Gregg Huff
Biographic Data
| ID | 3714861 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gregg Huff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gregg |
| FAMILY NAME | Huff |
| SIGNATURE | HUFF G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Economic Growth of Southeast Asia
This is the first comprehensive analysis of Southeast Asian globalization and development since 1870. Interpreting over 150 years of Southeast Asian economic history, Gregg Huff traces the impact of a first period of globalisation from the 1870s to 1929, the effects of Japanese occupation during World War II and its aftermath, and a second wave of globalisation since the late 1960s. He uses vent-for-surplus, dual economy and plural society concep…
Vent-for-surplus in Southeast Asian development since 1870
This paper develops a new vent-for-surplus model to analyze Southeast Asia’s two phases of rapid export-led growth. During the first, from 1870 to 1929, international trade provided the ‘vent’ to utilize frontier land and labour surpluses in the production of primary commodities. Intra-regional exchange both allowed and created specialization. Four commodities— rice, rubber, tin and sugar — accounted for most exports. A second growth phase from 1…
Financing Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in Thailand
This article analyses Thailand's place in Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and how Japan financed its goal of integrating the kingdom into the sphere. Financial arrangements to incorporate Thailand in a yen bloc go well beyond finance to reveal Japanese attitudes and policy towards the Co-Prosperity Sphere. In Thailand, Japan's use of ‘special yen’ created near open-ended Japanese purchasing power. Japan could obtain whatever resour…
World War II and Southeast Asia
From December 1941, Japan, as part of its plan to build an East Asian empire and secure oil supplies essential for war in the Pacific, swiftly took control of Southeast Asia. Japanese occupation had a devastating economic impact on the region. Japan imposed country and later regional autarky on Southeast Asia, dictated that the region finance its own occupation, and sent almost no consumer goods. GDP fell by half everywhere in Southeast Asia exce…
The Second World War Japanese Occupation of Singapore
Japan's Second World War occupation of Singapore was marked by acute shortages of food and basic consumer goods, malnutrition, rampant black markets and social breakdown. We argue that the exploitation of Singapore was extreme and fully accorded with pre-war Japanese policy. Japan used Singapore mainly as a communications centre and port to ship Indonesian oil. Mid-1943 attempts to add manufacturing to the city's role had limited success. Acquies…
The Great Second World War Vietnam and Java Famines
This article provides quantitative assessments of the great famines that occurred in Vietnam and Java in 1944-1945, which together claimed the lives of some 3.4 million people. It shows that in both Vietnam and Java, harvest shortfalls, in which weather figured prominently, were so large that insufficient food was available to feed everyone. Nevertheless, in both instances, even with the pressures of war and weather, governments could have acted …
Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine, 1944-5
This article analyses Vietnam's 1944-5 great famine, which, even beyond its sheer scale of a million deaths, is historically important as instrumental in the August 1945 Viet Minh and communist revolution. It is argued that typhoons which struck coastal areas resulted in a shortfall of available food and were the proximate cause of famine. The Japanese in occupation of Vietnam, the American government directing attacks on the transport system, or…
World War II Singapore
The Shipping Conference System, Empire and Local Protest in Singapore, 1910–1911
This article analyses local opposition in Singapore in 1910–11 to the shipping conference system and the responses of a powerful group of British shipowners and the Colonial Office. The conference, a cartel agreed among shipowners, divided monopoly profits among its members and a small group of London-based merchant houses. We suggest that the concerns of Singapore anti-conference protestors, backed by the governor of the Straits Settlements, cou…
The Cambridge History of the Second World War
The conflict that ended in 1945 is often described as a 'total war', unprecedented in both scale and character. Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War adopts a transnational approach to offer a comprehensive and global analysis of the war as an economic, social and cultural event. Across twenty-eight chapters and four key parts, the volume addresses complex themes such as the political economy of industrial war, the social prac…
The Challenge of Finance in South East Asia during the Second World War
This article analyses finance in South East Asia during the Second World War in terms of three challenges. Beginning in December 1941, Japan swiftly occupied South East Asia and immediately faced the challenge of how to finance occupation. Finance largely through printing money gave rise to a further challenge in the need to avoid hyperinflationary pressures. After the war the reoccupying powers faced their own, and a third, challenge of wartime …
