‘An

overview of Southeast Asia by one of our most distinguished historians—

this ninth edition takes in the Asian Economic Crisis and the terrorism which
dominates the media right now. A book for those curious about Angkor or the
ancient Malay world, Milton Osborne also employs his cool judgement to
examine the way the past influences border relations, separatist movements, the
quest for identity and other key issues challenging the region today. While
deepening our understanding of Southeast Asia, this fine introduction reminds us
also of the importance of history itself.’
Anthony Milner, Basham Professor of Asian History,
Australian National University

‘Students of Southeast Asian history will be grateful to Milton Osborne for

writing this appealing and intelligent tour de force, the book is a triumph of
organisation.
David Chandler, Australian Outlook

‘Milton Osborne has given an admirable introductory history.’

Hugh Tinker, History Today

‘Above all because it tells a single, comprehensive, and integrated story, this is
clearly the textbook of choice for students encountering Southeast Asia for the
first time.’
Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations,
Department of History, University of Pennsylvania

‘. . . He writes books on the region which have two qualities rarely found in
combination: impeccable and authoritative scholarship and the vividness and
lightness of touch of first-rate travel writing.’
Christopher Koch on Milton Osborne’s book The Mekong:
turbulent past, uncertain future
Also by Milton Osborne

BOOKS
The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and Response (1859–
1905), 1969
Region of Revolt: Focus on Southeast Asia, 1970, revised and expanded edition
1971
Politics and Power in Cambodia: The Sihanouk Years, 1973
River Road to China: The Mekong River Expedition, 1866–1973, 1975; new
edition 1996
Before Kampuchea: Preludes to Tragedy, 1979, 1984; reprinted with Postscript,
1984
Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness, 1994; Japanese edition 1996;
Czech edition 2003
The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, 2000; updated edition 2006
Exploring Southeast Asia: A Traveller’s History of the Region, 2002
Phnom Penh: A Cultural and Literary History, 2008

RESEARCH MONOGRAPHS
Singapore and Malaysia, 1964
Strategic Hamlets in South Viet-Nam: A Survey and a Comparison, 1965
River at Risk: The Mekong and the Water Politics of China and Southeast Asia,
2004
The Paramount Power: China and the Countries of Southeast
Asia, 2006
The Mekong: River Under Threat, 2009
11th Edition
This eleventh edition published in 2013
First edition published in 1979

Earlier editions translated into Japanese, Khmer, Korean and Thai

Copyright © Milton Osborne 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the
Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be
photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational
institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited
(CAL) under the Act.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS

Illustrations
Introduction

1 What is Southeast Asia?

2 The ‘Classical’ Background to Modern Southeast Asian History
3 Courts, Kings and Peasants: Southeast Asia Before the European Impact
4 Minorities and Slaves: The Outsiders in Traditional Southeast Asia
5 The European Advance and Challenge
6 Economic Transformation
7 The Asian Immigrants in Southeast Asia
8 The Years of Illusion: Southeast Asia Between the Wars, 1918–1941
9 The Second World War in Southeast Asia
10 Revolution and Revolt: Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines
11 Other Paths to Independence
12 An End to Postcolonial Settlements, and Beyond I: Indonesia, Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos
13 An End to Postcolonial Settlements, and Beyond II: Burma, Malaya,
Singapore, the Philippines and the Thai Exception
14 The Challenges of Independence in Southeast Asia
15 Southeast Asia’s Modern History: An Overview of the Present and the
Recent Past

Appendix: Discovering Southeast Asia through Art and Literature

Suggested Readings
Timeline
ILLUSTRATIONS

(Unless otherwise noted, photographs in the text are the author’s)

The Sultan Mosque, Singapore
The Cao Dai ‘Great Temple’ in southern Vietnam
Angkor Wat
Apsara at Banteay Srei
The Ananda Pagoda at Pagan
The Borobodur
Buddha at Sukhothai
Batavia in the eighteenth century
Village house in Sumatra
High-ranking Vietnamese mandarin
Vietnamese soldiers
Manila in the seventeenth century
Rubber plantation
A view of Singapore Harbour c. 1840
Singapore Malays, Chinese and Indians
Ho Chi Minh
President Sukarno
War in a Malayan rubber plantation
Australian troops preparing to defend the northern approach to Singapore
Death and destruction in Singapore
Australian POWs in Changi
MacArthur receiving the Japanese surrender
Tunku Abdul Rahman
Norodom Sihanouk
Lee Kuan Yew
Ferdinand Marcos
Exhumed skulls, Cambodia
Cambodian refugees awaiting food distribution on the Thai–Cambodian border
Cambodian resistance fighter
Vietnamese conscripts training in Kampong Chhnang
Discovering an Angkorian period temple
An Angkorian bas-relief from the Bayon
Wat Sri Sawai, Sukhothai
Arakanese Crowned Buddha
Cambodian ceramic bottle
Vietnamese ceramic dish
Javanese silk batik
Javanese cotton batik
Maps
The European presence in Southeast Asia in the late 18th century
Modern Southeast Asia
Mainland Southeast Asia: Distribution of Tai speaking peoples
The Angkorian empire at the height of its power in the twelfth century
The trading empire of Srivijaya
A simplified ethnolinguistic map of Burma
The making of modern peninsular Malaysia
Four key cities of the Indonesian revolution
Vietnam at the end of the First Indochina War
Graphs
Rapid urban growth in Southeast Asia
Population growth in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, 1800–2000
Diagrams
Schematic representation of the disposition of power in traditional Vietnamese
society
Schematic representation of the disposition of power in the traditional Buddhist
states of mainland Southeast Asia
A simplified family tree emphasising the change from being Chinese to
becoming Cambodian
This map shows, in a very generalised fashion, claimed European presence in Southeast Asia in the late
18th century. Points to be noted are: no European power held colonial positions on mainland Southeast Asia
(the Malay Peninsula is considered part of maritime Southeast Asia); with the exception of Dutch Batavia
(modern Jakarta) and Spanish Manila, European settlement in the maritime Southeast Asian world was very
small in both numbers and power; the shading used should not be regarded as a reflection of regions, rather
it should be taken as indicating a combination of claimed power and commercial political activity;
boundaries and names shown are generally those used in the 20th century.
INTRODUCTION

Although only four years have passed since the publication of the tenth edition
of this book, the rapid pace of change in contemporary Southeast Asia
underlines the extent to which the countries of the region are both dynamic in
character and facing many new challenges. Political change in Burma
(Myanmar) is one obvious example of a new and dynamic element in that
country’s recent history, marking a striking departure from the entrenched
policies followed by the dominant military leadership over many decades. The
economic resilience of the countries of Southeast Asia, despite the ravages of the
Asian Financial Crisis at the end of the twentieth century, is another index of the
region’s dynamism. In terms of challenges, continuing growth in the size of
national populations and the ongoing increase in urbanisation are placing ever-
new demands on governments. The availability of more up-to-date statistics, as
recorded in this new edition, underlines the extent to which Southeast Asian
populations are now larger in size than they were a decade ago, living longer and
doing so increasingly as urban dwellers. Yet while these contemporary
developments are not the chief concern of a book offering an introduction to
Southeast Asia’s long history, it is undeniable that many recent events have deep
roots in the more distant past. Civil unrest in Thailand in the first decade of the
twenty-first century underlines this point. An understanding of what occurred in
the struggles between the Red and Yellow Shirt factions in Bangkok during this
period is incomplete if it does not take account of political and demographic
developments in the early decades of the nineteenth century. And these struggles
also emphasise the extent to which a sense of regional identity is not solely
limited to the ethnically Malay provinces of southern Thailand.
So while I have not tried to provide a detailed commentary on very recent
history, I have again sought in this latest edition of the book to identify features
of the past that continue to have importance for the present. At the same time I
have endeavoured to take account of the latest advances in our knowledge of
Southeast Asia’s history—the fact that there is a continuing flow of new and
important research is one of the reasons the study of the area remains so
fascinating. This is particularly the case in discussion of early Cambodian
history. It is a topic that has benefited from intense research over the past several
decades, with some of the recent thinking about the Angkorian period already
noted in the previous edition of the book. Overall, it is certainly the case that
scholarship in relation to the whole of the region is becoming ever richer and
deeper in character. Because this is the case, I have again revised the Suggested
Readings in light of recent publications, although with an awareness that this is
an introductory history so that readers may always look elsewhere for more
detailed bibliographic guidance.
As with the tenth edition of my book, I have adopted the now common usage
of recording dates as being in or before the ‘Common Era’ (CE). For simplicity I
refer to ‘Thailand’ throughout the book, rather than to ‘Siam’, the name used to
describe the country before the 1930s. And I have continued to refer to ‘Burma’
rather than ‘Myanmar’, a name which continues to be seen by some inhabitants
of that country as carrying with it unacceptable political overtones. Nevertheless,
I recognise that the longer the new usage continues the more likely it is that
references to ‘Burma’, at least in relation to the contemporary state, will
eventually disappear—this is already the case among the countries that make up
the membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Throughout the book I have used the familiar name ‘East Timor’ and the
relatively newly official designation of ‘Timor-Leste’ for that country
interchangeably.
No book is the work of a single person and I again thank all of those who have
helped me in various ways in writing about Southeast Asia over many years;
their names are recorded in previous editions. I hope they might, forgive me for
singling out one name to be repeated here. I refer to the late Oliver Wolters who,
as my teacher and supervisor as I studied at Cornell, taught me so much about
the nature of history and inspired me to write about it.
With some embarrassment I realise that in ‘Introductions’ to previous editions
of this book I have never expressed my thanks to the publisher who in 1975 first
suggested I should write an introductory history of the region, Patrick Gallagher.
His continuing friendship and support through the book’s several editions since
1979 have been all that a writer could wish for, as has the highly professional
editing provided by Rebecca Kaiser over the past decade. But, as always, I must
emphasise that any shortcomings in the book are mine alone.
Milton Osborne
Sydney, 2013
Sydney, 2013
ONE
WHAT IS SOUTHEAST ASIA?

There is no better place to start than with a discussion of size and scale. For a
newcomer to Southeast Asian history the past is more confusing than the
jumbled present. Yet even when considering the present an outsider has the
greatest difficulty in visualising just how large an area Southeast Asia occupies
in geographical terms, and how substantial is the size of its population. The fact
that Indonesia’s population is approaching two hundred and fifty million may be
well known. But how often is that fact recognised as meaning that Indonesia has
the fourth largest population in the world? Only China,India and the United
States have larger populations than Indonesia. And how many casual observers
think of a now-united Vietnam as having a substantially larger population, at 91
million, than such countries as Spain (forty million), Poland (thirty-nine
million), and Canada (thirty-four million)? Vietnam’s population is even larger
than Egypt’s (eighty-two million), yet Vietnam is only one of four Southeast
Asian states, in addition to Indonesia, whose populations are each in excess of
thirty million. Figures can only be approximate where population is concerned,
but of the world’s population in the first decades of the twenty-first century
Southeast Asia accounted for no less than 8 per cent. The significance of this
percentage is made clear when the population of China is expressed as a
percentage of the world’s total. China, the world’s most populous country,
accounts for between 20 and 25 per cent of the total. Against this yardstick
alone, therefore, the population of the Southeast Asian region is substantial
indeed.
Size by itself does not mean power, and this is as true for contemporary
Southeast Asia as it was for other countries and regions in the past. Whatever the
power that an individual Southeast Asian state can exert within its own borders,
or outside them, none of the countries in the region has yet developed the global
power that was once exerted by some European powers, such as Britain in its
imperial heyday, or by the superpowers of the last quarter of the twentieth
century. Here, right away, is a major question for historians of Southeast Asia to
consider: Why has the Southeast Asian region, despite its size, played so small a
part in the shifts of global power over the past two thousand years?
The answer, or more correctly answers, to this question will need to take
account of many factors, not all of them agreed among those who make it their
business to study the Southeast Asian region. To a great extent, moreover, the
answers will point to the need to think about Southeast Asia in terms that will
often seem surprising for those whose cultural background has been strongly
influenced by Europe. Here is where scale as well as size deserves attention.
When dealing with the unknown or little-known there is a strong tendency to
think of cities, countries or groups of people as being in some way smaller in
size and importance than is the case for better-known areas and peoples. In the
same fashion there is a familiar readiness to discount the achievements of
unfamiliar civilisations by comparison with the presumed importance of our own
society and cultural traditions. This may be less of a feature of life today than it
was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the exploring
Europeans and their successors, the administrators, missionaries, planters and
men of commerce, had not the slightest doubt about their own superiority.
Nonetheless, the problem remains today as Southeast Asia is still an unfamiliar
area to most who live outside its boundaries.
Because we know that London and Paris are major cities today, and that these
are the modern successors of settlements dating back to Roman times, our
tendency is to think of their always having been large and important. Londinium
was important in Roman times, possibly more so than the settlement of Lutetia,
which was to change its name to Paris in the fourth century. But because of our
familiarity with the name London it is hard, perhaps, to visualise just how small
this centre was in Roman times and through to the period of the Norman
Conquest. When William the Conqueror was crowned King of England in
Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066 London still did not enjoy the status
of being England’s royal city. No more than 35 000 persons lived in the ill-kept
streets of this medieval city; yet this is scarcely the image London summons up.
At the same time, in the then unknown land of Cambodia— unknown, that is, to
the men and women of Europe—a population of perhaps a million grouped
around and supported a city that could rival and surpass any then existing in
Europe for its architectural achievement, its sophisticated water engineering, and
its capacity to produce a harvest of two or even three rice crops each year. This
was the city of Angkor from whose ruins with their accompanying rich stock of
inscriptions we have come to know of a civilisation of remarkable achievement
and high technological complexity. But whereas the wonders of Europe, of
Rome and Venice, of Paris and London, and a dozen other major cities, have
preoccupied scholars and interested observers for hundreds of years, the great
Cambodian city of Angkor, the centre of a powerful empire for nearly six
centuries, only became part of general Western consciousness in the nineteenth
century, and then only slowly.
The point may be made over and over again. Athens, Thebes and Sparta were
tiny states, nevertheless they live in the minds of those who study European
history for the contributions that they made to the development of European
culture, in that term’s broadest sense. By contrast, it is still rare outside either
specialist circles, or among those who have travelled widely, to find knowledge
of the empire of Pagan (Bagan), a centre of Burmese power during the eleventh,
twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the site of a temple complex that some
believe rivals the buildings of Angkor. Those who are the inheritors of the
Western tradition are not immediately receptive to the religious and cultural
underpinnings of the societies that built Pagan and Angkor. The same problem
of a lack of immediate empathy is apparent when attention turns to another early
Southeast Asian empire. It is easier for a Westerner to conjure up a picture,
accurate or otherwise, of Christopher Columbus sailing to the Americas than it is
to picture the heroic navigational feats of Malay sailors who voyaged to China
and made the Sumatra-based empire of Srivijaya such a powerful force in early
Southeast Asian history.
The contrast between our awareness of Europe and unawareness of Southeast
Asia should not be stressed beyond reason. There are a great many good reasons
why it is easier to understand segments of European history and why real and
continuing difficulties stand in the way of acquiring a similar background
awareness of the historical process in Southeast Asia. To gain more than a
superficial knowledge of early Southeast Asian history requires time, dedication,
and a readiness to learn a surprisingly large range of languages. All this is
required for the study of problems that may often seem lacking in general
interest. Generations of scholars have laboured in some cases to leave little more
than fragments for incorporation in the overall fabric of the region’s history. For
the general student there is, fortunately, some middle ground between a broad
lack of knowledge and scholarly devotion to detail that is, however admirable,
the preserve of the specialist.
So far in this introductory chapter the term Southeast Asia has been used in a
general, undifferentiated fashion. In the 1930s this would have caused surprise,
for only a few persons at that time thought and spoke about ‘Southeast Asia’.
Some writers used the term ‘Further India’ to describe sections of Southeast
Asia, as if all that was to be found beyond the Bay of Bengal was the Indian
subcontinent on a smaller scale. It is only necessary to think of the influence that
China has had over the formation of Vietnamese cultural life, or of the extent to
which the Philippines has acquired a very special character because of the long-
term Spanish influence in those islands, to realise how inappropriate the term
‘Further India’ is. Another general description that was used before the Second
World War was ‘Asia of the Monsoons’, a term deriving from the monsoon
weather pattern that is important in almost all of Southeast Asia. This term, used
by geographers most particularly, did not relate merely to the area that modern
scholars have termed Southeast Asia, for Sri Lanka and parts of India, as well as
areas of southern China, might equally well be described as monsoon lands.
For the most part, however, neither the foreigners who worked in Southeast
Asia before the Second World War, whether as scholars or otherwise, nor the
indigenous inhabitants of the countries of Southeast Asia, thought about the
region in general terms. The general tendency to do so came with the Second
World War when, as a result of military circumstances, the concept of a
Southeast Asian region began to take hold. From a strategic military point of
view it was apparent that an area existed that was not India, nor China, nor part
of the Pacific. Instead, a sense began to grow that Brunei, Burma, Thailand,
Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia—to use modern
names rather than those different ones which, in some cases, were current in the
early 1940s—formed some kind of geographical unit. The omission of the
Philippines is deliberate, at this stage, for the question of whether or not the
Philippines formed part of Southeast Asia was to remain a matter of scholarly
uncertainty as late as the 1960s. As for East Timor (now known officially as
Timor Leste), until that territory was invaded by Indonesia in 1975 it scarcely
rated a mention in general surveys of Southeast Asian history. As the
government of East Timor pursues its policy of seeking membership of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), future surveys of Southeast
Asian affairs will increasingly come to include it as an integral part of the
region.
The sense of Southeast Asia being a geographical and cultural unit did not, of
course, depend solely upon strategic thinking. Already, in the 1920s and 1930s,
anthropologists and historians had begun to take account of the similarities that
could be found between one region of what we now call Southeast Asia and
another. Similarities in the rituals used by the various royal courts throughout
mainland Southeast Asia were recognised as an indication of a common
inheritance or tradition. Basic similarities in family structure were found to exist
over a wide area. And for all of the evidence that was accumulating of the
importance of foreign ideas, and of foreigners, throughout Southeast Asia’s long
history, historians had begun assembling the evidence that showed a regional
pattern of international relations within Southeast Asia from its earliest historical
periods. Southeast Asia was not, in other words, merely a region that sustained
the impact of its greater neighbours, China and India. Empires within the region
waxed and waned and at various times links were established between the
mainland and the islands of the Indonesian Archipelago involving both politics
and trade.
With the end of the Second World War the tendency to think of Southeast
Asia as a whole gained even greater currency as there was a sharp increase in the
amount of scholarly attention given to the region. Now, more than ever before,
the underlying similarities to be found throughout a wide range of the region
were stressed by historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and linguists, to
mention only the prominent academic disciplines. To sense why these scholars
found their work so exciting, and to emphasise the way in which the picture of
Southeast Asia as a unit deserving of study in its own right emerged, it is useful
to review briefly some of the features of the region that are now taken for
granted but which only gained general recognition after the Second World War.
Probably most important was the recognition that the countries of Southeast
Asia were neither ‘little Indias’ nor ‘little Chinas’. The impact of those two great
countries on the region cannot be dismissed, though the degree and character of
their influence is still debated, but the essential right of Southeast Asian
countries to be considered culturally independent units was generally
established. To put the matter in another fashion, if the tendency in the past had
been to think of Southeast Asia as an area shaped by external cultural values,
most particularly those of India and China, scholars now paid just as much
attention to the strength and importance of indigenous cultural traditions. Where
Indian or Chinese influence did play a major part in the development of
Southeast Asian art, or religion, or political theory, stress began to be placed on
the extent to which Burmese, Cambodians, Indonesians, and others adapted
these foreign ideas to suit their own needs and values. The importance of Indian
religious concepts, for instance, must be recognised for a broad area of Southeast
Asia. But one of the most essential features of Hinduism, the rigid caste system,
was never adopted in the countries outside India. Indian artistic and architectural
concepts played an important part in the development of Southeast Asian art.
Yet the glories of Pagan, Angkor, and the temple complexes of Java stem from
their own individual character, just as the exquisite Buddha images that were
created in Thailand are quite different from the images to be found in India.
Even in Vietnam, where dependence upon an external, Chinese cultural tradition
has clearly been more significant than elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the strength
of non-Chinese cultural life, particularly below the level of the court, belies any
picture of that country as a mere receiver of ideas, unable to offer traditions of its
own.
Southeast Asian and foreign scholars alike came to recognise that Indian and
Chinese influence had been overemphasised in the past and that insufficient
attention had been paid to fundamental similarities existing in the societies
making up the region. While uniformity most certainly is not present throughout
the societies of Southeast Asia, certain broad similarities spread across a wide
area are striking. The importance of the nuclear or individual family in much of
Southeast Asia, as opposed to the importance placed on the extended family in
India, was one of these broad similarities. So, too, the generally important place
allotted women in the peasant society of traditional Southeast Asia reflected both
a widespread value and a contrast with both Indian and Chinese societies.
Another factor leading to interest in the Southeast Asian region as a whole
was the recognition of how much linguistic unity there was from area to area,
cutting right across the boundaries set, in many cases, by colonial powers. There
are still people who have not shed the illusions fostered by the former colonial
powers which sought to emphasise disunity rather than to recognise broad
similarities. So, not very long ago there were people who spoke and wrote as if
the language of northern Vietnam was quite different from the language spoken
in the southern regions of that country. The reality is that Vietnam, like almost
any other country, has dialectical variations from region to region. But, if
linguistic unity is taken as a significant factor indicating basic broader social
unities, then Vietnam despite its fragmented political history is unified indeed.
The difference between the Vietnamese spoken in the north of that country and
the Vietnamese to be heard in the south is certainly no greater than the difference
between ‘educated southern English’ and broad Scots. And the difference is a
great deal less than that to be found between the dialects of northern and
southern Italy.
When looking at areas larger than a single country such as Vietnam, the
presence of broad linguistic unity is more striking. Some of this unity is apparent
only to the most skilled scholars. This is the case with the quite recent
suggestion that modern Vietnamese and Khmer (or Cambodian) have a common,
if very distant, linguistic ancestor. For the non-specialist this is difficult to
comprehend, in part because of the fact that of these languages Vietnamese is
tonal, while Khmer is non-tonal. But a non-specialist can respond to the striking
fact that the Tai language, admittedly with considerable dialectical variations, is
spoken not only in Thailand, but in parts of southern China, in Vietnam, in the
Shan states of Burma, in Laos, in both western and northeastern Cambodia, and,
though this is less and less the case today, in the extreme north of peninsular
Malaysia. Here is a situation full of interest and importance. That the Tai
language has such a broad distribution alerts us to the often artificial character of
the border lines drawn on maps, for if a common language were taken as a basis
for establishing a state, then to divide the lowland areas of Laos from Thailand
seems hard to justify. At the same time, an awareness of the presence of Tai-
speaking persons over such a wide area of Southeast Asia brings a recognition of
the extent to which many of the states of modern Southeast Asia are troubled by
disunity resulting from the presence within their frontiers of minority groups.
Their interests, including their linguistic interest, are not shared by the majority
or dominant and governing group. Many Tai-speaking Shans in Burma, to take
only one example, continue in modern times as in the past to resent control by
the Burmans who are their long-time rivals and speak a different language.

