Under the British administration, the people of Burma were at the bottom of social hierarchy, with Europeans at the top, Indians, Chinese, and Christianized minorities in the middle, and Buddhist Burmese at the bottom. Forcefully integrated into the world economy, Burma's economy grew in extractive industries and cash crops agriculture, and had the second-highest GDP per capita in Southeast Asia; much of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of Europeans, however. The country became the world's largest exporter of rice, mainly to European markets, while other colonies like India suffered mass starvation. The British followed the ideologies of Social Darwinism and free market, and opened up the country to a large-scale immigration with Rangoon exceeding New York City as the greatest immigration port in the world in the 1920s. Historian Thant Myint-U states, "This was out of a total population of only 13 million; it was equivalent to the United Kingdom today taking 2 million people a year." By then, in most of the largest cities in Burma, Rangoon, Akyab, Bassein and Moulmein, the Indian immigrants formed a majority of the population. The Burmese under British rule felt helpless, and reacted with a "racism that combined feelings of superiority and fear".