Urban growth and change in 1940s Southeast Asia
This article analyses demographic change in Southeast Asia's main cities during and soon after the Second World War Japanese occupation. We argue that two main patterns of population movements are evident. In food-deficit areas, a search for food security typically led to large net inflows to main urban centres. By contrast, an urban exodus dominated in food surplus regions because the chief risk was to personal safety, especially from Japanese a…
Financing Japan's World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia
Financing Japan's World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia
This article analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the market-purchased transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. Occupation was financed principally by printing large quantities of money. While some Southeast Asian countries had high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money and because of Japan's stro…
Export-led Growth, Gateway Cities and Urban Systems Development in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Between the 1870s and World War II, falls in world shipping costs and Western industrialisation gave rise to export-led Southeast Asian growth and specialisation in a narrow range of primary commodity exports. A linked development was the emergence of a few dominant Southeast Asian urban centres, typically primate and always ports. Drawing on historical census data, this article uses rank-size distributions and transition matrices to investigate …
The Japanese Occupation of South East Asia during the Second World War
This article reviews recent Japanese- and English-language publications to assess scholarly interchange between the two languages and the effects on South East Asia of Japan's Second World War occupation. The economic and social impact on Borneo, Malaya and Singapore of the Japanese interregnum was devastating. In Burma and Indonesia, military training given by the Japanese fundamentally shaped the post-war order. The authors find surprisingly li…
Globalization, industrialization and urbanization in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Globalization, Immigration, and Lewisian Elastic Labor in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Between 1880 and 1939 Burma, Malaya, and Thailand received inflows of migrants from India and China comparable in size to European immigration in the New World. This article examines the forces that lay behind migration to Southeast Asia and asks if experience there bears out Lewis's unlimited labor supply hypothesis. We find that it does and, furthermore, that immigration created a highly integrated labor market stretching from South India to So…
Colonialism and the Economic System of an Independent Burma
IT is generally recognized that societies undergoing social and economic change are subject to uneven development. One aspect of this is the uneven development between what may be characterized as the three major sectors of society, viz. economic, government and military. Thus, although many countries have had the 'common' experience of being under colonial rule, the impact of colonialism on the three sectors varied. In other words, the transfer …
Globalization, industrialization and urbanization in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine, 1944-5
This article analyses Vietnam's 1944-5 great famine, which, even beyond its sheer scale of a million deaths, is historically important as instrumental in the August 1945 Viet Minh and communist revolution. It is argued that typhoons which struck coastal areas resulted in a shortfall of available food and were the proximate cause of famine. The Japanese in occupation of Vietnam, the American government directing attacks on the transport system, or…
The Great Second World War Vietnam and Java Famines
This article provides quantitative assessments of the great famines that occurred in Vietnam and Java in 1944-1945, which together claimed the lives of some 3.4 million people. It shows that in both Vietnam and Java, harvest shortfalls, in which weather figured prominently, were so large that insufficient food was available to feed everyone. Nevertheless, in both instances, even with the pressures of war and weather, governments could have acted …
Colonialism and the Economic System of an Independent Burma
IT is generally recognized that societies undergoing social and economic change are subject to uneven development. One aspect of this is the uneven development between what may be characterized as the three major sectors of society, viz. economic, government and military. Thus, although many countries have had the 'common' experience of being under colonial rule, the impact of colonialism on the three sectors varied. In other words, the transfer …
Financing Japan's World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia
This article analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the market-purchased transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. Occupation was financed principally by printing large quantities of money. While some Southeast Asian countries had high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money and because of Japan's stro…
Globalization, Immigration, and Lewisian Elastic Labor in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Between 1880 and 1939 Burma, Malaya, and Thailand received inflows of migrants from India and China comparable in size to European immigration in the New World. This article examines the forces that lay behind migration to Southeast Asia and asks if experience there bears out Lewis's unlimited labor supply hypothesis. We find that it does and, furthermore, that immigration created a highly integrated labor market stretching from South India to So…
Urban growth and change in 1940s Southeast Asia
This article analyses demographic change in Southeast Asia's main cities during and soon after the Second World War Japanese occupation. We argue that two main patterns of population movements are evident. In food-deficit areas, a search for food security typically led to large net inflows to main urban centres. By contrast, an urban exodus dominated in food surplus regions because the chief risk was to personal safety, especially from Japanese a…
Vent-for-surplus in Southeast Asian development since 1870
This paper develops a new vent-for-surplus model to analyze Southeast Asia’s two phases of rapid export-led growth. During the first, from 1870 to 1929, international trade provided the ‘vent’ to utilize frontier land and labour surpluses in the production of primary commodities. Intra-regional exchange both allowed and created specialization. Four commodities— rice, rubber, tin and sugar — accounted for most exports. A second growth phase from 1…
Colonialism and the Economic System of an Independent Burma
IT is generally recognized that societies undergoing social and economic change are subject to uneven development. One aspect of this is the uneven development between what may be characterized as the three major sectors of society, viz. economic, government and military. Thus, although many countries have had the 'common' experience of being under colonial rule, the impact of colonialism on the three sectors varied. In other words, the transfer …
Globalization, Immigration, and Lewisian Elastic Labor in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Between 1880 and 1939 Burma, Malaya, and Thailand received inflows of migrants from India and China comparable in size to European immigration in the New World. This article examines the forces that lay behind migration to Southeast Asia and asks if experience there bears out Lewis's unlimited labor supply hypothesis. We find that it does and, furthermore, that immigration created a highly integrated labor market stretching from South India to So…
The Japanese Occupation of South East Asia during the Second World War
This article reviews recent Japanese- and English-language publications to assess scholarly interchange between the two languages and the effects on South East Asia of Japan's Second World War occupation. The economic and social impact on Borneo, Malaya and Singapore of the Japanese interregnum was devastating. In Burma and Indonesia, military training given by the Japanese fundamentally shaped the post-war order. The authors find surprisingly li…
Globalization, industrialization and urbanization in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Export-led Growth, Gateway Cities and Urban Systems Development in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia
Between the 1870s and World War II, falls in world shipping costs and Western industrialisation gave rise to export-led Southeast Asian growth and specialisation in a narrow range of primary commodity exports. A linked development was the emergence of a few dominant Southeast Asian urban centres, typically primate and always ports. Drawing on historical census data, this article uses rank-size distributions and transition matrices to investigate …
Financing Japan's World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia
Financing Japan's World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia
This article analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the market-purchased transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. Occupation was financed principally by printing large quantities of money. While some Southeast Asian countries had high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money and because of Japan's stro…
The Cambridge History of the Second World War
The conflict that ended in 1945 is often described as a 'total war', unprecedented in both scale and character. Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War adopts a transnational approach to offer a comprehensive and global analysis of the war as an economic, social and cultural event. Across twenty-eight chapters and four key parts, the volume addresses complex themes such as the political economy of industrial war, the social prac…
The Challenge of Finance in South East Asia during the Second World War