Mainland Southeast Asia: Distribution of Tai speaking peoples

The Tai language is not only the principal language of the population of Thailand. It is, in addition, spoken
widely by the Shans of Burma, by the lowland population of Laos, and in the northern parts of Vietnam,
Cambodia and Malaysia. Tai speakers are also to be found in the extreme south of China.
 Another most important instance of linguistic unity is the broad spread of the
Indonesian/Malay language, known among specialists as ‘Austronesian’. Here
again the dialectical differences from region to region are considerable, but
variants of this basic language are spoken throughout modern Brunei, East
Timor, Indonesia and Malaysia, and in the Philippines, as well as along the
southern coastal regions of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam where there are
long-established Indonesian/Malay-speaking settlements. Yet just as the national
motto of Indonesia is ‘Unity in Diversity’, the similarities and unities that have
just been described should not blind a student of Southeast Asia to the profound
differences that do exist from place to place and between one ethnic group and
another. Indeed, a study of the history of Southeast Asia raises some of the most
difficult issues of judgment in this regard. What should be emphasised for a
region or for a period, the unities or the differences? And to what extent should
we concentrate on the continuities that so often seem a feature of Southeast
Asian history rather than paying attention to the discontinuities, to the breaks
with the past and the changes that disturb any suggestion that we are dealing
with an area in which traditional patterns are still dominant and little affected by
the modern world?
There can be no certain and agreed answer to any of these questions, for what
is involved is judgment, whether individual or collective, and judgment will
always be open to argument. Judgment will also always be subject to fashion and
there is no doubt that historical and anthropological fashions, to mention only
two scholarly disciplines, are as changeable, if not quite as frequently, as
fashions in clothes. Yet there might be some sort of general agreement about the
following propositions. The study of Southeast Asia over the past fifty years has
contributed greatly to the acceptance that this is a region deserving attention as a
whole and as an entity separate from the cultures of South Asia and China. To
think of Southeast Asia in this framework is very much a product of the post-
Second World War years and contrasts considerably with the way that scholars
approached the region in earlier periods. Now that the unities and similarities
have been generally recognised, however, it remains important to give due
attention to the differences, that do set geographical region apart from
geographical region, ethnic group apart from ethnic group, and which, for a
traveller, so often make the physical transition from one area of Southeast Asia
to another an easily and sharply perceived experience.
The sheer size of the geographical region making up Southeast Asia,
stretching over more than thirty-five degrees of latitude and nearly fifty degrees
of longitude, prepares us for its immensely varied geographical character. If
population has traditionally been concentrated in lowland settlements, along the
seacoasts and by rivers and lakes, this only tells part of the story of geography
and settlement patterns. The demands of high-density settlement in northern
Vietnam, for instance, have led to a very different approach to agriculture along
the Red River from that followed by the much less concentrated Vietnamese
population in the Mekong River delta. Yet even along the lower Mekong River a
modern traveller can still see dramatic evidence of the difference that exists
between the physical landscape of Cambodia and southern Vietnam, as the result
of differing population pressures in those neighbouring regions and of differing
values about the aims to be pursued by an agricultural population. To drive from
Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is to pass, sharply, from one
landscape to another. On the Cambodian side of the frontier there is untilled
land, while the land that is under cultivation is cropped once a year. Scattered
clumps of sugar palms give a sense of scale to the landscape and emphasise that
not all other vegetation has not been sacrificed to the growing of rice. Once over
the frontier, however, the scene changes immediately. Even to a casual observer
it is apparent that a very different pattern of agriculture is followed, one that
seemingly leaves no land untilled and grows its two rice crops each year on land
from which the sugar palms have been removed so that the landscape stretching
away to the horizon is unmarked by any vertical features.
The contrasts between the physical appearance of the Mekong delta region of
Cambodia and Vietnam are essentially those resulting from differing agricultural
practices. Even more striking are the contrasts that stem directly from basic
geography, from the difference between hill and valley and between those areas
favoured by climate and those where rainfall is uncertain and infrequent. Almost
all of Southeast Asia lies in the tropical zone, yet this does not mean that tropical
abundance is universal. For those hill peoples who live in areas of the upland
regions of Thailand, Burma and Laos, the pattern of life dictated by their
physical environment has little reminiscent of the tropical lushness that, on
occasion, may be typical of existence in more favoured regions.
Rapid urban growth in Southeast Asia
A tale of two cities: Bangkok and Jakarta Rapid urban growth has been a striking feature of Southeast
Asia’s modern history, particularly since the Second World War. Developments in Bangkok and Jakarta
exemplify this situation. At the end of the Second World War both these cities had populations of less than
a million. Sixty-five years later, the population of greater Bangkok was over eighteen times larger while
greater Jakarta’s had grown by more than twenty-five times its 1945 figure.
The continuing growth of Southeast Asia’s primate cities places tremendous strains on governments
faced with the need to provide services for their populations and to find work for those seeking
employment.

The whole concept of Southeast Asia as an area of lushness, growth and

fecundity needs qualification. It can be all of these things, but only if such
factors as population pressure do not intrude and when the land is fertile and
cultivable. Nothing is more deceptive than the endless green of ripening crops on
the island of Java where an ever-increasing population, now totalling nearly 140
million at the beginning of the twenty-first century, is jammed into an area little
different from England, where a population less than half the size benefits from
the economic diversification of a developed society. Equally deceptive are the
rolling hills covered with rainforest of peninsular Malaysia. Seen from an
aircraft the forests of West Malaysia run away to the horizon, unbroken by roads
or settlement. There is timber wealth here, but little promise of easy agricultural
expansion for a growing population.
From the dry zone of Burma to the snow-covered mountains of the Indonesian
province of Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), and from the rolling pastoral grasslands
of northwestern Vietnam to the steep terraced rice lands of the Philippine
Islands, Southeast Asia is a conglomerate of geographical and agricultural
contrasts.
Southeast Asia is an area of many other contrasts. One of the most obvious for
a modern traveller in the region is that between city and country. The growth of
Southeast Asia’s cities has been one of the most striking features of
developments in the twentieth century, particularly since the Second World War.
A few examples make clear how dramatic the changes have been. Bangkok in
2010 had a population of more than 14 million. Just over a century ago the total
population of Thailand was only 6 million persons. As recently as 1960 the
estimated population of Bangkok was less than one and a half million. The
example of Bangkok has its parallels elsewhere in the rapid growth in the size of
Jakarta, of Phnom Penh in the 1990s, of Ho Chi Minh City, and of many
provincial urban centres. These fast-growing Asian cities are magnets for the
rural dwellers who flock out of the country, where they often see little hope of
change and virtually no prospect of prosperity. For them the urban centres,
however miserable conditions may be, appear to offer some hope of personal
advancement. Such hopes often cruelly evaporate in the face of unemployment,
overcrowding, and an inadequate system of city services. Yet nothing could
better illustrate the contrast between city and country in modern Southeast Asia
than the continuing migration of rural inhabitants into the urban areas. For this
migration is, in considerable part, a reaction against the life offered in the
countryside with its limited horizons, its frequent drudgery and, in the eyes of
many young men and women, the limitations of tradition-bound existence. The
disadvantages of life far from the cities has, for the rural and provincial
population of Southeast Asia, been made all the clearer by the communications
revolution that has placed a transistor in almost every household’s dwelling or
even a TV screen, and by the greater availability of transport that has made visits
from one area of a country to another so much more readily possible.
Richness and poverty, development and a lack of development— these and
many other social contrasts stand out more clearly in Southeast Asia than in
those areas of the world that benefited from the great industrial changes of the
nineteenth century. If Southeast Asia is also an area that has been marked by a
notable degree of political instability, this is scarcely to be wondered at in terms
of the broad range of problems—in almost every aspect of life—that have
confronted those who govern, and those who wish to govern, since the countries
of the region attained independence after the Second World War. The one
exception to this observation, Thailand, was never under European colonial rule.
In terms of the problems Thailand has faced and faces, however, its historical
experience has many parallels with the former colonial territories. Here, to return
for a moment to similarities present among the countries of Southeast Asia, is
another important reason for thinking about the region as a whole rather than
solely in terms of individual countries. With the exception of Thailand, just
noted, all the other countries of Southeast Asia sustained varying periods of
colonial rule. What were the similarities and differences to be found in this
common experience? Did it matter whether the alien colonial power was Britain,
or France, or Holland, or Portugal, or the United States? And why did some
colonial regimes leave peacefully while others fought bitter wars to try and
remain?
To refer to the colonial period in Southeast Asia is to raise another much-
debated historical problem: how much attention should be given to the colonial
element in Southeast Asian history? The answer will vary from person to person
and from period to period. The realisation that too often in the past Southeast
Asians were excluded from their own history by the non-Southeast Asians who
wrote about the region has had a healthy effect. So, today, most historians are
aware of the importance of essentially Southeast Asian developments and the
role played by Southeast Asians in them, even if they continue to see some value
in discussing the part played by Europeans and others who came to seek power
and fortune in the area.
The Sultan Mosque, Singapore
Islam is one of the major religions in Southeast Asia, and the dominant religion in Brunei, Indonesia and
Malaysia. Increasingly, the architectural forms used for Islamic mosques in Southeast Asia show clear
borrowings from the Middle East, as in this photograph of the Sultan Mosque in Singapore.
The Cao Dai ‘Great Temple’ in Tay Ninh, southern Vietnam
Founded in the early twentieth century, the Cao Dai religion is a syncretic religion, a fact reflected in its
architecture.

What will be examined in this book, then, is an immensely varied region

marked by some notable unities and containing great diversity. An attempt will
be made to discover the factors that have been important in determining why
Southeast Asia has its present character and why it is that such sharply differing
political developments have occurred in countries that at first glance seem to
possess similar historical backgrounds. The region that is the setting for the
events and developments we consider will sometimes stagger us by the richness
of its diversity. To take one further example underlining this point, the Southeast
Asian area continues to be most diverse in its religious character. Islam is strong
in the maritime regions and Theravada Buddhism is the national religion of
Thailand, as it is in Cambodia once again. Some sections of the area are strongly
Christian, most notably the Philippines, but in other areas a basic animism is the
most fundamental of the population’s religious beliefs. Even having mentioned
these religions is to give a most incomplete catalogue. There are followers of
Hinduism, not only the descendants of Indian immigrants but the indigenous
populations of Bali and Lombok in Indonesia. Communism is the secular
religion of Vietnam, but it is not hard to sense the continuing presence of some
Confucian values in Vietnamese society. These are clearly apparent in the Cao
Dai religion that has many adherents in southern Vietnam and lists Joan of Arc
and Victor Hugo among other spiritually important guides to personal conduct.
For all the diversity we encounter we will still find that there are important
common themes in the historical experience of the countries making up the
region. Most particularly as we approach the modern period of Southeast Asian
history we will find that the problems faced by peoples seeking independence,
and then by governments seeking to operate within independent states, often
involve great similarities, even if the attempted solutions to these problems are
greatly different in their character.
With its rich past and sometimes turbulent present Southeast Asia is a region
full of interest for a casual observer as well as to those who have made its study
their lifetime task. An awareness of Southeast Asia’s history will not provide
any certain guide to future developments in the region, for that can never be
history’s task. But a review of the area’s history will illuminate the present,
making clear why the politics of one country are so different from those of
another, or why the region as a whole has, in so many ways and over such a long
period, been subject to strong external influence. Above all, an awareness of
Southeast Asia’s history provides an insight into the life and beliefs of a large
and fascinating segment of the world’s population, which in cultural
achievement, quite apart from contemporary political interest, deserves a much
greater degree of attention than it has yet received. In the recent past it has been
possible to see the tragic results of a lack of knowledge of the political and
cultural background to developments in more than one Southeast Asian country.
This fact provides an even greater incentive to learn something of the broad lines
of historical development that have made Southeast Asia what it is today.
TWO
THE ‘CLASSICAL’ BACKGROUND TO MODERN SOUTHEAST
ASIAN HISTORY

One of the most obvious problems encountered by Southeast Asian historians is

that of vocabulary. How should an historian describe, using words or phrases
that have been developed for a Western context, a very different historical
experience? There is no easy solution to this problem and scholars continue to
debate the proper way to describe particular periods in Southeast Asian history
and, just as importantly, what these periods are. So, while such terms as
‘classical’ or ‘medieval’ have generally acceptable meanings for those whose
preoccupation is European history, there is no such agreement among Southeast
Asian historians.
One solution is to use words without particular cultural or historical value; to
write and speak of ‘early’ Southeast Asian history, or of the ‘traditional’
Southeast Asian world. Yet even here there are problems, for different historians
will assign different dates to these periods. Because of these difficulties the term
‘classical’ applied to Southeast Asian history must be recognised as a less than
fully satisfactory description. Its value stems from the suggestion it carries with
it of there having been a period in Southeast Asian history that was marked by a
series of major achievements in art and architecture and in the development of
the state, as in Greek and Roman history, before there was a period of general
decline, by the end of the fifteenth century. This decline was then followed by
the emergence of newly powerful kingdoms. But if we use the term ‘classical’
we should recognise it for what it is: a useful but highly qualified historical
metaphor.
The Angkorian empire at the height of its power in the twelfth century
The Angkorian empire reached the height of its power in the twelfth century during the reigns of
Suryavarman II (1113–1150) and Jayavarman VII (1181–circa 1219). During these reigns Cambodia was in
control of the modern territory of Cambodia, much of southern Vietnam and southern Laos, and had vassal
states in central Thailand and in the Kra Isthmus to the south. The exercise of central power over these far-
flung territories was not uniform and the more distant a region was, the less direct the involvement of the
Angkorian ruler.

As a metaphor suggesting the greatness of Greece and Rome the idea of there
having once been a classical Southeast Asia is indeed helpful since it alerts a
newcomer to the weight of Southeast Asia’s cultural traditions that might not
always be obvious when considering more recent historical periods. This was
very much a problem during the nineteenth century. The first Westerners,
Frenchmen as it happened, to visit the court of the King of Cambodia in the late
1850s and early 1860s found it small and lacking in artistic distinction. They
took a similar view of the Cambodian ruler of the day, King Norodom, and they
could not believe that he, and those whom he ruled, were the descendants of the
population that had once lived beside the mighty temples of Angkor. Partly
because they could not believe this was so—though it was indeed the case—
these same Frenchmen had the greatest difficulty in understanding that King
Norodom saw himself as the defender of his country’s traditions and as a
descendant, in terms of kingly majesty, of Angkorian kings whose names might
be forgotten but whose glory was seen as essentially Cambodian.
 Here is one immediately important instance of the significance attaching to
the classical period. Southeast Asian individuals and Southeast Asian
governments have cherished the past glories of their countries, though the
manner in which these glories are remembered may be very different to the
Western concept of history. Burmans remember the glory of the temples of
Pagan built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and Indonesians have
continued to see significance in the empires claimed for Javanese rulers of
earlier historical periods. Sharp argument might sometimes be joined over the
extent to which the memories that are preserved are accurate. And it would be
misleading to suggest that there are not considerable variations from person to
person, social grouping to social grouping, and country to country in the nature
and importance that is attached to the so-called classical past. It would be a very
rash person indeed, however, who was ready to discount this importance
altogether.
There are further reasons for giving some attention to the classical period in
Southeast Asia, since the rise and fall of the kingdoms tells us much about the
factors that were to shape the more familiar course of the modern historical
period. If, for the moment, we consider mainland Southeast Asia, then it
becomes necessary to ask why it should be that the mightiest of the classical
mainland states, Angkorian Cambodia, should ultimately have been one of
history’s failures, despite the technological achievements, in the control and use
of water, and the architectural glories that were such a feature of its years of
greatness? Why, to continue asking questions with a rather negative character,
did the maritime empire of Srivijaya come to lose its dominant position
controlling the great east–west trade between India and China during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, after enjoying notable commercial success
during preceding centuries? Or why, to move to a more positive vein, was Java
to remain the geographical location for successive states that aspired not only to
rule over that island but also to a seldom-achieved suzerainty over other islands
in the Indonesian Archipelago?
It may not be possible to give completely satisfactory answers to all these
questions, particularly not in a chapter that is meant to provide background to a
later period. But it will be possible to sketch with broad strokes some of the
important characteristics of classical Southeast Asia, to give some account of the
factors that led to the rise and fall of states and empires, and the nature of their
achievements in fields as diverse as architecture and navigation. To do this it is
necessary to try and provide a brief picture of the patterns of states that had
emerged in Southeast Asia by the ninth century CE. There is much of Southeast
Asia at that time that we simply cannot describe either in terms of the location of
states or in terms of populations living away from the centres of kingly power.
Most of the Philippines remains outside our knowledge at that period, as do
other sections of the Southeast Asian maritime world. But once our gaze shifts to
the west of the Indonesian Archipelago the forms are easier to discern.
Recognisable kingdoms or states had already emerged in Java by the ninth
century and these states had demonstrated considerable artistic capacity in the
temples and shrines they erected and in the forms they chose to decorate them.
The most notable are the great Buddhist stupa, Borobudur, and the Prambanan
Hindu temple complex, both located not far from the modern city of Yogyakarta
in central Java.
Moving further west and north to the island of Sumatra, we know of the
existence of a trading empire, Srivijaya, that had risen to power in the sixth and
seventh centuries CE and, despite setbacks along the way, continued to dominate
trade between the West (India) and the East (China), as well as more local trade
in the Archipelago itself for hundreds of years. Although scholarly argument
continues concerning the exact location of Srivijaya, recent archaeological
research leaves little doubt that the capital of this great maritime empire was in
southern Sumatra, on and around the site of modern Palembang during the
eighth and ninth centuries CE. If we risk a broad summary of the situation in the
maritime Southeast Asian world of the ninth century, it might be in the following
terms: Whatever the petty states that existed elsewhere, the truly significant
centres of power that had emerged were linked to coastal Sumatra and inland
Java. These centres of power were to remain important in the following
centuries, until the end of the classical period.
The trading empire of Srivijaya
Scholars argue over the exact location of Srivijaya, the great trading empire that dominated maritime trade
through Southeast Asia and between India and China during the seventh to thirteenth centuries. Srivijaya
probably had a number of capitals, with the most important in southern Sumatra, adjoining modern
Palembang. As indicated in this map, Srivijaya maintained its power by controlling the ports and waters of
the Malacca Straits. The shaded areas represent the control exercised by Srivijaya.

The situation on the mainland is rather clearer, if still full of difficulties and a
rich subject for controversy. During the ninth century there was still no
independent Vietnamese state since Imperial China occupied the Red River delta
region and administered it as one of the most remote Chinese provinces.
Stretched along the modern Vietnamese coast was the state of Champa,
populated by the Chams, a people linguistically linked with the inhabitants of
Indonesia. To the west was the growing state of Cambodia, which was just
beginning its rise to greatness and dominance over much of mainland Southeast
Asia. Although we know today that greatness lay ahead for Cambodia, this was
far from clearly the case in the ninth century. The first Cambodian (Khmer)
kings to rule in the Angkor region had already begun to develop techniques for
mastering the environment that were, eventually, to provide the economic base
for agricultural production, military expansion and a program of great temple-
building. In the ninth century, however, they were only a little more clearly
masters of their quite limited world—a region that had been settled for some
centuries—than were the petty rulers scattered through the lowland regions of
modern Thailand and along the great river valleys of modern Burma.
Wherever recognisable states existed in this uncertainly defined Southeast Asian
region of the ninth century, the rulers and their courts were followers of
imported religions, of Hinduism and Buddhism. These Indian religions were one
of the most important features of a development that took place in the Southeast
Asian region over many centuries, beginning early in the Christian era. The
development has been given the name ‘Indianisation’, though once again there is
continuing disagreement among scholars as to just what the term means. Broad
agreement does exist, however, about certain features of the Indianisation
process, and it is these features that are now described.
Beginning in the second and third centuries CE there was a slow expansion of
Indian cultural contacts with the Southeast Asian region. It was an uneven
process, with some areas receiving Indian influence much later than others, and
with the degree of cultural impact varying from century to century. In the case of
the Vietnamese, who were in this early period living under Chinese rule, the
process of Indianisation never took place. For a different reason—distant
geographical location—neither did the Philippines participate in this process.
Indianisation did not mean there was a mass migration of Indian population into
Southeast Asia. Rather, a relatively limited number of traders and priest-scholars
brought Indian culture in its various forms to Southeast Asia where much, but
not all, of this culture was absorbed by the local population and joined to their
existing cultural patterns. This has been the generally accepted view, but some
historians now argue that Indian concepts may well have been brought back to
Southeast Asia by Southeast Asians who had themselves travelled to India. Both
developments probably took place.
Several cautionary remarks are immediately necessary. Because Indian culture
‘came’ to Southeast Asia, one must not think that Southeast Asians lacked a
culture of their own. Indeed, the most generally accepted view is that Indian
culture made such an impact on Southeast Asia because it fitted easily with the
existing cultural patterns and religious beliefs of populations that had already
moved a considerable distance along the path of civilisation. Just because this
was the case, the process of Indianisation should not be seen as simply involving
a Southeast Asian acceptance of Indian cultural values. Indian culture was
absorbed in much of Southeast Asia, and Indian religions, art forms, and theories
of government came to be of the greatest importance. But these various cultural
gifts from India became Southeast Asian and in doing so changed their
character. In some cases, moreover, quite fundamental features of Indian culture
and society were not adopted. The caste system of India did not, for instance,
accompany the practice of Hinduism in Southeast Asia, however much early
Southeast Asian kings might have felt that they were modelling themselves on
Indian rulers and made use of caste terminology to describe themselves and their
courts. Southeast Asian art drew upon Indian artistic models, but then developed
its own forms. Indian languages were used in government and religion. Yet
while the inscriptions written in Sanskrit remain one of our most important
sources for early Southeast Asian history, the use of this language ultimately
lapsed as Southeast Asians came to use Indian scripts to render their own
languages.
Southeast Asians, to summarise the point, borrowed but they also adapted. In
some very important cases they did not need to borrow at all. The techniques of
wet rice cultivation seem to have been indigenous to Southeast Asia and not a
technological import from another area. In addition, if there was borrowing and
adaptation that justifies the term Indianisation, one must realise that our view of
this process tends to be shaped by the evidence with which historians must work.
We know infinitely more about the world of kings, courts and priests than we do
about the world of the peasantry. The anonymous workers in the rice fields were
probably little affected by Indianisation. The complex features of Hinduism and
Mahayana Buddhism—the form of Buddhism that first had an impact in
Southeast Asia—were the concerns of their masters, while they retained their
fear and respect for the spirits that they believed were associated with both the
animate and inanimate beings and objects that surrounded them.
How might we explain the attraction that Indian ideas had for the rulers and
men of religion? A partial answer would seem to be that Indian culture provided
an organised and developed pattern of doctrine and knowledge for Southeast
Asians who were ready to grasp at new ideas promising greater religious and
secular power. The legends that tell of the arrival in Southeast Asia of Brahmin
priests from India often have a highly practical twist to them. The Brahmans of
the legends bring wisdom and advice to Southeast Asian rulers, instructing them
in statecraft as well as in religion. The Brahmans were scholars as well as
priests. They could advise on the proper ways to conduct relations with a ruler’s
neighbouring states. They were astronomers as well as astrologers, and architects
who shaped their temples not only in accordance with the demands of building
technology but also in terms of religious symbolism and astronomical
observation. Men such as these were invaluable advisers and it is not surprising
that the Cambodian national birth legend, to take only one example, sees the
legendary marriage of a Brahman with a local princess as the beginning of
Cambodia’s rise to greatness that culminated in the Angkorian period.

