entire plantation industry by taking over the British trading companies.