The other way round: manufacturing as an extension of services in small island states

Try valiantly though they might, small (often island) territories cannot possibly follow the hard‐and‐fast logic of industrialisation marked out for them by larger economies. Instead, they have worked out for themselves an alternative resort to manufacturing industry; they have done so on the basis of a pragmatism in part derived from the handicaps imposed by the architecture of global capitalism and colonialism. This ‘hands on’ approach involves: (1) the exploitation of the rentier status of a microstate as a base or platform for ‘merchandise’; (2) the provision of goods (apart from services) for privileged export purposes, particularly aimed at captured markets (such as tourists and small state diasporas); (3) the expansion into small, knowledge‐based industries; and (4) the parallel preservation of part‐time small scale, cottage industry, often in relation to self employment. In all four cases, the common denominator and main argument proposed is that manufacturing in micro‐states is best seen as an extension of services, rather than the other way round as is generally proposed.