In the Indianised Southeast Asia of the ninth century, two states existed that have
probably attracted more historical attention than any others. These states, the
inland state based at Angkor in Cambodia and the maritime state of Srivijaya
with one of its capitals in southern Sumatra, are seen as typifying the two very
different kinds of states that can be identified in the early or classical period.
They were also, in contrast to a number of other examples, states that preserved
their existence over a long historical period. As such, an examination of their
history can suggest some of the reasons that led to the success and development
of kingdoms and empires in the early history of Southeast Asia, and finally some
of the factors that brought decay and collapse.

Angkor Wat
Of all the monuments that have survived from the classical period of Southeast Asia, those of the Angkor
complex in northern Cambodia are among the grandest. Built between the tenth and fourteenth centuries,
the temples are scattered over an area of some two hundred square miles. The most notable, and probably
the largest religious monument ever built, is Angkor Wat, shown here from its western approach. Built by
King Suryavarman II, it was completed in the remarkably short period of about forty years. Angkor Wat
measures 669 by 726 feet (202.9 metres by 220.2 metres) at its base, and the central tower rises to 220 feet
(66.7 metres). Photograph by Oliver Howes

Angkor rose to a dominating position in much of mainland Southeast Asia as

a result of a notable combination of human genius, religious belief and
geographical location. In order to survive and then to develop more than a bare
subsistence civilisation in Cambodia, it was and is necessary to master the
problem of water, or rather the lack of it. Despite the torrential rains of
Cambodia’s wet season, the land dries rapidly once the rains cease and nearly six
months of rainless weather follows. Settlement is possible along the banks of the
rivers, but the further one moves away from these sources of water the more
acute the problem becomes. On the basis of the evidence provided by early
inscriptions, the population of pre-Angkorian Cambodia coped with this
situation on a local basis; that is, there seem not to have been any major
irrigation works comparable to those that were built and elaborated in the
development of urban complexes in the Angkor region at the beginning of the
ninth century CE.
What happened from the ninth century onwards, as the Angkorian state grew
in power, has been an issue of considerable controversy which is still not fully
resolved. Nevertheless, in the light of intensive recent field research in the
Angkor region, using the most up-to-date technology, the balance of opinion has
shifted substantially towards a view that the vast hydraulic works that can still be
seen today—the moats and canals linked to the temples, and the great baray or
reservoirs—were part of a system that was both practical and symbolic in
character. Fed by water from the Kulen hills to the north of the main temple
complex, the moats surrounding individual temples served as symbolic
representations of the ‘seas’ of the Hindu universe. And, in addition, water fed
canals that were used for irrigation and for transport, and to fill the great
reservoirs from which water could be drawn for both domestic and agricultural
purposes. This sophisticated pattern of hydraulic engineering could also be
combined with the use of flood-retreat irrigation to exploit the rise and fall of the
waters of the nearby Great Lake. In this fashion the Angkorian population was
able to produce two, and at times three, rice crops each year.
Angkor’s agricultural base enabled it to maintain a population that built the
great temples that remain as a reminder of Khmer achievements in the past.
Angkorian Cambodia’s wealth was in its people and agricultural capacity.
Without the combination of these two assets there could not have been an
Angkor Wat, the most famous of the great temples and the largest single
religious building in the world. Wealth, it is true, came into the city in the form
of captured booty and prisoners of war who were put to work as slaves. But in
the broadest sense Angkorian Cambodia was not a state that depended on trade
for its existence. The temples built by Angkor’s rulers, and on occasion by their
great officials, enshrined the religious ideals of the state. The wealth needed to
build and maintain them and to feed and clothe the priestly communities
associated with them came not only from the productive rice fields close to the
temples, but also from villages located away from the city at the centre of
Angkorian power.
Apsara at Banteay Srei
One of the most beautiful of the temples at Angkor, and one of the smallest, is Banteay Srei, founded in
967. It was built by a priest, not by a king, and is renowned for the beauty of its sculpture and carving.
Shown here is an apsara, a heavenly being that enhanced the world of the Hindu gods worshipped by the
Cambodians of Angkorian times. Photograph by Oliver Howes

For anyone who is privileged to visit the Angkor region, the size of the
Cambodian achievement during the years between the ninth and fifteenth
centuries is vividly apparent. Temples great and small spread over many
hundreds of square kilometres. Scholars are still discovering new and important
facts about the society that could bring these magnificent buildings into being.
One of the latest discoveries to fascinate historians is the possibility that the
great temple of Angkor Wat was built in such a way as to aid astronomical
observations. The investigations that have led to this suggestion have shown that
the architects and builders who worked on the temple were able to achieve
building feats of a quite remarkable character. Accuracy in construction was so
great that variations from a theoretically exact line in the height or direction of
walls built over great distances was less than 0.1 per cent.
This evidence of such technological capacity underlines the existence during
Angkorian times of a highly developed society. Its achievements in aesthetic
terms matched its capacities in technology. The statues, the carvings in both high
and low relief, the architectural forms that were increasingly refined over the
centuries of the Angkorian empire’s existence, all give eloquent testimony to the
richness of Cambodian culture during the classical period of Southeast Asian
history. There is other evidence to emphasise the richness of the culture. Even
though his visit came at a time when the Khmers of Angkor were losing their
grip on the empire they had built up over four centuries, the Chinese envoy,
Zhou Daguan (Chou Ta-kuan), who saw Angkor in 1296, was convinced that the
city was the richest in Southeast Asia. Despite his Chinese reserve towards the
culture and customs of a non-Chinese society, Zhou Daguan was clearly
impressed by the wealth of the Angkorian ruler and by the dimensions of the city
in which he spent nearly a year.
Yet if Angkor could impress even a sceptical Chinese civil servant, its
economic foundations were highly fragile. Cambodian power had extended from
its base in Angkor to incorporate within its empire large sections of modern
Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. This was not a trading empire, though some
exchange of goods took place. The really important unifying feature for the
Angkorian empire was something quite different from commerce. It was the
acceptance by many lesser rulers and governors that the king at Angkor was
their supreme lord, their suzerain, to use a European term once again. When
some of these lesser rulers, in what is today Thailand, no longer accepted this
situation and chose to fight for their independence from the Angkorian ruler,
they shattered the political relationship. In addition they threatened and
eventually damaged the agricultural system upon which Angkor’s very existence
depended. But it was not only the growing power of the Thai states to the west
that led to the weakening of Angkor’s power. Other factors played their part,
including a period of adverse climate change and, just possibly, the spread of
malaria. Moreover, very recent research suggests that well before the last
century of Angkor’s greatness the city’s rulers were facing problems in
maintaining the complex system of canals and reservoirs so essential to the
state’s prosperity. The decision of the Cambodian King and his court to leave
Angkor some time in the fifteenth century was an event of the deepest
importance for mainland Southeast Asia, though quite unknown in Europe. A
great empire had come to an end and with its end other states began their rise to
greatness. The Thais were the people who brought Angkor down and their
history from that time onwards was marked by a slow but sure progress towards
the achievement of control over the territories that comprise modern Thailand,
although this process was not finally completed until the early twentieth century.
The state of Vietnam, which had gained independence from China in 939 CE,
did not contribute directly to Angkor’s fall. Nevertheless, in the longer-term
historical perspective we can see that the collapse of Cambodian power was vital
for Vietnam’s subsequent expansion into areas of modern southern Vietnam that
once had been part of the Angkorian empire. In the west of mainland Southeast
Asia, events in Cambodia had had little direct importance for the early Burmese
state. A great Burmese city had been built at Pagan between the eleventh and
thirteenth centuries, only to be sacked in 1287 by the invading Mongols who at
that time ruled China. While these events and efforts made by later Burmese
leaders to found a stable state had no direct links with the decline of Cambodia,
once again the end of Pagan forms part of a broader pattern in which, by the
fifteenth century, we can discern the emergence of a new pattern of states and
power in the mainland region.
To think in terms of a changing pattern rather than simply in terms of decline
and fall is much more rewarding. Angkor collapsed, finally, because its
economic structure could not be maintained. But Angkorian culture did not
disappear. The newly powerful Thais absorbed much from those who had once
been their rulers. Thai architecture, the written form of the Thai language,
concepts of administration, possibly even dance forms, owe much to Khmer
inspiration. Moreover, if Angkor and Pagan fell, new states arose and other
existing states increased their power so that an approach that concentrates on the
decline of the most successful of the states in the early or classical period is
historically one-sided.

So far, the concern of much of this chapter has been with the mainland and more
particularly with the Angkorian empire. As important in its own fashion but cast
in a very different mould was the sea-borne empire of Srivijaya. Just as Angkor
enshrined the achievements of a land-based, non-trading Southeast Asian state
during the classical period, so did Srivijaya represent the greatest achievement
among maritime trading powers during this early phase of the Southeast Asian
region’s history.
Srivijaya’s rise to power depended upon trade and upon China’s sponsorship.
Put in a rather simplified form, the international trade pattern that was of greatest
importance in the early period of Southeast Asian history was the east–west
trade between China and the region including India but stretching further west to
Persia and beyond. Precious Western goods, including forest products believed
to have medicinal qualities, were exchanged in China for silks and porcelain,
lacquers and other manufactured items. By the seventh century control of much
of this trade, at least of the trade passing backwards and forwards between the
Indonesian islands, was in the hands of Malays whose chief centre of power was
in southern Sumatra, on the eastern coast of that island.
How this came about is still uncertain, as, too, is the explanation as to how the
sailors who manned the ships that carried the trade goods to China came to
master the navigational difficulties of a long voyage with few intermediate
landfalls. Some aspects of these historical developments are fairly clear,
however, and these throw much light on the emergence of a state that was very
different in character to the land-based kingdoms of both the mainland and the
maritime Southeast Asian world. One of the most clearly important factors in
Srivijaya’s rise to power was its political relationship with China. In briefly
surveying this relationship the whole question of China’s role in Southeast Asia
is broached, so that some general observations are necessary.
Whether strong or weak, the successive rulers of China regarded their country
as the central world state—the ‘Middle Kingdom’ of popular usage. This did not
mean that away from China’s land borders its emperors thought in terms of the
existence of a Chinese empire, certainly not in any very normal use of that term.
The Chinese view of the relationship with Southeast Asia was both more subtle
and more complex, and for a maritime trading state such as Srivijaya vitally
important.
For China, over a long historical period, the area described today as Southeast
Asia was the Nanyang region, the region of the ‘southern seas’. Only Vietnam
was ever directly ruled by China and only during one dynasty, the foreign
Mongol or Yuan dynasty that ruled China from 1280 to 1368 CE, did Chinese
emperors seek to impose their will on Southeast Asian countries other than
Vietnam by force. The countries of the southern seas were, in Chinese eyes,
lacking in discipline and order, and sadly without the proper Confucian state
apparatus that permitted the Chinese state and Chinese culture to survive and
progress despite foreign threat and internal political upheaval.
Such a region, in the Chinese view, could only function in a satisfactory
fashion if the various Southeast Asian states were in a proper tributary
relationship with China. Here is yet another instance in which the limits of
vocabulary impede easy understanding. To be a tributary state of China did not
mean that an individual Southeast Asian kingdom was ruled by the Chinese as
part of some ill-defined Chinese empire. Rather, the tributary relationship was
one that involved a considerable degree of give and take. The fact of being a
tributary certainly involved agreement not to act contrary to Chinese interests,
but the relationship also implied that China would protect its tributary’s interests
against those who might challenge them. Most importantly for a trading state
such as Srivijaya, the recognition that went with being granted tributary status
was linked to the right to trade with China. Once China had granted this status to
Srivijaya, the maritime trading states that were its rivals were at a severe
disadvantage.
With Chinese recognition given to it, Srivijaya’s own capacities brought it to
the forefront of Southeast Asian maritime power. Much of what is written about
Srivijaya can only be supposition, but it is supposition based on evidence that
leaves little doubt as to how this maritime state developed. Strategically placed
on the Malacca Straits, Srivijaya came to exert control over all significant trade
on the seas in the western section of the Indonesian Archipelago, and between
that region of the Archipelago and southern China. Although it does seem
correct to think in terms of there having been a Srivijayan capital, this had at
least two different locations, and possibly more, over the long centuries of
Srivijaya’s existence. The capital, additionally, may have been only slightly
more important than the other port cities and trading settlements that went to
make up this trading empire. For any state or settlement that tried to challenge
the Srivijayan monopoly we may suppose that retribution by the various groups
of the empire, united in common purpose, was swift. But equally we may
suppose that whatever power existed at the centre of Srivijaya, its exercise was
tempered by a readiness to allow the component parts of the empire a very
considerable measure of political freedom, provided always that the basic
trading arrangements were not infringed.
Srivijaya, like Angkor, was adapted to its environment. For the Indonesian–
Malay state of Srivijaya the open frontier of the sea made up for the lack of a
readily cultivatable hinterland along the swampy southeastern coast of Sumatra
and what is today the western coast of peninsular Malaysia. The very sharpness
of the contrast between these two states of the classical period is what makes
them such good examples of the two broadly differing patterns of historical
development that were followed by Southeast Asian states as late as the
nineteenth century. It was only in the nineteenth century that major changes
came to most of the land-based and largely self-sufficient states of Southeast
Asia. As for the role played by Srivijaya as a maritime power between the
seventh and fourteenth centuries, this was to pass to others, to Malacca and
ultimately, it could be argued, to Singapore in the nineteenth century. But
whichever later state held the role of regional entrepôt and was the focus of trade
in the western maritime areas of Southeast Asia, Srivijaya was the first to show
how vital the control of the seas could be. Few of the Portuguese, Dutch or
British traders and strategists who fought and manoeuvred to gain ascendancy in
the Southeast Asian maritime world realised that they were the successors of
earlier maritime empires and none knew of the Srivijayan state, but in a very real
sense they were only the latest to follow a very old pattern.
Yet if Srivijaya was adapted to the environment that existed in its heyday, like
Angkor it too was unable to survive once that environment changed radically. A
vital change for Srivijaya was the development in the thirteenth century of a
Chinese maritime trade with Southeast Asia in which the Chinese themselves
now sailed in their own trading junks to sell and buy goods in the region. This
development upset the balance that Srivijaya had so long maintained, if
sometimes in the face of considerable challenge and difficulty. The expansion of
Chinese shipping activity was made more dangerous to Srivijaya’s interests by
the fact that it came at a time when other Indonesian powers were striving to
extend a local suzerainty beyond their immediate power centres. Most
dangerously for Srivijaya, the Javanese land-based states had come to cherish
imperial ambitions and saw Srivijaya’s weakened condition as an opportunity to
strike a deadly blow. Some time in the late fourteenth century, the dominant
kingdom in Java was able to eliminate the residual challenge of Srivijaya and to
bring to an end that state’s long history of maritime dominance.

A valid complaint about the kind of history that has just been sketched so
superficially in these limited accounts of Angkor and Srivijaya is that so little
place is accorded to ordinary people. We are dealing with courts and kings, with
great battles and developments in trade that are linked to regional or even global
considerations. The difficulty about this reasonable complaint is that there are
few ways to redress the balance. Even when we deal with kings in the classical
period of Southeast Asian history it is seldom that a real insight into a
personality is provided. There are partial exceptions. The seventh century Khmer
king who had his court scribes boast in an inscription that women felt it would
be worth rape by the enemy to enjoy the rewards of his smile might be seen as a
prototype of the believer in male dominance. Yet even here it is not clear
whether one is reading a routine compliment or something that was truly linked
to the individual King Isana-varman for whom the inscription was recorded. We
can also sense something of the proclaimed personal values of a later Cambodian
king, Jayavarman VII (late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries), in both his
inscriptions relating to the role he assigned the state and his inscriptions
mourning the death of a wife.
No rounded picture of a personality emerges for these rulers, however, any
more than it does for the various kings of Javanese kingdoms in the classical
period. The names of rulers such as King Airlangga (late tenth century) and
Kertanagara (late thirteenth century), or of great officials such as Gadjah Mada
(fourteenth century), are remembered more for the events associated with their
names than for any real sense of their personality. And if difficulty is attached to
knowing more of such men, there are even greater problems when it comes to
any attempt to discuss the peasantry, the artisans and the other groups that did
not hold power but yet were vital for the survival of the state.
This problem of history being concerned with rulers, court ritual and great
battles remains with students of Southeast Asian history into the twentieth
century. Only in rare instances are we able to see the life of the ‘ordinary man’
or ‘ordinary woman’. There are, for the classical period, some glimpses of that
life to be found in the carvings on the Bayon temple at Angkor that show scenes
from everyday life in the Cambodia of the twelfth century. While the scenes of
cockfights, of ploughing, of women in childbirth, and of gamblers may be
typical, the carvings tell us little of the details of life for those who lived at the
village level. In the case of Java the great epic poem, the Nagarakertagama,
dating from the fourteenth century, gives much interesting information about the
relationships that existed between the Javanese court of Singasari and the rural
villages. We gain, however, little real sense of the villagers themselves from the
account. Our sources limit our understanding so that we are forced back to the
broader issues, to the problems of Indianisation, to the rise and fall of great
kingdoms, and to a subject largely omitted in this chapter so far, the cultural and
political developments in the one Southeast Asian state that was ‘Sinicised’
rather than ‘Indianised’, the state of Vietnam.
Throughout our study of Southeast Asian history Vietnam will remain a state
apart, a very different component of the region. So extensive was Vietnamese
cultural and political borrowing from its former colonial master, China, that it is
sometimes difficult, certainly at first glance, to see the Southeast Asian elements
in Vietnamese history and society. Yet those elements were and are present, and
throughout Vietnamese history there has been a significant tension between the
claims of the non-Chinese elements in Vietnamese life and the claims of the
Chinese elements, which were associated particularly with the emperor, his
court, and his officials. The place accorded women in Vietnamese non-official
society, the distinctively non-Chinese language of Vietnam, despite its multiple
borrowings from China, and the Vietnamese peasants’ migratory urge, are only
some of the features of that country’s history that seem to link it with Southeast
Asia rather than China.
At the official level, however, there can be no denying the force of Chinese
ideas. China was a model for Vietnamese official life, an armoury from which
new weapons could be drawn to combat new problems and challenges as these
arose. So much was this the case that an argument could be developed for the
greater impact of China on Vietnam than, for example, the impact of India on
Cambodia. Like most other arguments over degree, particularly in relation to
Southeast Asian history, scholars adopt differing viewpoints on this matter. They
would be in general agreement, however, about the profound importance of
China and Chinese ideas for the development of the Vietnamese state.
Equally, moreover, general agreement would also emerge in any scholarly
discussion for the proposition that Vietnam, with its independence achieved in
939 CE, continued over the succeeding centuries to work to maintain that
independence, if necessary by fighting for it against China. Once again, an
understanding of Vietnam’s relationship with China has been confusing for some
observers since Vietnam was, most clearly, one of China’s tributary states. This
tributary status, despite the strong cultural links between the two countries, did
not mean that Vietnam was ready to accept political interference by China in its
internal affairs. Tributary status did mean that Vietnam could not readily act
outside its borders in a manner likely to offend its great northern neighbour and
suzerain.
If Vietnam was a very special Southeast Asian state, by comparison with
those other areas that experienced cultural importation from India, its rise to
power and emergence as one of the stronger states of the mainland by the end of
the classical period in the fifteenth century further emphasises the major changes
that were taking place throughout the region as a whole. For Vietnam’s rise to
power was at the expense of its southern neighbour, Champa. This Indianised
state had, on occasion, been able to challenge the mighty Angkorian empire. As
late as the twelfth century the Chams were able to sack a temporarily weakened
Angkorian state in a successful water-borne attack on the city after their great
war canoes had travelled up the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers. By the beginning
of the fourteenth century, in contrast, Champa’s former strength had greatly
decayed and the Vietnamese were already involved in a process of annexation
and long-term attrition that was to lead, eventually, to the obliteration of the
Cham kingdom.
The Ananda Pagoda at Pagan (Bagan)
The vast temple complex at Pagan, in central Burma, rivals the Angkor monuments in Cambodia for the
richness of its architecture and the extent of the territory covered by its buildings. The most impressive of
the temples at Pagan is that built by King Kyanzittha (1084–1113). The Ananda temple represents the high
point of Burmese art when, between 1094 and 1287, the Pagan empire was the dominant power in the west
of mainland Southeast Asia. From A Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava in 1866, compiled by
Henry Yule in 1856