This article analyses finance in South East Asia during the Second World War in terms of three challenges. Beginning in December 1941, Japan swiftly occupied South East Asia and immediately faced the challenge of how to finance occupation. Finance largely through printing money gave rise to a further challenge in the need to avoid hyperinflationary pressures. After the war the reoccupying powers faced their own, and a third, challenge of wartime …
Urban growth and change in 1940s Southeast Asia
This article analyses demographic change in Southeast Asia's main cities during and soon after the Second World War Japanese occupation. We argue that two main patterns of population movements are evident. In food-deficit areas, a search for food security typically led to large net inflows to main urban centres. By contrast, an urban exodus dominated in food surplus regions because the chief risk was to personal safety, especially from Japanese a…
The Shipping Conference System, Empire and Local Protest in Singapore, 1910–1911
This article analyses local opposition in Singapore in 1910–11 to the shipping conference system and the responses of a powerful group of British shipowners and the Colonial Office. The conference, a cartel agreed among shipowners, divided monopoly profits among its members and a small group of London-based merchant houses. We suggest that the concerns of Singapore anti-conference protestors, backed by the governor of the Straits Settlements, cou…
World War II Singapore
Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine, 1944-5
This article analyses Vietnam's 1944-5 great famine, which, even beyond its sheer scale of a million deaths, is historically important as instrumental in the August 1945 Viet Minh and communist revolution. It is argued that typhoons which struck coastal areas resulted in a shortfall of available food and were the proximate cause of famine. The Japanese in occupation of Vietnam, the American government directing attacks on the transport system, or…
World War II and Southeast Asia
From December 1941, Japan, as part of its plan to build an East Asian empire and secure oil supplies essential for war in the Pacific, swiftly took control of Southeast Asia. Japanese occupation had a devastating economic impact on the region. Japan imposed country and later regional autarky on Southeast Asia, dictated that the region finance its own occupation, and sent almost no consumer goods. GDP fell by half everywhere in Southeast Asia exce…
The Second World War Japanese Occupation of Singapore
Japan's Second World War occupation of Singapore was marked by acute shortages of food and basic consumer goods, malnutrition, rampant black markets and social breakdown. We argue that the exploitation of Singapore was extreme and fully accorded with pre-war Japanese policy. Japan used Singapore mainly as a communications centre and port to ship Indonesian oil. Mid-1943 attempts to add manufacturing to the city's role had limited success. Acquies…
The Great Second World War Vietnam and Java Famines
This article provides quantitative assessments of the great famines that occurred in Vietnam and Java in 1944-1945, which together claimed the lives of some 3.4 million people. It shows that in both Vietnam and Java, harvest shortfalls, in which weather figured prominently, were so large that insufficient food was available to feed everyone. Nevertheless, in both instances, even with the pressures of war and weather, governments could have acted …
Financing Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in Thailand
This article analyses Thailand's place in Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and how Japan financed its goal of integrating the kingdom into the sphere. Financial arrangements to incorporate Thailand in a yen bloc go well beyond finance to reveal Japanese attitudes and policy towards the Co-Prosperity Sphere. In Thailand, Japan's use of ‘special yen’ created near open-ended Japanese purchasing power. Japan could obtain whatever resour…
Vent-for-surplus in Southeast Asian development since 1870
This paper develops a new vent-for-surplus model to analyze Southeast Asia’s two phases of rapid export-led growth. During the first, from 1870 to 1929, international trade provided the ‘vent’ to utilize frontier land and labour surpluses in the production of primary commodities. Intra-regional exchange both allowed and created specialization. Four commodities— rice, rubber, tin and sugar — accounted for most exports. A second growth phase from 1…
The Economic Growth of Southeast Asia
This is the first comprehensive analysis of Southeast Asian globalization and development since 1870. Interpreting over 150 years of Southeast Asian economic history, Gregg Huff traces the impact of a first period of globalisation from the 1870s to 1929, the effects of Japanese occupation during World War II and its aftermath, and a second wave of globalisation since the late 1960s. He uses vent-for-surplus, dual economy and plural society concep…
Economics (17 works) · Political science (14 works) · History (13 works) · Development economics (12 works) · Economy (12 works) · Geography (10 works) · Socioeconomic Development in Asia (10 works) · World War II (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Asian Studies and History (8 works)