The Impact of Industrialisation by Invitation on the Caribbean

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This paper is endeavouring to demonstrate the concept of Industrialisation by Invitation and its social impact on the Caribbean. The concept of industralisation is considered as the process of social and economic changes whereby a society is transformed from an agrarian society to a more capital intensive economy, based on manufacturing, specialized labour, and industrial factories, where the economy gains much more capital.

After the post World War II, Sir Arthur Lewis a Saint Lucian Economist, Nobel Laureate (1915 – 1991) recognized the need for the Caribbean to not only depend on agriculture because the level of agricultural productivity in the Caribbean has been very low. In order to achieve salient growth of economic sustainability during the 1950s and 1960s Lewis suggested that the political economies of the Caribbean adopted the capitalist economic model of Industrialisation by Invitation. However the Caribbean was in no capacity to do this on their own, as stated by Thomas (1998), Benn & Manley (2004), who asserted since “these economies were labeled as weak and dependent, and controlled by stronger foreign states and institution.” Therefore the Caribbean would have to seek financial aid in the form of investments which would stimulate the industrialisation process.

Lewis, who was the intellectual genius behind the theoretical construct of Industrialisation by Invitation, premised that this model would attain simultaneous development of agriculture and industry sectors. Industry would absorb surplus labour from agriculture, thus, causing productivity and improve standard of living, hinging on the assumption that they would be an increase in demand for manufacturing products even though out of the investigati...

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