Because so many important changes took place in the thirteenth, fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, historians have asked whether there might be an identifiable
event or series of events that would provide an explanation for the downfall of
the great states of classical times and the emergence of the states that were to
play more prominent roles in the later history of the region. Notable among the
suggestions of such an essential event or series of events is that of the role
played by the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty in China. By bringing about the
downfall of Pagan in Burma, by interfering in developments in the Indonesian
Archipelago, and in Vietnam, Champa and Cambodia, the Mongols, the
suggestion runs, created a turbulent situation favourable to change. Other
commentators give a different emphasis, pointing to the changes a little later that
resulted from the arrival of Theravada Buddhism in the mainland of Southeast
Asia and of Islam in the maritime regions.
There seems every reason to give some weight to all of these suggestions, so
long as no single cause is seen as having been sufficient by itself to alter the
political map of Southeast Asia from the late thirteenth century onwards. The
importance of the Mongol destruction of the state based at Pagan cannot be
overstated. But the role of the Mongols in bringing change to Angkor is much
less clear. Islam was to have great significance as a unifying factor among the
coastal populations of the Indonesian islands. The extent to which its arrival in
northern Java and northern Sumatra had any quick, political effect in speeding
the decay of the older pattern of state relationships in the archipelago is more
difficult to determine.
Briefly, it is easier to argue that a series of important changes took place and
to note that these political changes often ran parallel, or nearly so, with
developments in the fields of culture and religion than to argue for general
political change as the result of a single major factor in the history of the
Southeast Asian region. The case of Cambodia is instructive in this respect.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century there have been a number of
attempts to account for the decline of this mighty state in terms of a single, major
cause. Some of the earliest of these explanations placed the greatest importance
on the arrival of Theravada Buddhism, a more ‘democratic’ religion, it was
argued, than Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism. Later arguments suggested
that a possible reason for the decline of the Angkorian state might have been the
spread of malaria as Thai invasions of the Angkor region damaged the system of
reservoirs and canals in and around the city and so provided stagnant ponds in
which mosquitoes could breed. Nowadays such single-cause explanations are
treated with reserve, and scholars are, as has already been noted in this chapter,
inclined to accept that a range of factors were involved. The acceptance of
Theravada Buddhism by Cambodian rulers might well have been an attempt to
shore up the power of the state rather than an effort to make religion more
‘democratic’. The invasions by the Thais undoubtedly were of very great
importance, playing a part in the deterioration of the city’s complex system of
canals and reservoirs. Possibly, too, climate variation had an effect on crop
yields, while malaria may have been an additional factor in undermining
Angkorian power, though evidence for this is very limited.
Major changes took place in Southeast Asia over a period of more than two
centuries as old states were no longer capable of adapting to changed
circumstances and as new states proved more attuned to the changed world. To
search for causes other than in the broadest range of factors that govern the
capacity of individuals and kingdoms to survive or to fail is to court
disappointment. Moreover, to place the major historical emphasis on the fall of
the old states and the disappearance of certain cultural characteristic, such as the
use of Sanskrit, is to minimise the extent to which old values lived on in the new
states that were the successors to the powerful kingdoms and empires of the
classical period.
In short, the Southeast Asian world that emerged following the end of the
classical period owed a very great historical debt to earlier times. Students of
modern Southeast Asia may not always be aware of the more complex details of
that debt, but they cannot disregard its importance or remain ignorant of the
broad lines of development without severely limiting their understanding of
more recent issues, of the underlying cultural factors that influence historical
developments, and of the basically important fact that Southeast Asia possesses a
past no less full of interest and deserving of attention than other areas of the
world.
THREE
COURTS, KINGS AND PEASANTS: SOUTHEAST ASIA BEFORE
THE EUROPEAN IMPACT

Looking back over the long span of history there is a great temptation to search
out ‘watersheds’, sharp breaks with the past, periods that can be described as the
beginning or end of an era. Such an approach is both understandable and on
occasion justifiable. The danger, however, is that such an approach carries with
it a very great risk of distortion. Because formerly great empires were
overthrown or collapsed in both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia we
should not think of those empires as having been completely forgotten by the
descendants of the men and women who had once lived at Pagan in Burma, at
Angkor in Cambodia, or near the great monuments of central Java such as the
Borobodur. Nor should we assume that the kings who ruled over the states of
Southeast Asia that emerged in the centuries following the end of the ‘classical’
period saw themselves as less important, less royal, or even less powerful than
their predecessors. To put the matter briefly, the bulk of the states making up
Southeast Asia in the eighteenth century were not only still essentially traditional
in character, they were, just as importantly, states in which the rulers reigned
with a clear conviction of the permanence, if not the stability, of the traditional
world. Indeed, some scholars would now argue that the eighteenth century was a
period of increasing confidence for many of the states of Southeast Asia. Quite
certainly, most of the kings and officials of eighteenth-century Southeast Asia
had no sense of their position being threatened by men from Europe.
This final fact explains why so much attention is given to the eighteenth
century in any general survey of Southeast Asia’s history. Although change
when it did come in the nineteenth century as the result of a growing European
role in the politics of Southeast Asia was often much slower and less dramatic
than some commentators once suggested, the search for ‘watersheds’ does
appear partly justified in relation to the eighteenth century. This century
witnessed a significant historical shift from a situation in which most Southeast
Asian states maintained a traditional existence, essentially untouched by the
influence of Europe, to a new situation in which, at the political level at least,
Europeans began to exert an increasing influence over developments in the
region. The eighteenth century was, therefore, the last century in which the
traditional world of Southeast Asia was dominant, if not universal.
The difficulties associated with the use of metaphors such as ‘watershed’ are
immediately apparent, however, when one looks ahead from the eighteenth
century to the changes of the nineteenth century that have just been mentioned.
The question is then raised as to whether or not there were a whole series of
‘watersheds’ as colonial powers became more and more important in the
Southeast Asian region: an ‘eighteenth-century watershed’, a ‘nineteenth-century
political watershed’, and a ‘late nineteenth-to early twentieth-century economic
watershed’. Clearly the excessive use of any metaphor robs it of its force and
suggestion. Possibly the most helpful way to think of the ‘watershed’ metaphor
is in terms of a series of linked developments in which over a period of perhaps
two centuries Southeast Asia was transformed economically, politically and
socially. Viewed from this perspective, the period of the eighteenth century is
part of the ‘watershed’ that was represented by the combined political and
economic changes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and ended
with the Second World War.
A political map of eighteenth-century Southeast Asia on which the
cartographer tried to indicate the boundaries of the various states by use of
different colours would appear as an extraordinary mosaic. It is a difficult task
even to count how many colours there would have to be on this map. Instead of
the ten states that make up twenty-first-century Southeast Asia—or eleven if we
now include East Timor—a cartographer attempting this task for the eighteenth
century could not think in terms of less than forty states—kingdoms,
principalities and sultanates—that required delineation. Many of these states
were of minor importance. Both on the mainland of Southeast Asia and in the
maritime world one would have to find some way of distinguishing between the
states of real importance and those which existed at the pleasure of their
suzerains or overlords. But however the calculations are made the political map
of eighteenth-century Southeast Asia is notably more complex than a political
map of the contemporary region. Moreover, the political map of eighteenth-
century Southeast Asia, in contrast to a map of the succeeding century, would
have one very distinctive feature. The areas showing a colonial presence would
be very small indeed. Apart from the northern Philippine Islands and much of
Java, the European presence in eighteenth-century Southeast Asia was extremely
limited, a few trading posts dotted along the coastlines of the various regions.

The Borobodur
The Borobodur monument in Central Java was constructed at the end of the eighth-beginning of the ninth
century AD. Construction in the form of a huge Buddhist stupa, a conical or domed building, it is richly
decorated with low relief carving showing scenes from religious texts (top). Its summit is crown by a series
of smaller stupas, which sheltered statues of the Buddha, and from which pilgrims could look at distant
sacred volcanic mountains, such as Mount Merapi (bottom).
Photographs courtesy of M.C. Ricklefs

What sort of states existed in this still essentially traditional Southeast Asian
world? The most distinctive was the Vietnamese state. Throughout most of the
eighteenth century Vietnam was politically divided with one great family, the
Trinh, dominating northern Vietnam while another family, the Nguyen,
dominated the southern areas. Despite this division, and indeed despite the
dramatic developments of the last three decades of the century when a major
uprising brought temporary unification under rulers who challenged and
overcame the power of the great families, the ideal of a politically undivided
Vietnamese state survived. This ideal state was thought of as one in which
Confucian values were dominant and an administrative system modelled on that
used in China prevailed. Yet attachment to Confucian values and a bureaucracy
that took China as its example did not mean the Vietnamese were simply a
provincial variant on a metropolitan Chinese theme. The rulers of Vietnam, or
portions of it when the country was divided politically, copied much but not all
from China. Most clearly they did not accept any suggestion that China had a
right to interfere in Vietnam’s internal affairs, even if it claimed the right to
demand Vietnam’s allegiance as a tributary state.
As a result of the partial Chinese overlay on Vietnam’s court and its officials,
the state stood apart from its Southeast Asian neighbours in terms of the
precision and formality that attached to the government structure. In theory, and
to a considerable extent in practice also, the Vietnamese bureaucracy was open
to all who could meet the tests of scholarship. In the Buddhist kingdoms of
Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and in the lowland principalities of
modern Laos) officialdom was, in contrast, a quasihereditary affair. Being the
son of an official was the vital fact that determined subsequent entry into the
ranks of the ruler’s administration. In Vietnam merit was taken as the guiding
principle, even if it often proved the case that the sons of officials had more
opportunity to succeed in their learning and so to enter the official ranks.
Vietnamese officials advised a ruler who was spoken of as the ‘Son of
Heaven’ and who was thought to mediate between the physical world and the
spiritual world by the correct observance of state and religious ceremonies. Just
as the performance of these ceremonies followed a minutely drawn-up set of
procedures, so was the rest of Vietnamese official life conceived of as following
prescribed patterns. The bureaucracy was a pyramid with the ruler at the apex
and with clearly defined links established between the apex and the lowest
officials in the provinces who formed the base of this administration. The law
was a written code, detailed in form and complete with learned commentaries.
Strict rules covered the amount of authority possessed by each grade of official
and the qualifications for each grade. And in another contrast with their
neighbours, the Vietnamese believed in the necessity of clearly defined borders.
In this, as in so many other ways, Vietnam differed from the other major
mainland states of Southeast Asia, for which, in a way that has been discussed in
an earlier chapter, the important external cultural influence came from India
rather than China. For all of its pervasive importance, however, Indian cultural
influence in Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and in the riverine states of Laos was a
less clear-cut and obvious affair. Vietnamese officials dressed in the same
fashion as Chinese mandarins. With the exception of some court priests such
direct borrowing was not a characteristic of the Buddhist courts of mainland
Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, again, official architecture drew directly from
China, whereas in the Buddhist states the Indian influence was a more subtle
matter, and by the eighteenth century only rarely directly recognisable as a case
of cultural borrowing.
The organisation of the Buddhist states contrasted sharply with that found in
Vietnam. The pattern of official relationships was in many ways much more
complex, in part because it lacked the clearly defined lines of authority that were
so much part of the Vietnamese system. Where the Vietnamese system sought to
control the state in great detail down to the level of the village, the central power
in the Buddhist kingdoms followed a very different practice. Control over the
more distant regions of the kingdom was readily delegated to provincial
governors who were able to exercise almost completely unfettered power,
always providing that they did not challenge the king’s position as the ultimate
arbiter of affairs within the state. If the pyramid is a useful symbol to depict the
disposition of power within Vietnam, a series of concentric circles might be
taken to represent the nature of power in the Buddhist kingdoms. The state might
be considered as the area contained by the largest of these concentric circles, but
it was only at the centre, where the smallest of these concentric circles is located,
that the king’s power was truly absolute. Beyond the central circle—or beyond
the limits of the palace, to take the real-life example instead of the graphic
concept—it was frequently the case that the king’s power diminished in clear
proportion to the distance one moved away from the capital. As for borders, the
Buddhist rulers in mainland Southeast Asia, again in contrast to Vietnam,
accepted that these were uncertain and porous. Indeed, given the lack of close
links between the centre of Buddhist kingdoms and the outer regions, as well as
the existence of numerous petty centres of power largely independent of their
greater neighbours, some writers have argued that to talk of ‘states’ in the
traditional Southeast Asian world is inappropriate. Certainly the states of
traditional Southeast Asia, for we will continue to use the term for convenience,
were very different from the political units we describe as states in the twenty-
first century.
The officials who held power, whether at the centre of the state in the king’s
palace or in the outer regions, were not men who gained their appointments
through scholarship. Birth into a quasihereditary family, ability and an
opportunity to gain the ruler’s notice all played their part in determining
advancement. It would be quite wrong to suggest that the rulers of the Buddhist
kingdoms did not have clear ideas on what constituted a good official, for the
record is clear that they did. But the standards were much more flexible and
much more personal that those that applied in Vietnam. In the same fashion, the
conduct of business within the state was less set in a formal pattern, more subject
to the personal likes and dislikes of the kings, at the highest level, or the officials
great and small in the provinces away from the capital.
To write in these terms is to discuss the ideal, or at least the general, rather
than to dwell on individual departures from the norm. Notably powerful
Southeast Asian rulers of Buddhist states did attempt to impose their control
over the kingdom as a whole, just as there were periods in Vietnamese history
when the clearly structured organisation of the state was unable to operate and
the central power could not control ambitious governors in the regions more
distant from the capital. But in the general terms that must be used in any broad
historical survey there is no need to hesitate in underlining the great differences
that existed between the government of Thailand, to take the example of one
Buddhist kingdom, and Vietnam.
The king in Thailand was, like his counterpart the emperor in Vietnam,
expected to intercede between the world of men and the spiritual world. But the
nature of this intercession and the role assigned to the monarch involved in the
act were very different. In Thailand, and in the other mainland Buddhist states,
the king’s semi-divine status reflected the fact that the monarch and the throne
he occupied were the centre of the kingdom. Monarchy was the linchpin that
held the Buddhist kingdoms together. Despite his title as the ‘Son of Heaven’ the
Vietnamese emperor had no equivalent status. The Vietnamese emperors were
essential to the existence of the state, but they were not the state. The point may
be made clearer when it is noted that the Vietnamese were able to accept a
situation in which for more than a hundred years during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries their emperor was no more than a figurehead, a puppet at
the beck and call of one of the great families. However limited a king’s power
was away from the capital in which he had his palace, and however much senior
officials might have tried to take advantage of a child succeeding to the throne,
the idea of a state existing more as a reflection of its officials than of its ruler
was not part of the system to be found in the Buddhist kingdoms.
Common to all the Buddhist rulers of mainland Southeast Asia was a belief—
held both by themselves and their subjects—in their semi-divine or near-divine
character. The concept of a king possessing magical, divine-like characteristics
is a difficult one to grasp from a Western viewpoint, and the more deeply one
examines the matter the more complex the issue becomes. For a person seeking
to understand Southeast Asia in general terms the following broad points deserve
attention. The quasi-divine, magical role played by traditional Buddhist rulers in
the states of mainland Southeast Asia involved something more than the concept
of ‘divine right’ associated with Christian rulers in Europe. Such European rulers
held an office sanctioned by the Christian divinity. But no matter how elevated
the status of these kings and queens, they were not semi-divine or nearly god-
like themselves. The Buddhist kings of mainland Southeast Asia, on the other
hand, were seen as divine, or partially so. Their position as king was not only
sanctioned by the Buddhist faith, and continuing Hindu religious beliefs, they
were in themselves removed from the rest of mankind and credited with
possessing powers that only the divine or near-divine could hold.

A schematic representation of the disposition of power in traditional Vietnamese society. Those occupying
positions as officials below the level of Prefects and Sub-Prefects were not members of Vietnam’s
mandarinate.

A schematic representation of the disposition of power in the traditional Buddhist states of mainland
Southeast Asia. The more distant a region from the kingdom’s capital, the less likely it was that the ruler
exercised significant power there. Beyond the outer provinces, the border regions were porous, with
uncertain boundaries.

Once again, this is the ideal picture. If the ideal had prevailed without any
qualification there would never have been any family feuds, coups d’état, or any
of the other turbulent events that saw kings toppled from their thrones and
ambitious men plotting, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to usurp the
monarch of the day. But if the reality was more complicated than the ideal, the
ideal was nonetheless maintained. Challengers who succeeded in removing a
ruler from the throne immediately tried to claim all the semi-divine powers of
their defeated opponent. What is more, with rare exceptions, those who fought or
schemed to overthrow a ruling king did so in terms of their own claim to have a
more legitimate right to the throne than the actual monarch. The importance of
this traditional historical background for more modern periods in Southeast Asia
may already be apparent. Given the immensely elevated status of traditional
Buddhist rulers, there should be no surprise in the fact that a ruler such as the
Thai monarch has continued to be a fundamentally important figure in the
modern history of Thailand. Traditional ideas of kingship also help to explain
why Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia was for many years able to reap immense
political advantage from the fact that he had been Cambodia’s king before
abdicating his throne in 1955.
Royal figures have also been important in the recent history of the maritime
regions of Southeast Asia. If their importance has not been so striking as has
been the case for the mainland, the explanation owes something to tradition as
well as to the fact that Thailand’s monarchy ruled over a country that was never
colonised, while Sihanouk and his ancestors reigned in a colonial system that
allowed at least some of the symbolic importance of the king of Cambodia to be
maintained. Unlike the mainland, Buddhist monarchies—again excluding
Vietnam as a special case—the majority of the rulers of the states in the
maritime world were followers of Islam, sultans who acted in the name of their
religion as well as their state. As followers of Islam the sultans could not, in
strict theory, be other than men with the limitations that such a status involves.
Strict theory was yet again qualified, and most particularly in those regions of
maritime Southeast Asia that had sustained substantial influence from Indian
ideas—in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia.
Buddha at Sukhothai
Buddhism was the dominant religion of the Thai states that challenged the power of Angkor in mainland
Southeast Asia in the thirteenth century and defeated the Cambodians of Angkor in the fifteenth. One of the
earliest of the Thai kingdoms was Sukhothai, its capital some two hundred and ninety miles (four hundred
and sixty kilometres) north of modern Bangkok. The ruins of Sukhothai are dotted with great monumental
Buddhas, such as that photographed here, which are still objects of worship.

Nowhere was this more true than in Java where the rulers of the central
Javanese kingdom of Mataram, which rose to power at the end of the sixteenth
century, were followers of Islam but just as importantly, perhaps even more
importantly, inheritors of a rich mystical tradition drawing upon Hindu–Buddhist
ideas as well as indigenous Javanese religious beliefs and cultural patterns. The
rulers of Mataram were more than men in the eyes of their subjects, in a way that
many of the sultans of the coastal and riverine states of maritime Southeast Asia
were not. These latter rulers were men with special rights and almost limitless
privilege, but they were men all the same. The ruler of Mataram ensconced in his
kraton, or palace, gave formal acknowledgment to Islam but his kingship is more
readily understood as having parallels with the Buddhist monarchs of the
mainland than in terms of the patterns to be found in many of the other
traditional courts of the islands.

Whatever the religious or philosophical underpinnings to their exercise of

power, the rulers of Southeast Asia in the traditional world of the eighteenth
century and the officials who served them were a group apart from the rest of the
population. In Vietnam merit could enable a peasant child to move into the
official ruling group. Once this change took place the youth or man of the people
took on a new role. Even more marked was the division between ruling group
and ruled in the rest of the region. Apart from the rarest exceptions, the division
between the elite and the rest of the population was almost complete, a profound
gap that could only be bridged in extraordinary times or by an extraordinary
man.
When using such terms as ‘division’ or ‘gap’, however, it is essential to make
clear what sort of separation between elite and non-elite is being discussed. The
division involved was not one that separated kings or sultans from the peasantry
in religious terms, for instance. On the contrary, the peasants quite clearly felt a
religious link between themselves, their rulers, and the complex religious beliefs
they held. This fact is bound up in such basic sayings as ‘to be a Burmese is to
be a Buddhist’. In terms of traditional Burma one could add ‘and to know that
the chief patron of Buddhism in Burma is the king’. The essential feature of the
division was that of power. In traditional Southeast Asia power was concentrated
in the hands of the elite few. No middle group or class existed to moderate the
stark division between rulers and ruled. Whether power was exercised wisely or
not it was in the hands of the few.
Such a situation should not be taken to mean that there were no differences
among those who made up the ruled portion of the population in traditional
Southeast Asia, for such was not the case. Most importantly, in all the countries
of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, there was a marked difference between
the members of peasant society who acted as ‘headmen’ or village leaders and
those who had no role in the determination of policies within a village
community. Because the term ‘peasant society’ is used as a general description
there is an easy tendency to think of all peasants being more or less the same: all
poor, all farmers, and all with little role to perform in life except to tend their
fields and obey higher authority. Such a general picture is unsatisfactory. No
peasants in the traditional Southeast Asian world were truly rich, by whatever
standards one may apply. But some were a great deal better off than others.
These men and their families had gained power and influence in their village
communities and once having achieved it seldom let it go. They were the
community leaders who acted as headmen and so as go-betweens linking the
village with higher provincial authority. Although their material condition may
often have been better than that of their fellow villagers their duties as the final
link in the chain between the court and the village settlement could often be
unenviable as they supervised tax collection, arranged labour contributions, or
ensured that men went to war on their distant ruler’s behalf.

Batavia in the eighteenth century

A view of the Dutch colonial city of Batavia, on the northern coast of Java, in the early eighteenth century.
Batavia, modern Jakarta, was well-placed to dominate sea traffic with the spice islands of eastern Indonesia,
and it was the trade in spices that originally brought the Dutch to Indonesia. Built on lowlying ground,
Batavia was a death trap for many of its European inhabitants, who succumbed to malaria or the
consequences of appallingly inadequate sanitation. Photograph from National Library of Australia

The application of power by these village leaders differed from country to

country, and even from district to district. Given the emphasis that has already
been placed on Vietnam’s very distinct character, it will not be surprising to
learn that village society in that country was dominated and directed by members
of a very particular leadership system. Whereas power and executive
responsibility generally went hand in hand in the rest of Southeast Asia—a
headman held power and exercised it—the situation was different in the complex
society of a Vietnamese village. There the more prosperous peasants were a self-
perpetuating group, as elsewhere. The difference lay in the fact that the
Vietnamese village leaders worked through a group of village officials who had
responsibility for the government of the village but were themselves responsible
to other more powerful villagers.

