Emerging Asian Pacific cooperative models from a global history perspective

Abstract Asia Pacific cooperatives were created and evolved under strong Western influence. They received strong impacts from founders of cooperative ideas; for example, Rochdale pioneers for consumer cooperatives, Danish/German farmers for agricultural cooperatives, and Raiffeisen, Schurze-Delitzsch, and Desjardin for credit cooperatives. In particular, the British Empire enacted the Cooperative Credit Societies Act of 1904 in India supporting Raiffeisen-style agricultural credit co-ops. It was very much a top-down approach based on an imported theoretical concept and followed by other colonial governments. Cooperatives evolved to the typical state-sponsored model even after independence, but some cooperatives created unique cooperative models by their own efforts and learning from other cooperatives. In Australia and New Zealand, immigrants founded cooperatives following European models, while cooperatives in noncolonized Japan followed a different trajectory mixing Western ideas with a bureaucratic system. This chapter will shed light on the origin and evolution of Asia Pacific cooperatives from what is called a global history perspective, seeking an holistic interpretation of histories, taking international connectedness through colonialization, migration, trade, and exchange of ideas/experiences into consideration. It is especially relevant when Asia is resurging in the “Great Convergence” after the “Great Divergence.” Here the dynamics of integration, differences, conversion, and diversion of cooperative models are discussed. The research question is “How have Asia Pacific cooperatives evolved from the imported Western models to create the unique Asia Pacific models?”