Business
A business class created and protected by a colonial government does not become an independent force. It lives on the shelter and openings the rulers provide, so it acts as an appendage of empire rather than a challenger to it.
Families that rose through humble or unsavoury trades later want their origins forgotten. Showing where a respectable elite's money came from provokes anger from its descendants.
In a colony, the first local capital can come from renting the state's monopoly on selling liquor, not from making anything. Bidding for the right to collect drink revenue lets outsiders pile up cash fast. That cash is then moved into land and plantations.
An administrative overhaul by the ruling power can start a new elite. When old rules on who may trade, own and serve are loosened, people from groups outside the traditional hierarchy can climb through the new openings.
Wealth made from tax farming and plantations does not push a society from farming to industry. A bourgeoisie living off the agricultural economy has little reason or ability to transform it.
New money buys standing by marrying into older, established families. Matches are arranged to link newly rich families to old clans, swapping wealth for the respectability they lack.
A class of newcomers who rise within a few generations can shape a modern nation more than any group that follows them. Their habits, wealth and institutions become the base the later country is built on.