So far the survey of Southeast Asian society undertaken in this chapter has dealt
with the traditional world that was largely untouched by European power or
ideas until the end of the eighteenth century. Yet even before the eighteenth
century began, and slowly through that century, men from Europe were
beginning to become involved in the affairs of the region and in one notable
instance, in the Philippines, to have an important impact on society at large. The
Portuguese, the Spaniards and the Dutch were the earliest of those from Europe
who came to the Southeast Asian region and played a role in its history that
remains a matter for continuing debate and reassessment. In the sixteenth
century it appeared that the Portuguese as the first upon the scene would
establish a dominant role in the region and gain the major share in the rich trade
in spices—the commodity that had drawn Europeans to Southeast Asia in the
first place. But Portugal’s early successes, including in 1511 the capture of
Malacca, the great trading city on the western coast of the Malayan Peninsula,
were followed by relatively quick decline as the Dutch became the most
important European nation trading in the Malay–Indonesia world. But how
important? For the merchants of the ports in the Netherlands, the Dutch who
lived, and usually after a very short time died, in Indonesia were important
indeed as they developed a commercial system that for a period brought great
profit to the Dutch state. But the impact of the Dutch outside their base in Java,
and their outposts scattered through the islands, was minimal until the middle or
even the end of the eighteenth century. Indeed, for some regions of Indonesia the
impact did not come until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In
terms of society and its patterns of behaviour, an interesting case has been
developed to suggest that Dutch men and women in Batavia (Jakarta) were as
much, or more, affected by Indonesian values than the reverse. The interest of
such a discussion must not hide the vital fact, however, that the Dutch were still
of minor importance to the bulk of the Indonesian population until the middle of
the eighteenth century. A similar statement cannot be made in relation to the
Spaniards in the Philippines, however.
The Philippines comes into historical focus remarkably late by comparison
with other parts of Southeast Asia. We know that trading junks from China and
Japan visited the Philippines for centuries before the Spanish established
themselves in the northern islands of the archipelago during the latter part of the
sixteenth century. The records of these voyages tell us frustratingly little about
the nature of society in the Philippines and as a result our knowledge of life in
the Philippines before the Spanish arrived depends largely on the information
provided by men who wrote after the colonial presence had become an
established fact.
In the broadest terms, the Spanish came to an area of Southeast Asia in which
authority was for the most part exercised over small communities without any
central direction. The exceptions to this general rule were mostly found in the
southern islands of the Philippines where the adoption of Islam by traditional
leaders had helped them to organise small states using the unifying force of
religion to incorporate a number of scattered communities into a single political
unit. By the middle of the sixteenth century Islam was slowly gaining ground in
the more northerly islands and had reached as far as Manila. But this was a
coastal phenomenon. The inland areas remained untouched by the new religion
so that the Spaniards encountered a society in which a large village was the
essential unit. Authority, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, rested in the hands of a
headman who was, through birth and inheritance, or through ability, more
prosperous and powerful than his fellow villagers.
The absence of central power in the northern Philippine islands, for the
southern islands were never to experience significant Spanish rule away from a
few port centres, enabled the Spanish colonial power to implant itself in a way
unmatched anywhere else in the region. Unlike anywhere else in Southeast Asia,
moreover, the principal agents for the Spanish advance were not soldiers and
traders but missionary priests. This state of affairs was unique in the history of
Southeast Asia, even though missionary priests played important roles
elsewhere. In the Philippines, however, the link between the church and the state
was of a different order from that existing during French rule over Vietnam. The
church and the state were inseparable in the Philippines, as they were in other
parts of the world that fell under Spanish colonial control. This distinctive
feature has led some scholars to argue, to an extent convincingly, that in order to
understand Philippine history and society from the seventeenth century onwards
it is necessary to study the Spanish experience in Latin America.
Village house in Sumatra
An engraving of a village house in Sumatra. The drawing from which this engraving was made was
executed in 1792. Despite the slow increase in European contacts with Southeast Asia by the closing years
of the eighteenth century, peasants, such as those seen in this picture, continued to live a life largely
circumscribed by the limits of their village and its nearby regions. From The History of Sumatra, by
William Marsden, published in 1811, from National Library of Australia

Whether or not one seeks enlightenment from the comparison of the

Philippine experience with that of the various countries of Latin America, the
impact of Spanish values, particularly Spanish Christian values, on the peasant
society of the Philippines was profound. The Philippines became the one country
in the Southeast Asian region in which Christianity became more than a minority
religion. The presence of Christian missionaries did not, of course, bring
immediate change to social patterns in the countryside. Slowly, however, with
the combined force of the church and state lending authority to developments,
the Spanish colonial impact affected the life of the peasantry, giving new and
greater power to the traditional local leaders, yet insisting that power beyond the
village or district level could not pass out of the hands of Spaniards. The
ultimate irony of this situation is well known to Filipinos but all too often
unknown by others. By the early years of the nineteenth century, two hundred
years of Spanish rule had brought into being a growing group of native Filipinos
whose education fitted them to assume roles in the state and the church that were
denied them because they were not Spanish. The resentments this situation
caused became the seeds of the Philippine revolutionary movement in the late
nineteenth century. Yet there was a further irony again. If the Spanish impact,
coming so much earlier and so much more profoundly in the Philippines than
elsewhere in Southeast Asia, created a class that resented Spanish political
control, it also laid the foundations for a rural economic situation in which
centuries of colonial control developed, strengthened, and gave legitimacy to the
high degree of social stratification that remains a feature of Philippine life to the
present day.

Extended discussion of the Philippines makes the point that the country’s
experience was in many ways very different from the rest of Southeast Asia—
more different, in some important senses, than those features that always remind
us of Vietnam’s special character. Nevertheless, for the Philippines as well as the
rest of Southeast Asia, there was a general pattern to peasant life that allows us
once more to enter the risky world of simplification and summary. Throughout
Southeast Asia the basic pattern of peasant life was one in which men and
women assured their right to farmland by the act of farming. For most of
Southeast Asia the Western concept of land ownership did not apply—but
Vietnam once again differed from most of its neighbours in the existence of
clearly defined private land ownership. A family might work one area of land for
many generations but the fields remained the ‘property’ of the ruler. Such a
situation was not as full of difficulties as might be thought at first glance. And as
long as the population of the various countries remained small there was little
pressure on land. If circumstances conspired to make life in one agricultural area
difficult through war, famine or the excessive demands of an overlord, then a
family or a village could move on to find an alternative region in which to work.
They could even move from one country to another. As late as the end of the
nineteenth century French officials in Cambodia were amazed to find that
peasants moved in both directions across the border between Cambodia and
Thailand—a fact that needs to be remembered whenever emphasis is placed on
the sense of national identity among a peasant population.
Life as a peasant was seldom easy and at times shockingly harsh. The risk of
famine in countries that depended on monsoons to provide the water for
irrigating wet-rice cultivation was always in the background. In all but the
poorest regions there were occasions for village festivals with their
accompanying gaiety, but these were the exceptions to a way of life that was
plagued by disease as well as involving demanding physical labour.
Although the peasant farmers or cultivators were the most important Southeast
Asian group outside of the elite ranks, there were other groups which also
deserve attention. In villages of the larger kind and in the minor trading or
administrative centres away from the great capitals there were artisans and
merchants. Along the coasts of both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia and
on the rivers and lakes there were fishermen whose occupation set them apart
from the cultivators but who otherwise shared the same values and suffered
comparable hardships of life.
The world of the peasant, whether cultivator or fisherman, of the artisan and
the small trader was essentially a closed one. No truly autonomous villages
existed but the links with the larger world were weak. The more prosperous
villager might know a little of the world beyond his village’s rice fields, as the
fisherman of necessity knew of a world beyond the beach where he landed his
catch and pulled his boat out of the water. But the world beyond the village was
imperfectly perceived and the likelihood that anyone born into a village would
leave it except during war or to live in another village was slim indeed. This fact
explains a common theme to be found in the folk tales of many of the countries
of the Southeast Asian region. The theme involves the remarkable
transformation of a village youth into a great official or even a king through wit,
good fortune, or magic—sometimes all three together.
Such a theme gives sharp emphasis to the basic reality of peasant life, the
unchanging nature of existence. Life was not necessarily static. Villagers moved
in the face of famine or to avoid war. Itinerant traders travelled with their
caravans right across the face of mainland Southeast Asia, reaching from lower
Burma into the highland regions of modern Vietnam. Indonesian traders from
Sumatra, the northern ports of Java, and Sulawesi criss-crossed the seas of the
archipelago in their trading voyages. But having ventured abroad they returned
to a world that altered little in its essentials from year to year and decade to
decade.
Yet change of momentous proportions was not far distant for Southeast Asia
as a whole as the eighteenth century drew to a close. Many of the changes that
came were the result of the Western impact on the region. During the nineteenth
century Thailand alone escaped the experience of colonial rule, and even in
Thailand’s case the West impinged on the country in a fashion far greater than
ever before. But other changes had little if any connection with the advance of
the colonial powers. The last three decades of the eighteenth century in Vietnam
were marked by political upheaval and by a challenge to established social and
economic patterns—just how truly revolutionary the Tay-Son rebellion (1771–
1802) was in social terms is yet another unresolved historical controversy. The
advent of a new dynasty on the Thai throne, the Chakri dynasty, from 1782
onwards, brought to power a remarkable series of kings whose personal energy
and ability transformed the state. They did this as much through reinvigorating
Thai forms of government as through later selective borrowing from the West.
Changes brought by growing Western influence and changes inspired by
outstanding individuals within the ruling groups of the various Southeast Asian
states were later to affect the population as a whole. Initially, however, the fact
and prospect of change had its greatest effect on the elite. Here, once more,
emphasis is given to the division between the rulers and the ruled. It was the
ruling class in Thailand who first were aware of the genius that inspired the first
Chakri ruler, Rama I, in his profusion of decrees that codified the reorganised
life at the court and in his own presentation of the Ramayana legend. It was the
central Javanese elite who welcomed the sudden burgeoning of literature from
the middle of the eighteenth century. So too the Vietnamese elite were the first
to respond to the remarkable epic poem, the Kim Van Kieu, that the author
Nguyen Du wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century and which has
never been superseded as the finest Vietnamese literary examination of the
moral dilemmas of human existence.
For the peasants the world went on as before, dominated by the cycle of crop
planting and harvest, the seasons of the year, and the awesome events of birth
and death. Visualising their physical world in the eighteenth century is difficult
in the extreme as even the remotest villages of twenty-first century Southeast
Asia have been touched and transformed by the modern world. Entering the
spiritual world of the peasant during the eighteenth century is even more difficult
an exercise. We may sense something of the complexity of this spiritual world,
the blend of animistic beliefs with one or other of the great religions or
philosophies— Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism—that
were followed in the states of Southeast Asia. But even the most sympathetic
student can only penetrate a certain distance into the religious world of another
culture in another age.
Yet for all the emphasis that has been given in this chapter to the separateness
of existence between ruler and ruled in the traditional Southeast Asian world it
would be wrong not to end with an insistence upon the totality of the world
within which these two groups lived. For this too was a feature of the traditional
world that was soon to come under challenge as new forces and new ideas
penetrated the region. The courts and kings were separate from the cultivators,
fishermen, and petty traders over whom they ruled. But all these groups
inhabited a single, unified world. Just as the serf and the feudal lord of medieval
Europe both, in very different ways, sensed themselves to be part of
Christendom, so the cultivators or fishermen sensed themselves as being within
the same world as their ruler, whether an Islamic sultan, a Buddhist king, a
Vietnamese Confucian emperor, or a Catholic Spanish governor. To a
considerable extent, the history of Southeast Asia from the beginning of the
nineteenth century is a history of the changes brought to this assumption of a
settled, single world.
FOUR
MINORITIES AND SLAVES: THE OUTSIDERS IN
TRADITIONAL SOUTHEAST ASIA

The ‘single world’ of the ruled and the rulers described in the previous chapter
was a world for those who belonged to the dominant society, whether in a lowly
or an exalted fashion. Not everyone who inhabited traditional Southeast Asia,
however, did belong, in the sense of being a member of the dominant ethnic
group within a state. A relatively small number of the outsiders in the various
states that made up traditional Southeast Asia were immigrants or the
descendants of immigrants from distant regions, Indians, Persians, Chinese and
Arabs. The minorities of this sort were not really important, outside of a few port
cities, until late in the nineteenth century. For the mainland of Southeast Asia,
and to a much lesser extent in the maritime regions, the true outsiders in the
traditional world were the people living in the hills and mountains.
The ‘hill–valley’ division of traditional Southeast Asian society was of a
different order to the division between ruler and ruled in the ethnically unified
mainland states or regions. The lowland cultivator was part of the dominant
society, even if a very insignificant part. The people who lived in the upland
regions were a group for whom the administrative apparatus of the lowland state
did not apply and who did not share the values of lowland society.
Yet once again caution is needed when giving a general description, for the
hill–valley separation was not absolute. The hill peoples of mainland Southeast
Asia were outsiders in terms of the operation of everyday government, but they
played an important if highly varied role throughout the region. They could
supply or be a source of slaves, trade in forest products, or offer special skills
such as the training of elephants. In these and other ways the upland minority
groups were linked with the dominant society without becoming part of it.
The general picture that is being described and which has changed little until
very recent times may seem rather strange in a modern world marked by a very
considerable degree of cultural unity—the ‘global village’ of popular
commentary. What has been described would not, however, have seemed nearly
so strange to Europeans of two hundred or even one hundred years ago. For the
people of the hills and mountains of Europe were long regarded, and regarded
themselves, as a group apart. And this was not only the case in Europe, as the
record of the isolated mountain communities in the eastern United States makes
clear. The variety of minority groups in the upland regions of Southeast Asia
was and is considerable. Equally considerable is the variation in their levels of
development as compared with those of lowland society. In traditional Southeast
Asia many of the hill people were nomadic farmers, gaining an existence
through the use of slash and burn techniques—‘eating the forest’—in their own
evocative phrase. They levelled and burnt the trees and found in the resulting ash
a temporarily highly fertile site for planting crops. Others were members of
essentially fixed societies, farming with wet-rice techniques in the high valleys
but resistant to any incorporation into the life of the plains.
The ethnic and linguistic links between the people of the hills and those of the
valleys were often close, even if this fact frequently went unrecognised. In one
important case the link was recognised by the hill people themselves. Sections of
the great Tai-speaking ethnic group who remained in their mountain valleys
rather than joining their linguistic cousins in the lowlands were aware of the
common basic language that existed between them so that they too called
themselves Tai. But such an awareness does not seem to have been a feature of
other groups. The Sedang and the Bahnar hill people of the southern mountains
running between Cambodia and Vietnam speak a language that, very roughly,
might be described as an early version of modern Cambodian or Khmer. This
fact, however, has not led to any sense of shared ethnic identity between these
hill people and the lowlands majority.
To a considerable extent the popular picture that has persisted for so long of
an absolute separation between the upland minorities and the lowland majorities
is a result of the almost absolute social division between the two groups.
Whatever the links involving the interests of government and trade, there was a
near absolute social division that was summed up in the words traditionally
chosen by the dominant societies to describe the peoples of the hills. Without
exception the words are pejorative, laden with disdain and emphasising the
social and cultural gap that separated the two groups. Uplanders were moi to the
Vietnamese, phnong to the Cambodians, and kha to the Lao. The words can all
be translated as ‘savage’ or ‘barbarian’, and be seen as enshrining Rudyard
Kipling’s concept of a ‘lesser breed without the law’. Nowadays, these
pejorative terms have generally been removed from official use, but still linger
in the vocabularies of individuals.
Social division, in the very broad sense the term has in this case, may have
been almost absolute, but, as already noted, it did not prevent contacts between
the dominant and non-dominant groups. The hill people performed a variety of
functions for the lowland societies. Who else could provide their knowledge if a
lowland army wished to move across the hills and mountains to strike at an
enemy? Who else could guide the slave-raiding parties from the lowlands to the
most remote regions and aid in the capture of men, women and children whose
primitive society set them furthest apart from those dwelling on the plains?
These tasks were irregular, as was the employment of levies from the hills to
fight as soldiers in the armies led by lowland rulers. The importance of this
soldierly role may be gauged from the appearance in Cambodian folk literature
of a man from the hills who is the hero of a successful battle against invaders.
Other tasks were more regular. Until the French stopped the procedure,
because they saw it as an example of slavery, a minority group living in the
foothills of the mountains of southwestern Cambodia had the hereditary task of
supplying the Cambodian court with cardamom seeds. In return for this tribute
the Pear or Por hill people were allowed to live largely undisturbed in their
malaria-infested environment.
Beyond such practical tasks the link between the peoples of hill and plain
could be magical. While the traditional world of Southeast Asia still retained its
essential character in the eighteenth century both the Vietnamese and the
Cambodian rulers accorded a special magical role to two Jarai sorcerers living in
the chain of mountains lying between the two countries. These ‘kings of fire and
water’, as they were known, were sufficiently important for the Cambodian
monarch to send them gifts, a procedure that seems to have been curiously
parallel to his act of sending tribute to the rulers of both Thailand and Vietnam.
The explanation appears to lie in terms of a belief in the great magical power of
these sorcerers and of their distant link with the most sacred component of the
Cambodian royal regalia, the preah khan. This was a famous sword that was also
described as the ‘lightning of Indra’, the king of the Hindu gods. In more
scientific terms the status attributed the two ‘kings’, and the tenuous links
maintained between other royal families and particular groups of hill peoples,
might be regarded as testimony to the long-forgotten shared origins of groups
that now lived in isolation from each other.
A simplified ethnolinguistic map of Burma
Among the countries of mainland Southeast Asia, Burma is distinctive because of the high proportion of
ethnic minorities within its borders. More than thirty per cent of Burma’s population is made up of minority
groups.

Most of the observations about upland and lowland peoples made so far relate
to those states of mainland Southeast Asia in which there was a clearly dominant
ethnic group, the Vietnamese in Vietnam, the Cambodians (Khmers) in
Cambodia, the Thais in Thailand, and to a much lesser extent the Lao in Laos.
The picture was very different in other areas. On the mainland the situation in
Burma stood in sharp contrast to its neighbours. Despite its long history, Burma
has seldom been a unified state. The Burmans have dominated the major river
valleys, but the populations of the upland regions that fall within the frontiers of
Burma have seldom readily accepted the government the Burmans have tried to
impose on them. Indeed, from the first recorded history of Burma to the present
day, tension between different ethnic groups has been a recurrent feature. It has
been a feature because of the very considerable size of the indigenous minorities.
The Shans, Kachins, Karens and Chins, to mention only the most prominent of
the non-Burman groups, make up approximately one-third of the entire
population—the Shans and the Karens alone account for something like 16 per
cent of Burma’s total population.
Minorities of this size underline the much greater ethnic unity of Thailand,
Vietnam and Cambodia. In each of these countries the indigenous minorities are
less than 15 per cent of the total population. Such a figure did not always prevent
clashes between the dominant and the non-dominant groups in the past but with
the preponderance so clearly established in favour of the major ethnic groups
there has never been any real question as to where power lies. The indigenous
minorities in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia could accurately be described as
outsiders. But the term takes on a different meaning in relation to Burma. There
the Shans, Karens and others were outsiders too, but outsiders who again and
again showed they were able to resist any attempt by the Burmans to impose
their Burman will upon them. In making this distinction there is a very necessary
qualification that must be added. If in Thailand, for example, there was no
question of where real power lay and which group exercised it, there was also
another aspect of the upland–lowland relationship. Throughout the historical
period, indeed until quite recently, lowland governments have not generally
found it necessary to become involved in the day-to-day government of upland
areas. Provided the populations of those areas did not act against the interests of
the state then they were best left to govern themselves. Such a policy was
possible in the states where the upland people were not seen as a threat. It was
impossible, in Burman eyes, when the upland peoples posed all too clear a threat
to the dream of Burmese unity.

The pattern of ethnic relationships that existed in mainland Southeast Asia in

traditional times had no real parallel in the maritime regions. Although the
inhabitants of the maritime world, from the Malayan Peninsula to the Philippine
islands, spoke a series of languages that have a common linguistic root, the
geographical character of their environment encouraged fragmentation rather
than unity. The large island of Java gave scope for the development of sizeable
states, such as Majapahit in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet even
Majapahit and the earlier Sumatran-based empire of Srivijaya had little
ethnolinguistic unity beyond their centres. As students of Southeast Asia have
repeatedly emphasised, the maritime regions of Southeast Asia have an ethnic
pattern very different from the mainland. Instead of there being a general pattern
of dominant majorities and non-dominant minorities, the population of the
maritime world is much better seen as composed of an intricately related series
of ethnic groups. Only comparatively rarely was there a situation in which one
clearly defined ethnic group dominated another minority group. Rather, territory
was associated with groups of people who had a clear picture of their own
identity and of their separateness from others. This was true whether one talks of
the Bugis seafarers of Sulawesi, the Sundanese of West Java or the Dyak
tribesmen of the interior of Borneo. In the geographically fragmented and often
environmentally difficult world of maritime Southeast Asia the establishment of
large territorial states was mostly impossible before modern times, and the
survival of smaller states and of many tribal areas was the norm.
There were, and are, some limited instances of primitive hill populations
whose level of development set them apart from the larger ethnic groups of the
maritime world. These peoples, to be found in scattered groups from the
Malayan Peninsula through the Indonesian Archipelago and in the Philippine
islands are the descendants of some of the earliest inhabitants of the region.
Always small in numbers and described as Negritos by ethnologists, they never
represented a challenge to those other ethnic groups whose life was lived in the
lowlands.
The real division in the maritime world was not between hill dweller and
valley dweller but rather between those who followed a pattern of life linked
with a permanent base, whether for farming, fishing or trading, and those who
still pursued a nomadic life combining hunting and slash and burn agriculture. In
the mainland world the nomadic cultivator was, of necessity, an uplander, but
such was not the case in large areas of maritime Southeast Asia. Moreover, for
the bulk of the nomadic groups of the traditional maritime world there was no
sense on their part, or on the part of others, that they were linked to state systems
of more settled peoples.

