Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Gregg Huff
Author-Workplace-Name: Pembroke College
Author-Email: gregg.huff@pmb.ox.ac.uk"
Author-Name: Gillian Huff
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of History
Author-Email: gillian.huff@history.ox.ac.uk
Title: Urbanization in Southeast Asia during the World War II Japanese Occupation and Its Aftermath
Abstract: This working paper analyzes demographic change in Southeast Asia’s main cities during and
soon after the World War II 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
and Allied bombing. Black markets were ubiquitous, and essential to sustaining livelihoods
in cities with food-deficit hinterlands. In Rangoon and Manila, wartime population
fluctuations were enormous. Famines in Java and northern Indochina severely impacted
Jakarta and Hanoi through inflows of people from rural areas. In most countries, the war’s
aftermath of refugees, revolution and political disruption generated major rural-urban
population relocations. Turmoil in the 1940s had the permanent consequences of augmenting
the primacy of Southeast Asia’s main cities and promoting squatter settlement.
Classification-JEL: N15, N90, N95, R11
Keywords: urbanization, Southeast Asia, famine, World War II, entitlements, Japan
Length: 45 pages
Creation-Date: 2014-04-20
Number: _128
File-URL: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/13331/huff-and-huff-working-paper-urbanization-one.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_128