--- Ann Li <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would argue that due to the 19C. origin as a > purely free(sic)-trade port > and its entrepot function, that Singapore has > always been a city(-state) > based on capital rather than on labor (which is > expolited elsewhere, but > contiguously). The economic geography > literature on Asian metropoles would > be useful. Certainly it is the case that > transportation and communications > whether trans-shipped opium in the 19C or 24/7 > financial services in the > 20-21st C., its success comes from various > colonial and post-colonial > institutional./ neoinstitutional economic > advantages in their most "pure" > urban form as a site for exchange and > transaction.
I somehow doubt that all the non-British 19th century immigrants that were attracted there brought mostly capital. They brought labor for the sorting and transport of rubber, for one thing. It was also the locus of British imperial rule for the area, so the origins might better be termed mercantile than simply liberal free trade (I know we always use such terms with offsetting quotes on such lists as this). C Jannuzi __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com