The experience of being an outsider in traditional Southeast Asian society was in

general determined by ethnic and geographical factors. But there were other
outsiders who need to be considered in any survey of the region. These were the
men, women and children whom European visitors so readily described as
‘slaves’. There were indeed persons whose position in society in traditional
Southeast Asia combined all the deplorable features that are usually conjured up
by the world ‘slave’. These were persons who were in a very clear and special
fashion outsiders, persons who could never share in the benefits of established
society. They were the property of their owners, to be treated and disposed of as
their owners pleased, with no hope of release for themselves or for their
children, who were automatically slaves from the moment of their birth.
Prisoners of war and the persons seized in slaving expeditions were the groups
who most usually filled this role.
 Beyond these persons, for whom the fact of being a slave was a harsh matter
with no prospect of relief, there were other groups whom Western observers also
described as slaves but who, more accurately, deserved other descriptions.
Western visitors to the traditional world of Southeast Asia seldom understood
the difference, for instance, between the ‘true’ slaves, condemned to a life of
servitude, and those persons who had voluntarily, but temporarily, given up their
freedom in order to meet a debt or other unfulfilled obligation. These debt
bondsmen were not outsiders in a true sense, though clearly the treatment they
received at the hands of their masters varied greatly from place to place and from
period to period.
Perhaps more importantly for our understanding of the complex nature of
traditional Southeast Asia there were other groups of persons who occupied
indeterminate positions as hereditary servants of rulers or great officials. These
men and women did not live outside the societies in which they performed their
tasks, but they had no choices open to them; their position in life and the tasks
they pursued were pre-ordained by birth. Such were the men and women who
were hereditary palace servants, whether in the courts of the Buddhist kingdoms
of mainland Southeast Asia or the sultanates of central Java.

Even the briefest review of those who were the outsiders in traditional Southeast
Asia lends emphasis to the complexity of a region that began to experience a
substantial impact from the West from the end of the eighteenth century
onwards. Yet an awareness of that complexity should not blind an observer to
the possibility of general judgments nor to the fact of there being some general
themes in the history of the region. For all of the contrasts that exist between
mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, between regions that have adopted Islam
as a religion and those that follow Buddhism, or another religion, there are
equally important unifying features to be considered.
All regions of Southeast Asia at the beginning of the eighteenth century were
still dominated by a pattern of life that had altered little for many centuries.
Industry, in a Western sense, was nonexistent, and artisans were only a small
proportion of the total population. Outside of the ranks of the rulers, their
officials and those who provided the services the elite demanded, there was little
if any buffer between those who governed and the cultivator, the fisherman and
the petty trader.
This was a world that placed a high value on order, the observance of proper
procedures, and the maintenance of due respect for traditional practices. It was a
world, as a result, that was also vulnerable to the efforts of those who were not
Southeast Asians to change it. For the men of the West frequently did not work
by the Southeast Asian rules. Even when they thought they were doing so this
was seldom really the case and resultant change was often as great as if
deliberate attempts had been made to introduce new ideas and techniques.
Those who lived in the traditional Southeast Asian world of the eighteenth
century may have felt they had answers to their own problems, whether these
were of peace and war, the relationship of man to the universe and the gods that
controlled it, or the need to find proper patterns of behaviour towards different
groups inside and outside society. But these were no longer the only problems
that had to be answered as the West increasingly began to impinge upon the
daily life of an ever-growing number of Southeast Asians. To a considerable
extent the history of Southeast Asia from the beginning of the nineteenth century
can be seen as a long-drawn-out debate or argument, and sometimes battle, over
the issue of how Southeast Asians could find answers to the problems posed by
the new challenges they faced. Some of the answers were the result of a
conscious search for solutions. Some of the problems have never been fully
answered. Challenge, in brief, became the keynote of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries—challenge to traditional dispositions of power, to the
acceptance of traditional values, and to the traditional pattern of economic life.
As these challenges developed so was the traditional Southeast Asian world
slowly but inexorably undermined.
FIVE
THE EUROPEAN ADVANCE AND CHALLENGE

The question of how important the European role has been in the history of
Southeast Asia has been one of the great preoccupations of those who have
studied the region since the Second World War. As in many scholarly debates
there have been times when the real issues have been obscured by the dust of
combat as advocates of particular points of view have been unready to see that
theirs was not the only opinion that deserved consideration. At the heart of the
controversy was the issue of what factors were really important in shaping the
course of Southeast Asian history. As the debate developed most scholars came
to agree that it was Southeast Asian factors that were the most important. And it
was recognised that in the past non-Southeast Asians when writing about the
region had frequently been prevented from giving full weight to those factors as
the result of their own, usually Western, values.
Now that the dust has settled, however, there is additional general agreement
that the period of European colonial activity cannot be dismissed as an
unimportant episode in the broader history of Southeast Asia. What is now
accepted as an important qualification to older ways of looking at the history of
the region— ones that emphasised the role of Europe and so came to be called
‘Eurocentric’—is that the nature of the European impact was highly varied and
the force of its impact very uneven. Recognition of these facts, combined with
an awareness of the rich and important history of Southeast Asian states and
their populations that form the true stuff of Southeast Asian history no matter
what the period under examination, has permitted a more balanced picture of
developments to emerge. And this more balanced picture certainly takes account
of the European role even if in a rather different fashion than was the case sixty
or even fifty years ago.
One example will make the point clear. Before the Second World War it was
quite common for history books to refer to Dutch rule over the Indonesian
islands as if this had been established in a firm fashion for some hundreds of
years. The Dutch had arrived in Indonesia in the early seventeenth century and
so, general histories often suggested, these islands had been a Dutch colony for
three hundred years. The errors of such a presentation are glaring, but the
erroneous simplification had wide currency. The idea of a Dutch colony
established for three hundred years takes no account of the fact that large areas
of modern Indonesia did not fall under Dutch colonial control until late in the
nineteenth century and even later, at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Moreover, the type of history that was preoccupied with the Dutch role seldom,
if ever, gave any significant attention to the Indonesian role in the history of
their own islands. Indonesians formed the background for Dutch action instead
of being seen as vital participants in the clash between two cultures that was part
of a much larger Indonesian history.
None of this means that Indonesian history can be written without giving
attention to the role of the Dutch. They in Indonesia, as was the case for the
Spaniards and Americans in the Philippines, the French in the Indochinese
region, and the British in Burma and Malaya, and even the tiny number of
Portuguese in East Timor, were important participants in the historical
development of these countries. In some aspects of history the European role
was vital in determining developments of far-reaching significance. The
establishment of international boundaries in the Southeast Asian region was one
such case. But in other aspects of life the part played by the European was much
less important than it was once thought to have been. French officials in
Vietnam, for instance, were often depicted in histories of that country, written
before the Second World War and by their countrymen, as presiding over the
implantation of French culture among the Vietnamese population. The error of
such a view was most clearly revealed in the extent to which Vietnamese
revolutionaries, as they fought the French in the 1940s and 1950s, were able to
strengthen their capacities to challenge their opponents through the promotion of
literacy in the Vietnamese language. French language and culture, all French
claims to the contrary, never supplanted indigenous values and the indigenous
language.
As much as anything else, we are dealing here with a question of focus. The
older histories of the countries in Southeast Asia tended to have a narrow focus.
They looked at the parts played by European governors and officials rather than
at the whole scene. When the focus changes from this narrow approach to a
broader view the Europeans do not disappear but they assume a different place
within the overall Southeast Asian world. The Europeans become only one
group of the many seeking to advance their position, and a group moreover that
was often notably ill-informed about the societies within which they worked.
A further example reinforces the point being made. As the eighteenth century
drew to a close the Dutch had been established in Batavia (Jakarta) for nearly
two hundred years. Much of Java was linked with the Dutch East India Company
through trading agreements or the Dutch appointment of senior provincial
officials responsible to the alien power. Yet to think of Java as a region that was
‘Dutch’ in any political, let alone cultural, sense would be an extravagant
nonsense. Not only did Javanese cultural life continue virtually unchanged from
centuries before, the Dutch colonial rulers still had remarkably little knowledge
of the region over which they claimed uncertain control. Not until just after the
beginning of the nineteenth century did a European power in Java come to know
of the existence of one of the world’s great Buddhist monuments, the giant stupa
of Borobodur near the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta. And this discovery
was made not by the Dutch but by the British when, during the Napoleonic
Wars, they briefly played a colonial role in Java.

What, then, did the Europeans achieve as they asserted their political and
economic power in Southeast Asia? The European powers became, at the most
fundamental level, the paramount powers of the region. This political
development was accompanied by one of the most important features of the
European advance into Southeast Asia: the creation by the colonial powers of the
borders that, with minor exceptions, have become those of the modern states of
Southeast Asia. At the same time, the Western advance called into question old
values and ways of conducting government, since the success of the European
powers in gaining control served as a testimony to the inadequacies of past
systems. To understand these political developments, and the shifts in power and
thought that were involved, the time has come for a country-by-country survey
of the establishment of colonial rule that ended forever the traditional world
described earlier.

THE MAINLAND STATES

Burma

Up to the end of the eighteenth century Burma had not been the target of major
European expansion. Beset by its chronic problems of ethnic disunity over the
centuries, Burma in the second half of the eighteenth century seemed to have
found new life under the vigorous leaders of a new dynasty, the Konbaung.
Under the founder of this dynasty, Alaungpaya (reigned 1752–60) and his
successors, most particularly Bodawpaya (reigned 1782–1819), Burma achieved
a measure of internal unity and was able to lessen, if not entirely eliminate, the
external threats posed by its neighbours. Relative success in these fields,
however, only solved one set of problems facing the Burmese state. The other
set of problems was posed by the slow expansion of British power into areas of
northeastern India that had previously been regarded by the Burmese as falling
within their sphere of influence.
Here was an almost textbook instance of a clash between alien and Southeast
Asian values. Eighteenth-century Burmese rulers regarded the areas of Assam,
Manipur and Arakan lying in or to the west of modern Burma as a frontier zone
in which their interests should prevail. They did not, in general, seek to maintain
strict control over these regions. What was expected was that Burmese interests
should be paramount and that no place should be allowed to those who might
challenge those interests. Such a view was quite the reverse of that held by the
officials of the British East India Company whose power was extending over an
ever-wider area of India. The idea of frontier zones as opposed to clearly
delineated borders was foreign to them. Equally inexplicable in their Western
eyes was a political system that allowed the rulers of Burma to claim
paramountcy over these regions lying between India and Burma, on the one
hand, while accepting no responsibility for the conduct of the inhabitants of this
region so long as Burmese interests were not involved. If, the British argument
ran, raiding parties from Assam, Manipur or Arakan struck into territories under
East India Company control, then the Burmese court was responsible and should
act to prevent its ‘subjects’ from behaving in this way.
There was no meeting of minds. What was more, the problem of the frontier
zones was not the only issue in dispute between Burma and the British. Other
irritants involving differing views on the rights of British traders—or to make
the point more clearly, the lack in Burmese eyes of those rights—and on the
appropriate level of diplomatic interchange slowly but surely poisoned relations
and led to the disastrous decision by Burma’s ruler, King Bagyidaw (reigned
1819–37) to confront the British by invading Bengal.
The tragic result for Burma was the British advance into Lower Burma, the
capture of Rangoon, now renamed Yangon, and then the imposition of the
Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 that gave the East India Company control of Arakan
and Tenasserim.
For more than twenty years this was the limit of the British advance and in the
Burmese capital at Ava complex domestic political concerns were of greater
importance than the annoying but not unbearable British presence in Arakan and
Tenasserim. Once again, however, totally different views of how government
and business should be conducted led to a confrontation between the Burmese
and the British.
The parallel between the developments in Rangoon in the early 1850s and
those in Canton, now known as Guangzhou, is striking. Burmese officials in
Rangoon allowed British merchants to trade, but did not hesitate to seek personal
enrichment through persecution of men whom they regarded as alien interlopers.
They believed that acting in this way enhanced Burmese prestige since it
provided evidence of their unassailable power. Their judgment proved fatally
wrong as the British in India came to see events in Burma as a test of strength
with significance for their role in the East as a whole. At first without
authorisation but later with approval from London, British troops fought the
Second Burma War that led to the occupation of Lower Burma, an area of
considerable agricultural and timber potential.
Once again there was a pause in the British advance. Having established
themselves in Lower Burma by 1853 the British were content to wait, and the
Burmese court found it impossible to muster sufficient military power to evict
the British or even to present a united diplomatic front as chronic domestic
rivalries continued despite diplomatic danger. By the 1880s Burma had become
important to Britain not only as a potential source of wealth but also as an
element in Britain’s rivalry with France for spheres of influence in Asia. It is far
from clear how much of this was apparent to the Burmese court, its ruler and
officials. For some officials British traders were still seen as providing an
opportunity for personal enrichment and the humiliation of foreigners. For others
in the court at Mandalay issues of protocol often seemed more important than
those of power—though it is clear that the British just as much as the Burmese
attached great importance to the question of whether or not foreigners should
wear shoes in the presence of the king. Matters came to a head in 1885 as the
Burmese court at Mandalay misjudged the strength of British determination to
become the dominant power in Burma and to ensure that its commercial interests
prevailed over those of France. In rejecting a British ultimatum, Thibaw, the
Burmese king, sealed his country’s fate and British troops began the Third
Burma War in November 1885.
By the beginning of 1886 Britain had captured Mandalay and proclaimed
control over those areas of Burma not previously occupied. Although much hard
fighting took place over the next few years, often accompanied by harsh
punishment of those captured by British forces, ‘British Burma’ had come into
existence and a western border was delineated between Burma and India. What
might have happened if the Burmese leadership had better understood the nature
of the challenge they faced can never be answered. The harsh, though accurate,
judgment must be that the Burmese leaders as prisoners of their own view of the
world were unable to see that the values to which they attached so much
importance were meaningless to the British.
Vietnam

Like Burma, Vietnam came under colonial rule in a series of steps. But unlike
British rule in Burma the imposition of French rule was completed in a period of
twenty-five rather than nearly sixty years. And in a fashion similar to Burma,
also, Vietnam’s ruler and court at times behaved in a fashion that suggested there
was no true understanding of the nature of the challenge presented by the
French.
The search for similarities should not be carried too far, however, since
Vietnam was a very different state from Burma at the time of the first invasion
by French forces in the late 1850s. Quite apart from the great cultural differences
between the two countries, Vietnam in the 1850s seemed set on an ever-rising
path towards success. There were internal difficulties but the state was unified
and expanding. Whatever the political and cultural differences between the two
states, the governments of Burma and Vietnam shared a fatal flaw. In neither
case was there any general appreciation of the power and the determination of
the European invaders. In Vietnam’s case the court at Hue was not ignorant of
Western technological advances, but was convinced that these posed no threat to
its independent existence.
The French saw Vietnam as a springboard for trade with China, little realising
that Vietnam’s geographical location next to China did not mean that any
significant trade passed between one country and the other. When French forces
invaded Vietnam, hoping for trade, pledged to protect Christian missionaries,
and jealous of British colonial advance elsewhere, the Vietnamese court could
scarcely believe what was happening. The Confucian order had not prepared the
ruler and his officials for a development of this kind, despite their awareness of
events in China as the Western powers imposed their presence upon the Chinese
state. As a result the Vietnamese, once they found they did not have the material
strength or the diplomatic capacity to chase the French from the country,
adopted a policy that had little more than hope as its justification. With the
French occupying a large, fertile area of southern Vietnam between 1859 and
1867, the Vietnamese in the capital of Hue hoped that the invaders would
advance no further even if they did not go away.
Their hopes were notably astray. The French intended to stay and went on in
the 1880s to extend their colonial possessions to include all of Vietnam. In doing
so they did more than establish a new colonial empire in the East, they played a
significant part in accelerating the developing intellectual crisis in Vietnam. The
Vietnamese state at the time of the initial French invasion at the end of the 1850s
was a paradoxical combination of dynamism and stagnation. Vietnam’s
continuing territorial advance into the lands of the western Mekong River delta
was the clearest evidence of the state’s persistent dynamism. But this was a
dynamism that existed alongside the unreadiness of the Vietnamese emperor, Tu
Duc, and the bulk of the official class to recognise how great a threat the West
could pose. A very few voices were raised to argue the existence of a threat and
the need for change, among them the Catholic scholar-official Nguyen Truong
To. But until the full import of the West’s challenge was revealed by the
establishment of French colonial rule throughout Vietnam, the conservative
element remained dominant.

High-ranking Vietnamese mandarin

Vietnam is part of Southeast Asia, but culturally distinctively different through the influence of China. In
traditional Vietnam this Chinese influence was visually apparent in the architecture of palaces and temples,
and in the clothing of officials such as this high-ranking mandarin. From the Tour du Monde 1878
Vietnamese soldiers
By comparison with the rulers of other traditional states of Southeast Asia, the Vietnamese emperors
differed in maintaining a standing army. The existence of this army, and a belief in the power of their
Confucian ideology, misled the Vietnamese rulers and their officials into thinking they could withstand the
onslaught of French colonisation. In the event, soldiers such as those shown here were no match for the
much better armed French soldiers who gradually conquered the whole of Vietnam between 1858 and 1886.
From the Tour du Monde 1878

The geographical shape of Vietnam was not determined by the French in a

fashion that was to be the case with the impact of colonial rule in other parts of
Southeast Asia. In part this was so because of the long concern that Vietnamese
rulers and officials had always shown to delineate their country’s borders. Nor,
unlike the maritime regions, was France instrumental in creating a new state
where none had existed previously. But in posing a military threat and then
imposing an alien colonial government the French played an important part in
the destruction of the old Vietnamese order. In their subsequent unreadiness to
share power with the Vietnamese and consider the possibility of independence
for their colony the French did more: they set the stage for one of the most
powerful revolutions in Southeast Asia’s history.
Cambodia

By comparison with Burma and Vietnam, Cambodia was a minor state in the
mainland Southeast Asian world. Little remained of its former greatness, so far
as power was concerned, and even its great temple ruins had by the middle of the
nineteenth century passed out of Cambodian control to lie within the territories
of the King of Thailand. That Cambodia survived at all was a reflection of the
unreadiness of the rulers of Thailand and Vietnam to push their rivalry to its
ultimate conclusion. Having clashed in a series of protracted campaigns fought
across Cambodian territory earlier in the nineteenth century, the Thais and the
Vietnamese concluded that their best interests would be served by permitting
Cambodia’s continued existence, in vassal relationship to both the neighbouring
courts, as a buffer zone between them.
We can only speculate what might have happened if the nineteenth century
had not been marked by France’s advance into Vietnam and subsequently into
Cambodia. Yet while it can only be speculation, the likely lines of historical
development that might have affected Cambodia do not seem difficult to trace.
Without the French advance it seems hard to think of Cambodia being left for
long to play its buffer zone role. Eclipse as a state seemed—though it can never
be argued in any certain fashion—the most likely fate in store for this painfully
weak country.
The decision of the French in Vietnam to extend control over Cambodia
beginning in the 1860s may therefore be seen as ensuring the state’s survival.
Not only the state’s, moreover, for by treating the ruler of Cambodia, King
Norodom, in such a way that he managed to remain as the symbolic leader of the
nation the French also were instrumental in boosting the prestige of the royal
family and of the officials associated with the court. In this their actions were in
striking contrast to what happened in the two other countries already surveyed in
this chapter. In Burma the British brought the monarchy to an end. In Vietnam
the French undermined the authority of the royal house so that no Vietnamese
emperor could ever again command the loyalty that was demanded and received
in pre-colonial times. But in Cambodia as a result of both planning and the lack
of it the French helped the traditional royal leadership to remain important
politically.
Laos

As the British and French pursued their aims in the rest of mainland Southeast
Asia, two areas remained outside the general pattern of developments. The most
important of these was Thailand, the one country in the whole of Southeast Asia
that was able to avoid the experience of colonial rule. The other area was the
region of the mainland that has come to be known as Laos.
No such entity existed in the nineteenth century. The region that is today
called Laos was composed in the mid-nineteenth century of a confusing pattern
of minor states, none of them able to act in any truly independent fashion. In the
traditional Southeast Asian manner these petty states were vassals of more
powerful overlords; on occasion a state would have more than one suzerain.
In a very real fashion the fact that a state of Laos came into existence was the
result of colonial action, more specifically colonial rivalry. As the nineteenth
century drew to a close, rivalry between the French and British on the mainland
of Southeast Asia was intense. With the British established in Burma and the
French controlling Vietnam and Cambodia, the question of where spheres of
influence would lie was a matter for prolonged, and sometimes aggressively
emotional, debate. Thailand both benefited and lost from this situation. The
benefits flowed from the fact that so long as Thailand remained as an
independent state between the British holdings in Burma and the French
holdings in Indochina, the advantages of a buffer state to the two imperial rivals
helped to preserve its existence. But the benefits to Thailand had to be weighed
against the losses that resulted from the concessions necessary to preserve the
goodwill, or tolerance, of the rival European powers. So while Thailand
remained free of colonial control it was at the cost of many concessions that
ended some at least of the country’s independence. Foreign powers were able,
for instance, to gain highly advantageous trading terms in Thailand and to insist,
as they had done in China, on the right of their subjects to extra-territorial
privileges should they become involved in both civil and criminal legal cases.
What was possible for Thailand was denied to the Lao states. Without unity of
their own, as vassals of various overlords and subject to increasing disorder as
Chinese refugees and bandits spilled out of China into the region south of the
Yunnan–Quangxi border, the Lao states appeared an attractive prospect for
colonial advance. The opportunity was seized by the French and between 1885
and 1899, through a combination of individual audacity, Great Power
manoeuvring, and reliance on dubious claims linked to Vietnam’s past
suzerainty over sections of Laos, the French established a colonial position in
Laos. More clearly than anywhere else in mainland Southeast Asia this was a
case of the European advance bringing into existence a new state, one that
despite great political transformations has survived to the present day.
Thailand

Thailand’s distinction in avoiding the experience of colonial control has already

been stressed many times. Yet this success did not mean that Thailand was
unaffected by the great changes that accompanied the colonial advance into the
rest of Southeast Asia. Along with Vietnam, Thailand was one of the two
notably successful states of Southeast Asia. Unlike Vietnam, however, Thailand
was able to build upon its historical success to survive without experiencing
colonial rule. Many factors combined to make this possible. One of these has
already been mentioned in discussion of developments in Laos—the fact that
Thailand came to be seen by the rival European powers as a buffer zone between
their conflicting interests. But there were other more positive reasons for the
Thai achievement. Most importantly, Thailand gained advantage from the
leadership of remarkable kings and officials. The contrast between Burma and
Thailand is particularly striking in this regard. Facing a new and alien threat
from the British, Burma’s Buddhist kings and officials found it almost
impossible to appreciate the nature of the challenge, let alone to formulate a
means of resisting it. In Thailand, on the other hand, inquiring minds from the
king downwards were already seeking to understand the nature of European
power and the scientific and technical learning that formed an essential part of
that power.
King Mongkut (reigned 1851–68) was one of the most outstanding of all Thai
rulers and a vitally important architect of Thailand’s plans for avoidance of
foreign rule. A reforming Buddhist who had spent his early adult years as a
monk, Mongkut’s strategies involved positive efforts to acquire Western
knowledge and diplomatic concessions that prevented an opportunity arising that
could have been used by one or other of the European powers as an excuse to
impose foreign rule. His approach was followed by his son and successor, the
reformist-minded King Chulalongkorn (reigned 1868–1910). Both monarchs
were remarkable men and fortunate in the calibre of their senior associates,
whether these were other members of the royal family or officials in the Thai
court.
Yet despite the great talents of Thailand’s leaders the challenge of the
European powers could not be evaded entirely. French determination to
consolidate their colonial position in the Indochinese region led to Thailand
losing its suzerainty over territories along the Mekong River in the Lao region
and over the western provinces of Cambodia that had been regarded as part of
Thailand for over a century. These losses took place around the turn of the
century. A little later, in 1909, Thailand conceded control over four southern
Malay states to the British. These states—Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and
Trengganu—then became associated with the British colonial empire in the
Malayan Peninsula and form part of the modern state of Malaysia.
In short, if Thailand never experienced colonial rule in the fashion of its
Southeast Asian neighbours it was nonetheless very much affected by the
European advance. It lost control of territory and had to make substantial
concessions to foreign interests. Despite this, Thailand presented a singular
contrast to the rest of Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth century. Thai leaders
followed policies that revealed a remarkable capacity to gain the greatest benefit
from the new and intrusive element of European power. Only in Thailand did an
independent Southeast Asian state seek to gain the benefits of modern science
and technology through the employment of foreign, European advisers.

THE MARITIME STATES

Indonesia

When discussing the mainland region of Southeast Asia and the challenge posed
by European imperialism, the time span involved for the establishment of
colonial states is at most some sixty years. For Indonesia the period during
which the Dutch established an empire was in excess of three hundred years. Not
surprisingly, with a slow advance of this sort spread over so many years, the
character of the challenge posed and the response it evoked varied tremendously.
Having made this point it is as well to remember, as emphasised later in this
chapter, that the major period of Dutch advance in Indonesia took place over a
period of some sixteen years at the end of the nineteenth century.
The Dutch came to the Indonesian Archipelago as traders. To pursue their
initial goals it was sufficient to gain control of the major ports of northern Java
and the principal commercial centres of the other islands engaged in the spice
trade. Slowly, however, and in the fashion that has certain distinct similarities
with developments involving the British in India, the Dutch East India Company
became as much a territorial power as a trading venture. When Javanese rivalries
led to the collapse of the kingdom of Mataram in the eighteenth century the
Dutch had already become sufficiently involved in manipulating the internal
affairs of Java to be vitally interested in playing a part in overseeing the
establishment of Mataram’s successor states, based in the central Javanese
capitals of Yogyakarta and Surakarta (Solo).
By the middle of the eighteenth century the Dutch East India Company could
claim to exercise political control over most of Java. But this control was
tenuous in character and there was no accompanying impact in terms of Dutch
culture or technology. There was, however, an economic impact as the Dutch,
working through the Javanese elite and through Chinese tax agents, developed
an ever-increasing number of ways to raise money and extract the maximum
agricultural production for the Company’s benefit. The burden of this economic
impact fell on the peasantry. But for the peasantry as well as for the elite
economic changes did not mean there were any sudden transformations of their
traditional world, its values, and its hierarchy.
The same was essentially true in the limited number of areas away from Java
that sustained the Dutch impact before the nineteenth century. Challenges to
established relationships and systems of values were part of the history of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the Dutch slowly and intermittently
expanded their control over the Indonesian Archipelago. This expansion was in
part a response to a growing market for tropical products in Europe and in part a
response to the increased activities of other foreign powers in the Southeast
Asian region.
From the Dutch point of view the pressures of economic demand and foreign
competition meant that it was no longer sufficient to maintain a loose control
over the scattered islands, working from a limited number of bases and in
association with local rulers. Instead the Dutch government in the Indies—for
the Dutch East India Company had been abolished at the end of the eighteenth
century—now sought to establish closer control and more uniform
administration. These aims on occasion led to sharp and bloody conflict with
local forces, particularly in areas of Sumatra. Most particularly the Dutch had to
fight for decades before they were able to achieve dominance over the northern
Sumatran region of Aceh at the end of the nineteenth century. In Bali, too, Dutch
control was only achieved after bitter resistance was overcome.
By the early twentieth century the basic structure of the Dutch East Indies had
been established. As the result of conquest and treaty the Dutch claimed control
over all of the Archipelago, stretching from Sumatra in the west to the western
part of New Guinea in the east. Only the tiny Portuguese colony located in the
east of Timor escaped the Dutch net. The Dutch flag now flew above a strikingly
diverse series of islands in which levels of cultural development ranged from the
distinctive and refined world of Java to the modern stone age still found in New
Guinea. In such a diverse region the impact of an alien European force had to be
equally diverse, ranging from the increasing impoverishment of the peasantry in
central and eastern Java to the implantation of Christianity in such sharply
differing regions as the Toba highlands in Sumatra and the outer Indonesian
island of Ambon.
More than all of the other changes and developments that came with Dutch
rule the eventual establishment of foreign control over all of the islands of
modern Indonesia brought something else. This was the possibility for the varied
population groups in the Dutch East Indies to think of their common interests
and a future common national identity. In more distant historical times there had
been rulers who thought in terms of a Nusantara, an empire of the islands. As a
result of foreign rule the outlines of such an empire were established, and in a
clearer and firmer fashion than had ever seemed possible before. The final
creation of the Indonesian Republic was the work of Indonesians. But this work
was accomplished within a framework that in considerable part was laid down
during the period of Dutch colonial rule.

Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei

No less than Indonesia the modern state of Malaysia finds its geographical
origins in the colonial period. In traditional times the present state of Malaysia
was part of the wider Indonesian–Malay world. Malay sultans ruled in states of
varying size along the seacoasts of peninsular Malaya, the northern regions of
the great island of Borneo and in eastern Sumatra, an island that came under
Dutch control. Non-Malay peoples inhabited the hinterland of both the Peninsula
and Borneo. In traditional times the area now occupied by Malaysia formed a
region of shifting power and alliances. The northern states of peninsular Malaya
were linked in vassal relationships with the rulers of Thailand while the southern
states of the Peninsula had ties with sultanates in areas that now form part of
Indonesia.
European expansion into this region was a slow and haphazard affair. The
Portuguese capture of Malacca in the early sixteenth century was not followed
by any further major advance into the area of modern Malaysia until the late
eighteenth century. By that time the Portuguese had been replaced by the Dutch
as the rulers of Malacca and the first British settlement in the territory of modern
Malaysia had been established on the island of Penang, in 1786. Settlement of
Singapore followed in 1819 and by the 1830s the British had advanced to the
point that they held three settlements on the fringe of the Malayan Peninsula,
Singapore, Penang and Malacca, where they had now replaced the Dutch.
These settlements were not only on the fringe in a geographical sense, they
also had a fringe character in terms of their relations with the Malay states of the
Peninsula. The Straits Settlements, as the three British colonial bases came to be
called, were in but not of the Malay world that surrounded them. In all three the
population grew not so much as the result of migration by Malays, though some
took place, but rather through the influx of Chinese, and later of a lesser number
of Indians. Nevertheless, as the years of the nineteenth century passed, links
between the British settlements and the Malay sultanates of the Peninsula grew.
The southern Malay state of Johore became, in economic terms, a close partner
with, if not an integral part of, Singapore. All three units of the Straits
Settlements played roles as bases from which merchants and traders, tin miners
and labourers, gradually began to transform the economic structure of the
Peninsula. To a considerable extent the usual colonial paradigm was reversed
and the flag followed trade into Malaya so that, as trade and commerce
developed, Britain came first to achieve a political paramountcy in the region
and subsequently to build on that paramountcy to ensure direct political control
of affairs.
The process that led to the final emergence of British Malaya in the first two
decades of the twentieth century need not be detailed here. By the time of the
First World War British control, with some degrees of variation, extended over
the whole of peninsular Malaysia in addition to the Straits Settlements. Together
the two political conglomerates formed an economic whole and a more or less
unified political entity. But whatever had been achieved in these terms the result
of colonial advance in the area of modern peninsular Malaysia had not been the
achievement of unity in other terms. Chinese immigrants predominated in the
Straits Settlements. In the sultanates of peninsular Malaya the Malays retained
special rights as the ‘people of the country’ but they did so against a background
of economic advance on the part of other communities, the European and the
Chinese. Here was a very special result of the European advance into Southeast
Asia. Britain’s colonial efforts in peninsular Malaysia drew new geographical
boundaries that were to become the basis of a later new state. But within those
boundaries the same colonial power followed policies, for the most part without
thought, that led to the creation of problems that are still being worked out today.
The making of modern peninsula Malaysia

The importance of the European powers in the creation of new boundaries is

abundantly apparent in relation to peninsular Malaysia, but nothing could make
the point more plainly than the developments that took place in Borneo, in the
areas that have come to constitute East Malaysia (modern Sarawak and Sabah)
and Brunei. As part of the general colonial advance of the nineteenth century,
Europeans considered the possibility of gaining economic and strategic
advantage in northern Borneo. This was done at the cost of further diminishing
the already declining power of the Brunei sultanate, which once had extensive
power along the coast of Borneo and over parts of the Sulu Archipelago. In the
event the areas that have now been incorporated in the modern state of Malaysia
were brought under a measure of European political control by two of the most
unusual colonial powers to operate in Southeast Asia, while Brunei sultanate was
left as a small enclave, becoming a British protectorate in 1888.
In Sarawak the agent of colonial advance was not a government but an
individual, James Brooke, the first of the ‘white rajahs’ about whom so much
has been written. In Sabah, by contrast, the colonial power was a commercial
venture, the Chartered Company of North Borneo. In each case the peculiarities
of the colonial ‘power’ led to very distinctive developments within these two
territories. Yet the fundamental thread that has linked so much of the
commentary on developments in the maritime world was there nonetheless. In
Sarawak and Sabah, as elsewhere, the very existence of the later postcolonial
states was the partial result of the European advance. Where no comparable state
had existed before and no boundary lines had been drawn, the nineteenth
century, even in these two eccentric cases, witnessed the establishment of new
political entities.

East Timor (Timor-Leste)

Within five years of capturing the great port city of Malacca the Portuguese
made contact with East Timor, a site known through the Indonesian Archipelago
as a source of sandalwood. It was not until the 1560s, however, that the
Portuguese established their first permanent settlement on a small island near
East Timor, and not until the middle of the seventeenth century that Portuguese
in any numbers—at most, a few hundred—settled in East Timor itself. Many of
these settlers were members of religious orders. After operating from a base at
Lifau in the Oecusse region of the island for some time, the Portuguese moved
their administrative headquarters to Dili in 1769.
Distant from Portugal and with limited resources, the settlement in East Timor
became a neglected part of Portugal’s overseas empire. Located near the much
stronger Dutch East Indies possessions, East Timor frequently seemed at risk of
being absorbed into the Dutch empire. Nevertheless, treaties concluded with the
Dutch in 1859 and 1893 preserved its existence. The certainty afforded by these
treaties did little for the economic or political development of East Timor which,
up to the Second World War, was used by the faraway government in Lisbon as
a location to which political opponents of the state could be deported.
The Philippines

Much of what has been written in this chapter concerning the importance of the
European impact in establishing the territorial boundaries of Indonesia and
Malaysia applies with equal force to the Philippines. The long period of Spanish
rule over these islands was vitally important in delineating the boundaries of a
state where neither boundaries nor any entity equivalent to the modern
Philippines existed previously. Yet just as the Dutch in Indonesia moved much
more slowly than is often recognised to establish control over the whole of the
modern Indonesian state, so was the Spanish achievement of control in the
Philippines a slow affair. And not only slow; it was also incomplete. Although
Spanish power was able to dominate most of the lowland areas of the northern
Philippines by the middle of the eighteenth century, the highland areas remained
regions apart. Moreover, the southern Muslim areas of the Philippines never
came under real Spanish control. Repeated Spanish attempts to dominate the
fiercely independent sultanates of the southern regions failed. Spanish control
was achieved in some major southern ports such as Zamboanga, but the Sultan
of Sulu and his less powerful counterparts never submitted to Spanish rule. The
seeds of contemporary Muslim separatism in the southern Philippines were sown
long ago.
But while the Philippines’ experience of the European challenge had the
similarities with Indonesia and Malaysia that have just been noted, the
imposition of Spanish rule provided an additional element in the history of those
islands that did not exist elsewhere. This vitally important element was
Catholicism. Conversion to the religion of the invading European colonial
powers took place elsewhere, most particularly in Vietnam. But nowhere else in
Southeast Asia—Portuguese Timor included, before 1975—did the religion of
the colonialists become, in a broadly universal sense, the religion of the
colonised. (Once again stress must be given to the fact that it is the northern
Philippines that is being discussed.)
At a wider level one might see the implantation of Catholicism as reflecting
the more general fact that Spanish rule in the Philippines gave the northern
islands a new framework for society. Building upon the village structure of pre-
colonial times, the Spaniards created a new, non-indigenous system. To suggest
that this system removed all indigenous elements from Philippine society would
be an error. But it would be equally erroneous not to recognise that the
administrative and economic, as well as the religious, structure instituted by the
Spanish had the most profound effect.
 The historical irony that marked the Philippine reaction to Spanish rule has
been recorded in an earlier chapter. Filipinos became dissatisfied with Spanish
rule when it became clear that the colonial power would not allow Indios—the
non-Spanish inhabitants of the islands—to enjoy the same civil and ecclesiastical
rights as the Spaniards did themselves. Yet the Indios who claimed these rights
were the products of Spanish schools, seminaries, and universities. The
Spaniards who ruled in the Philippines had created a situation with no real
parallel elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Their colonial subjects began the revolt
against Spanish rule in the nineteenth century because they were, in effect,
excluded from being Spanish. In their resentment of the barrier placed in the way
of the becoming Spanish the Filipinos established their own national identity,
one that nonetheless remained inseparably linked with the experience of Spanish
rule and the importance of Catholicism.

Manila in the seventeenth century

The Spanish established their colonial headquarters for the Philippines in Manila in 1571. By the mid-
seventeenth century Manila, as seen in this engraving, was a substantial town. Trade was Manila’s
lifeblood. Silver and gold from the Americas was exchanged for goods brought to Manila from East Asia,
with the commerce handled by Manila’s large resident Chinese population. Power, however, was firmly in
the hands of the Spanish, with the State and Catholic Church working hand-in-hand to further political
control and the conversion of the population.

The attention given in this chapter to such administrative matters as the

establishment of states’ borders must be seen as only one facet of a complex
whole. The colonial powers may be correctly seen as having established borders
where none existed before, and their actions, whether good or bad, self-
interested or altruistic, played a part in shaping the new nations that were to
emerge in Southeast Asia. Such developments were not, it is useful to remember,
confined to one area of the world. The institution of new borders and the
establishment of new nations were associated with the years of colonial rule in
Africa as well as in Southeast Asia.
Beyond these administrative matters, however, other processes were at work
that have only been mentioned briefly so far, but which will receive more
consideration as the history of Southeast Asia is traced into more modern times.
Colonial powers delineated the areas of states and played a part in shaping the
character of their populations. In the final analysis, nonetheless, the indigenous
inhabitants, the Southeast Asians themselves, determined how they should live
and by what standards. This must be constantly remembered when the challenge
and the advance of the Europeans into Southeast Asia are being considered.
SIX
ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

In the preceding chapter great emphasis was placed on the impact of the alien
European colonial powers which established themselves in Southeast Asia. The
advance of the colonial powers began as early as the sixteenth century, but
developed more importantly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And, as
the previous chapter underlined, the nature of the European impact was complex
and varied. It was more than this; it was also paradoxical. Southeast Asians
found they were controlled by alien newcomers who were strangers to the
cultures and values of the region and they came, some sooner, some later, to
resent this control and so to fight against it. Yet the same control that evoked
resentment also played its part in establishing the political map of Southeast Asia
as it exists today. The room for argument about the true importance or the true
cost of European expansion is almost limitless. The kind of balance sheet that is
prepared to record ‘good’ and ‘bad’ will vary from individual to individual, time
to time, and most certainly nationality to nationality. What there can be no doubt
about is that there was a European impact on the societies of Southeast Asia and
that this impact had enormous consequences. One of these many consequences
that has only been mentioned briefly so far was the economic transformation of
the region.
Although Southeast Asia’s economic transformation from the seventeenth
century onwards involved the essential participation of its indigenous
population, there is no way of avoiding the conclusion that great change took
place because of decisions taken by the colonial administrations that ruled over
all but one of the countries in the region. In terms of the interests of the
indigenous populations, many of the changes that took place were negative and
it was rare, if ever, that the colonial powers placed the interests of the indigenous
population above their own. But whatever the motivations and the nature of the
results, Southeast Asia experienced massive economic change, particularly
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This chapter’s concern is to
provide an outline of those changes.

To fly over modern Southeast Asia on a clear day is to be struck by the great
contrast between areas of land that have been brought into agricultural or
mineral production and those that have not. Whether on the mainland or in the
maritime regions, the transformation of the landscape by human agencies stands
out clearly. Vast rice fields spread about river deltas. Open-cut mining leaves
bleached scars on the ground below. The repetitious patterns of rubber and oil
palm plantations are clearly differentiated from the chaotic world of the still
uncleared jungle. It is staggering to realise how much of this landscape did not
exist one hundred years ago. Rubber plantations, to take what is perhaps the
most striking example, are essentially a development of the twentieth century. A
relatively small number of plantations were begun in the late nineteenth century,
but the great expansion of rubber-growing began in the twentieth. It took place
either as the result of European investment or, when smallholder rubber grown
by Southeast Asians was involved, in response to the demands of the European
or American capitalist world.
The expansion of rice-growing in Southeast Asia is another example of the
tremendous changes that took place from the nineteenth century onwards and
owed much, though by no means all, to the onset of European colonial control.
The massive efforts that transformed the Mekong River delta in southern
Vietnam from a maze of swamps and undirected watercourses had begun before
the arrival of the French in the early 1860s. As change took place in the last two
decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth it was
still Vietnamese, for the most part, who both contributed the labour and, for a
limited few, reaped the financial benefits of the transformation that was
achieved. But the fact that such vast change took place depended in considerable
measure on the European control that made the draining and cultivation both
possible and profitable. This same European, more particularly in this case
French, control also permitted a series of social developments that led to deep
resentment of the economic system that emerged. For the changes in the Mekong
delta region did not bring economic enrichment of the many, but of the few.
This fact points once again to the other side of Southeast Asia’s economic
transformation that was all too often ignored while European powers held sway
in the region. When the term ‘transformation’ is used it carries with it, for many
persons, the suggestion of ‘progress’. Change has often in the past been seen as
good in itself, particularly when it could readily be seen to involve the expansion
of areas under cultivation, the introduction of new crops and plantation products,
and the establishment of new infrastructure where there was none before. Yet
each of these transformations had not one effect but many. At the very least it is
essential in seeking to understand how Southeast Asia’s economy changed so
rapidly from the nineteenth century onwards to ask, ‘Who benefited from this
transformation?’

In order to answer the question and to understand the importance of the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries it is essential to realise that the economic
activity that accompanied the expansion of European economic control of
Southeast Asia was very different from that of traditional times. Certainly, there
was abundant economic activity in traditional Southeast Asia. The great empire
of Srivijaya was a forerunner of later maritime states that sought to gain wealth
through a monopoly of the sea routes and the markets. Even in such states as
Angkor, where participation in external commerce was a minor part of national
life, complex internal economic patterns were developed to meet the cost of
maintaining and staffing the many monastic institutions that formed such a vital
feature of Cambodian life. And Chou Ta-kuan (Zhou Daguan), the only
eyewitness to describe Angkor in its days of glory, gives a picture of petty trade
taking place on a daily basis. Malacca before it fell to the Portuguese in the early
sixteenth century was a flourishing international entrepôt. Chinese and Japanese
junks traded into the ‘southern seas’. Caravans of merchants wended their way
across the heart of the mainland regions and inter-island trade in the maritime
world was as much part of life in pre-colonial times as it continued to be once
the European presence was established.
The prospect of becoming involved in the existing pattern of trade and so of
gaining wealth was, after all, one of the single most important factors bringing
the Europeans to Southeast Asia. They wanted to gain a part, the largest part
indeed, in an existing spice trade that promised great riches. That the Iberians—
the Portuguese and the Spanish—wanted more need not delay us long at this
stage. They wanted converts to Christianity, it is true. But this hope never
excluded the possibility of gaining wealth through trade, though in the case of
the Philippines there were sad disappointments when it was found how little
opportunity existed for the development of profitable exports, in the early stages
of Spanish rule at least.

For a period, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese and the
Dutch succeeded in their aims. They gained a monopoly of the spice trade in
Southeast Asia, more exactly in the islands of modern Indonesia, and so
controlled the supply of these commodities for the European market. In doing so,
however, they commenced a process of peasant impoverishment in the
Indonesian world that has left its mark to the present day. The Dutch aimed at
complete control of the spice trade and worked to achieve it through destruction
of spice trees outside selected areas. Having begun as aliens working within an
existing system the Dutch, through their technological and organisational
superiority, then began to alter that system significantly. Whole islands that had
once formed an integral part of the traditional pattern of trade were suddenly
removed from participation. Even when production was still permitted, trees
were destroyed to meet short-term Dutch efforts to maintain high price levels.
Already Southeast Asia’s economic activity was being linked to the European
market economy in a way that had never existed before.
As the Dutch succeeded in controlling the spice trade in cloves and nutmeg in
the eastern part of Indonesia, and the pepper trade in much of the western
regions, so during the eighteenth century did they go on to exert increasing
control over the production and marketing of agricultural crops in Java. Coffee,
most particularly, became the object of Dutch regulation. Working through local
rulers and Chinese agents, the Dutch themselves were at one remove in this
process. But it was they who determined upon the system of ‘forced deliveries’
that required a set amount of the crop to be made available to the East India
Company under threat of severe corporate punishment of villages if the goods
were not forthcoming. At the same time the Dutch expectation was that the
Indonesians who furnished the goods so much in demand in the European
market would themselves provide a market for the manufactured goods,
particularly textiles, that could be brought to Southeast Asia by Dutch ships.
It would probably be an error to suggest that Java, the Spice Islands and the
other sections of Indonesia that had became part of the Dutch colonial economic
system had been plunged irretrievably into economic disaster by the beginning
of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, a pattern of economic development had
been clearly established that placed the interests of the exploiting power, and its
agents, above all else. And the role of the bulk of the population in this pattern
was clearly, and disadvantageously, determined. Such a pattern was to be
reinforced as the economy of Indonesia, and the whole of Southeast Asia,
became more diverse and more closely attuned to a broad range of European
interests in the nineteenth century.
The nineteenth century was the age of Europe’s industrialisation. That
technological revolution played a major—many would agree the major—part in
accelerating the search for colonial possessions overseas. Colonies, in the
simplest form, were seen as essential elements in the economic pattern that
required the supply of raw materials to the industrial countries of Europe. Once
processed these raw materials could be sold to the markets of the world,
including, if possible, the colonies from which the processed materials originally
came. Seen in retrospect the whole system seems quite remarkably unbalanced
in Europe’s favour. Southeast Asians in Burma, Vietnam or the Philippines, for
instance, were expected to play an uncomplaining role in a process that enriched
their colonial masters but offered little reward to them or their fellows. The fact
that an imbalance existed and that this did not trouble the bulk of the Europeans
concerned with the colonies may be hard to believe, but it was certainly true. An
essential feature of the expanding imperial age and the economic developments
that went with it was a belief that what they were doing was right and proper.
For most European colonisers questions of equity simply did not arise. They saw
the world in different terms and thought in grandiose fashion, so that the
prominent mid-nineteenth-century French colonialist and explorer, Francis
Garnier, an intelligent and in many ways a cultured man, saw nothing unrealistic
or unreasonable about stating the proposition that ‘nations without colonies are
dead.’

Rubber plantation
A rubber plantation in Malaysia. The discovery that rubber could be grown profitably in much of Southeast
Asia was a major factor in the modern economic transformation of the region. Photograph courtesy of Far
Eastern Economic Review

His observation avoids examination of a whole range of questions, not

forgetting the fundamental issue of whether or not those who were colonised
wished to undergo this experience. As a statement of the kind of drives that
urged men to develop rubber estates, to exploit tin mines, and to grow copra
palms, the Frenchman’s view cannot be ignored. And Southeast Asia could, like
Africa, supply many of the materials that became, during the nineteenth century,
essential to the needs of modern Europe and America. Tin from Malaysia and
Indonesia could help meet the industrial nations’ demand for cheap tinplate and
the bearings so essential to the development of fast-running factory machinery.
Rubber from Southeast Asia as a whole, but particularly from Indonesia,
Malaysia and French Indochina, could help meet the multiple needs of societies
that expected constant improvement in a range of items from motor car tyres to
surgical equipment. Copra could play a major part in the vast expansion of the
soap industry as rising standards of living in Europe and America made personal
cleanliness the norm rather than the exception.
Since Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century came to meet new demands
from Europe it will be readily understood that a new kind of economic
relationship developed between Southeast Asia and the industrial world during
that century. The old system, characterised by the Dutch-monopolised spice
trade, faded into unimportance as the new pattern developed. Rather than survey
this pattern country by country, a more useful approach is to consider the
economic changes that took place in terms of some of the principal industries or
commodities involved.
Rubber

The existence of natural rubber had been known for centuries before scientific
advances in the nineteenth century permitted the development of a stable
substance, largely unaffected by temperature changes, that was rapidly
recognised as having a vast range of uses. The problem remained of finding a
reliable source for this product since initially it was available only at high price
and in erratic quantities from South America.
Mostly as the result of British efforts, the possibility of growing rubber in
Southeast Asia was discovered. Since the discovery did not take place until the
last two decades of the nineteenth century it must be noted that rubber was not,
in itself, one of the initial causes for the dramatic advance of European power
into Southeast Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Other economic
factors had been at work before rubber came to play its part, but once established
rubber plantations became a vital justification for colonial endeavour. For in one
of those notable conjunctions between supply and demand the discovery that
rubber could be grown profitably coincided with the sudden expansion of
demand in the early twentieth century that culminated in the period of the First
World War.
Vast areas of the Malayan Peninsula, of Java and Sumatra, and of Vietnam
and Cambodia were brought under rubber cultivation. Here was transformation
indeed, for many of the areas that were planted with rubber had not been
cultivated previously. Some sense of the size of development involved is
provided even in the briefest review of statistics. West Malaysia (peninsular
Malaysia) had no rubber plantations—not even the exploitation of wild rubber in
its various forms—before the 1880s. Yet by the beginning of the 1970s rubber
plantations accounted for nearly 65 per cent of all cultivated land, with one-third
of the agricultural workforce engaged in the plantation industry. This is the most
dramatic example of all, but it reflects a pattern that took place elsewhere, even
if on a smaller scale. Where once land lay uncultivated, or covered by jungle,
new plantations were established.
Such vast enterprises required large investments of capital and this fact
ensured that ownership of large-scale rubber holdings was in the hands either of
foreigners or that very small group within the indigenous community who could
provide the investment capital necessary for establishing a plantation and then
wait at least five years for production to begin. Initially, therefore, large
investors controlled the rubber industry and the benefits to Southeast Asians
themselves were limited. Even in the field of labour, the employment
opportunities in Malaya went to non-indigenous workers as the plantation
companies imported indentured labourers from India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In
Vietnam the bulk of the labour force was indeed Vietnamese but this guaranteed
no real personal or social gain since the conditions under which labour was
recruited and subsequently used were the basis for repeated complaint and
justified scandal.
Yet for all the lack of benefit to Southeast Asians associated with the
establishment of much of the rubber-growing industry, developments from the
1920s onwards redressed the balance to some degree. For it was from that
decade onwards that the smallholder began to play an important part in the
production of rubber. While they could never challenge the role played by the
great plantations, the smallholders were able to grow rubber as part of their
broader agricultural activities and to reap unexpected benefits as a result. To
illustrate the point by statistics again, it has been calculated that by the end of the
1930s well over 40 per cent of the rubber being produced in Malaya and
Indonesia came from smallholders. In the closing years of the 1970s the
smallholders in West Malaysia (the former British Malaya) had improved their
share to above 50 per cent. Such an advance took place against opposition from
the large plantation interests. In British Malaya and even more particularly in the
Dutch East Indies—the role of smallholders was much less important in French
Indochina— legislation discriminated against the smaller grower in favour of the
large plantations. There could be few more sharply defined demonstrations of
the extent to which, under colonial regimes, the economic interests that the
colonial governments believed should be served were not those of the
indigenous inhabitants.
Tin

Tin mining had been part of Southeast Asia’s economic life for millennia before
it assumed new importance in the nineteenth century with the growth of demand
in Europe and America.
Although deposits of tin are found elsewhere in the region, it was in Malaya
(West Malaysia) that the industry developed to its greatest degree. There, from
the 1870s onwards, the establishment of British political control over the Malay
states enabled the rapid expansion of already existing Chinese tin-mining
enterprises. In the twentieth century Chinese dominance was challenged by
European capital and the greater technological efficiency of the extraction
methods used by the large Western firms that now sought to gain a major share
of the industry. Although the Chinese share declined, this section of the industry,
with it reliance on labour-intensive methods, was never overwhelmed by the
capital-intensive Western firms that relied on the tin dredge for the extraction of
the metal.
In contrast to the situation that existed in the rubber-growing industry, the
competition that has just been described was between two different sets of non-
indigenous groups, the Europeans and the immigrant Chinese. The exploitation
of tin by Chinese mining groups, with the sanction and for the partial benefit of
local authorities, had been going on in Malaya for centuries. Only with the
establishment of a British colonial presence in Malaya, however, did the
situation favour a very considerable expansion of Chinese mining activity. The
final resulting situation, before the Second World War, was that Malaya’s tin-
mining industry remained in the hands of groups, whether Chinese or European,
who were considered outsiders by the Malays, and who regarded themselves as
the only true owners of the country known as British Malaya.
Rice

The rubber plantations were largely dependent on imported labour. The tin
industry was in the hands of non-indigenous groups. But in the development of
the most important Southeast Asian export crop of all, rice, the role of the
indigenous peasant was absolutely vital. This did not mean, for the most part,
that the final result in terms of the peasants’ interests was startlingly different
from other aspects of the economic development of Southeast Asia. Unlike the
plantation and mining enterprises, however, in rice growing the Southeast Asian
peasant was essential.
Rice had been exported from Southeast Asia before the onset of a full-scale
colonial advance in the mid-nineteenth century. But the value of the exports was
small, and internal movement within a single country, from a rice surplus area to
a deficit area, was certainly more important than any export trade that was
carried on. Moreover, rice was not generally grown for export. The bulk of the
rice produced before the nineteenth century was for subsistence, to feed the
peasant farmers and their families. Only if conditions were particularly
favourable and yields higher than expected was a surplus available for disposal
outside the growing area.
An increasing world market in the second half of the nineteenth century
provided the stimulus for rapid expansion of those of Southeast Asia’s rice-
growing areas that were capable of developing rice surpluses—the Mekong
River delta region of southern Vietnam, the Chao Phraya (Menam) River delta in
central Thailand, and the Irrawaddy River delta in Burma. In Vietnam and
Burma the expansion of the rice-growing industry took place within a colonial
context. In Thailand, by contrast, the almost equally rapid expansion occurred in
an independent state. The differences between the colonial and the non-colonial
experience are worthy of attention.
Just as the development of large-scale rubber plantations represented a
tremendous physical transformation of the countryside as well as an economic
development of great importance, so too the expansion of the main rice-growing
areas changed the landscape. In the deltas of the Irrawaddy, the Chao Phraya and
the Mekong, a bare 150 years ago, rice growing took place on a sparse, scattered
basis. In a real sense these were untamed frontier lands. Seen today, the deltas
offer a vision of immense agricultural richness and are a testimony to the
millions of anonymous peasants whose labour drained the swamps, built the
canals, and brought the rich soil into crop production. In the face of such
evidence of agricultural richness the fact that these deltas, most particularly in
Burma and Vietnam, became regions of major economic and social inequality
demands an answer.
Put simply but accurately, the promise of the open frontier eluded the
peasantry of Burma and Vietnam because they were not equipped to supply
more than their labour. To grow rice is an age-old peasant activity and one that
they have carried out with tireless efficiency. But in the developing conditions
more than labour was required. Expansion of the area under cultivation may, at
first, have seemed a golden opportunity to the small peasant cultivator. As never
before it appeared that there could be a chance to break the cycle that kept the
peasants what they were—subsistence farmers living in the shadow of want. But
the financial demands of the expanding rice-growing industry were beyond the
peasant. Capital was required for seed, for equipment and to employ the labour
necessary to ensure that the harvest was collected with the minimum of delay.
With great luck an individual Burmese or Vietnamese peasant did occasionally
overcome the problems involved in such a situation. In general, however, the
tide ran against the small peasants’ interests.
Almost from the beginning of the dramatic expansion of the rice-growing area
in southern Vietnam the peasants found they had no role to play in developing
large holdings other than as tenants, at best, and as simple labourers, at worst.
Interestingly enough, the hopes of individual Frenchmen that they would be able
to acquire and control the great rice-growing areas of southern Vietnam proved
as ill-founded as the different hopes of the peasants who sought to change their
lot. The real beneficiaries of the expansion of Vietnam’s rice-growing capacities,
and in participation in the expanding export trade, were a relatively small
number of rich Vietnamese landowners and the Chinese rice merchants of
Cholon, Saigon’s twin city. The Vietnamese landowners, their interests closely
linked with the French colonial power, were able to command both the capital
and the labour necessary to bring the previously unproductive regions into
production. The Chinese merchants and shippers, who also controlled the vital
rice mills in Cholon, provided an unsurpassed commercial network that no one,
European or Vietnamese, could successfully challenge.
In the Burmese case the situation was a little more complicated and the eclipse
of the peasant from other than a labouring role took a little longer. But the
general pattern was essentially the same. One notably different element existed
in Burma as the result of that country’s administrative link with British India. As
Britain established its colonial control over Burma, the new territories came
under the general administration of India, despite the substantial cultural
differences dividing the two countries. As ‘part’ of British India, Burma was
open to virtually unrestricted immigration from India and many of these Indian
immigrants were to play a major, and most would argue negative, social role in
the development of the rice-growing industry of Lower Burma. Although it is
true that the availability of rural credit owed much to Indian moneylenders, it is
equally true that the long-term trend was one in which Indians slowly drove out
the Burmese from many of the essential sections of the rice industry, including
the basic role of labourer. Burmese landlords remained an important element in
the overall scheme of things, but like the Vietnamese landowners who profited
from the Mekong delta rice fields they were separated in almost every sense
from their workers.
For both Vietnam and Burma the weaknesses and dangers that had
accompanied this economic transformation of the rice industry during colonial
times were dramatically and tragically revealed in the Great Depression of the
1930s. Once the export markets of the world collapsed so were the weaknesses
within the rice industry starkly revealed. Although the major landowners were
able to weather the storm through reliance on accumulated savings or by
drawing on reserves of capital, no such choice lay open to the labourer, who
suddenly found himself without funds and without work. The social costs of
such a situation had immediate consequences in riots and protests. In the long
term the political consequences were of a more formidable character.
In very considerable contrast to the description of events in Vietnam and
Burma was the history of the rice industry in Thailand. To suggest that no
peasants suffered in the expansion of rice growing in the Chao Phraya delta
region of Thailand would be to ignore reality. Few, if any, major economic
changes take place without some human cost. Yet if there were losers in this
massive development there were certainly far fewer than elsewhere and the
social costs were notably smaller. Like Vietnam and Burma, Thailand in the
mid-nineteenth century possessed a vast area suitable for rice growing that had
not been previously developed. Unlike in the other two countries, however,
exploitation of this formerly untilled area was the essential prerogative of the
peasant. Just why this should have been so is not always clear, but the main
reasons are not hard to find. The fact that Thailand was not a colony of an
external power—whatever limitations external powers might have succeeded in
imposing on Thai freedom of action—was of cardinal importance. The Thai
government was not accountable to a distant parliament, ministry or electorate
that expected the colonies to pay. Instead the control of agricultural development
was in the hands of the Thai monarch and his close advisers. It was they, rather
than foreign commercial interests, who determined the broad pattern of
developments which saw the peasants retaining land ownership and the size of
land holdings much more restricted than in Burma and Vietnam. The availability
of capital was important in Thailand too. Once again the role of Chinese rice
millers and merchants was essential for expansion. Yet unlike the other two
expanding areas geared to the export market, the relationship between the
peasants and the merchants in Thailand could be accurately be described as
involving a sense of partnership rather than exploitation.
Other export commodities

Rubber, tin and rice were among the most important of the commodities
exported from Southeast Asia. But there were many others that also contributed
to the character of the region’s economy, in particular its increasing dependence
on capital investment and the use of wage labour. The development of copra
plantations, for instance, followed the pattern set by the rubber industry, though
on a much smaller scale. A range of other crops proved suitable for plantation
development, including tobacco and coffee and, most importantly, sugar. This
last crop developed as a major export item in Java and the Philippines. Drawing
on the local population for its labour supply, the sugar industry played a
significant part in shifting the balance of peasant labour away from subsistence
farming to paid employment. In doing so the sugar-growing industry was yet
another factor in aiding the great economic changes of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The development of Southeast Asia’s oil industry was less
labour intensive but required very substantial capital investment. As early as the
1880s oil was being produced in Burma. Subsequently, from the second decade
of the twentieth century onward, oil production was an important export
commodity from the Indonesian island of Sumatra and from the territories of
Sarawak and Brunei in northern Borneo.

So far the emphasis in this chapter has been on one broad aspect of the general
economic transformation that took place in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Many other changes and developments occurred that were of great
importance, including changes in the region’s infrastructure, its roads, railways,
bridges, dams and ports. But there is still an important question that needs
answering: how widespread were the changes that were taking place? Should we
imagine a situation in which, from some time in the second half of the nineteenth
century, Southeast Asia was ‘gripped’ by economic change, so that no part of
life was untouched by the kind of developments that have already been
described?
Quite clearly such was not the case. In the more remote areas of the Southeast
Asian world the inhabitants were largely, if not totally, unaware of the
momentous changes that were occurring elsewhere. Even in less remote regions,
and most particularly in the rural villages, much of life went on with only the
most limited effects being felt as a result of the economic developments
associated with the expansion of Southeast Asia’s export economy. Village
cultural life, to take one of the most notable examples, demonstrated an
extraordinary resilience to outside pressures, even when these were
geographically not far distant. Increasingly, however, recent research has laid
stress on the extent to which the economic transformation did reach down and
affect a quite remarkably broad range of Southeast Asian life, whether this was
the intention of the ruling colonial administrations or not.
The development of an export-oriented economy not only posed the
possibility of an alternative to subsistence farming, it also introduced those who
were prepared to engage in wage labour to the concept of a cash economy. This,
for most of the rural population of Southeast Asia, was a totally new element
that replaced traditional barter arrangements. The development of a cash
economy went hand in hand with the slow but steady growth of a demand for
consumer goods on which to spend wages. And this pattern was such as to
encourage the spread of petty retail business, usually run by one or other of the
two major immigrant groups in Southeast Asia, the Chinese or the Indians.
Developments of this sort were most obviously associated with areas in which
the establishment of plantation industries had immediate and easily observable
results. Other results were less easily observable. To a considerable extent their
existence has only come to be recognised by scholars who have been able to
review the past with the benefit of the accumulated knowledge and the
perspective that the passage of time affords—which does not mean that
Southeast Asian peasants were unable to recognise the problems in a less
academic fashion at the time. It is now clear, to take one of the best-known
examples, that as the economic transformation of Java took place, and as there
was a simultaneous major growth in the size of the rural population, the
Indonesian peasants who lived on that island responded by a process that has
been called ‘agricultural involution’. Instead of seeking to escape from the
increasing difficulties of rural life by migration—one of the methods adopted
elsewhere—the peasants methodically set to work to grow more and more on
what was, proportionately per capita, less and less space. This effort may have
been admirable in terms of the determination displayed. In terms of the social
costs that it exacted it was highly negative in character. The already harsh
conditions of normal existence became worse. The value of land increased to
benefit not the average peasant but the moderately well-to-do rural dweller. And
the downward spiral of rural poverty was followed at an increasing pace.
Developments in Java are perhaps the best known of those important changes
that were taking place in the background of economic transformation but which
were often misunderstood or ignored at the time. A much less well-known
example, that also reflects some general developments, may be taken from the
history of Cambodia. This country, in great contrast to Java, was untroubled by
population pressure throughout its modern history. Yet even here, in a country
that did not develop large-scale plantation industries until after the First World
War, the existence of a colonial presence led to economic changes that
profoundly affected the life of the rural population. The institution of new taxes,
the establishment of new authorities within the village structure where none had
existed before, and the requirement for men to engage in unpaid labour on the
state’s behalf disrupted the traditional rural scene. Only as the full impact of
French policies in rural Cambodia have begun to be understood has it become
possible to understand why rural discontent in 1915 and 1916 was sufficiently
strong to involve protest action by perhaps as many as 100 000 peasants.
So change as the result of economic developments was indeed widespread, but
it was also very uneven. The views of some earlier economic analysts who
thought in terms of there being two separate economies—one linked the to the
world market and the other a closed ‘native’ economy—operating in Southeast
Asia were incorrect. Certainly there were broad divisions within the economic
life of the various countries of Southeast Asia. These broad divisions were,
however, interrelated so that the life of a subsistence farmer as well as the wage
labourer on a plantation was affected by the economic changes that were taking
place.
The development of cities provided one instance of the broad impact of
general economic change. In the early nineteenth century the number of cities of
any size in Southeast Asia was very small. Royal capitals, such as Bangkok in
Thailand, or Yogyakarta in central Java, had populations that were numbered in
tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. Even the older colonial capitals
such as Batavia (Jakarta) and Manila had, after centuries of an alien presence,
populations of less than 200 000. Saigon in 1820 had a population of about 180
000, but it was unquestionably the largest city in Vietnam, a country that the
French in the 1860s accurately described as being almost entirely without cities.
A view of Singapore Harbour c. 1840
After becoming a British possession in 1819, Singapore grew rapidly in both size and importance. As
Southeast Asia’s principal entrepôt, its harbour was constantly filled with shipping, as seen in this early
engraving.

The great cities of Southeast Asia, in short, date for the most part from the
nineteenth century, in terms of their possessing a character as metropolitan
centres with vital links to the wider world. Singapore, to take perhaps the most
dramatic example of all, was a tiny Malay fishing settlement at the time of its
foundation in 1819, probably with less than two hundred permanent residents. Its
rapid growth during the nineteenth century was chiefly due to immigration from
China in response to a rapidly expanding economy. As the great entrepôt for the
Southeast Asian region as a whole, Singapore’s development was a vivid
reflection of the wider economic changes that were taking place. It was the
transhipment point for goods that were sent to ports in the rest of the world.
After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Singapore’s role as link between
Asia and Europe was strengthened as the time required for a voyage to or from
Europe was sharply reduced.
Just as the growth of cities was a feature of the nineteenth century, so too was
the expansion of the infrastructure, the roads, canals and other forms of
communication so essential to modern economic life. The effect of the new road
and rail systems introduced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries varied
greatly from country to country. In some cases, moreover, the long-term and
unplanned effect was just as important as the immediate intentions for which a
particular communications artery was constructed. The case of the roads built in
peninsular Malaysia is a good example of such a development.
Before the last decades of the nineteenth century almost all communication in
Malaysia was by water. Instead of the modern road and rail systems that carry
traffic north and south, particularly on the west coast of the Peninsula, transport
moved slowly on the sea and in an even more restricted fashion along the rivers
that flowed down from the central mountain range to the coast. The construction
of a road and rail network took place to carry the growing quantities of tin and
rubber that were produced as economic transformation played its part in this
region. At first there was little benefit to the population in general as a result of
this new communications system, for it was specifically designed to serve
particular and mostly alien commercial interests. Yet with the passage of time
the expanding communications system came to be important for the Malay
peasantry as well, and eventually to serve the interests of those peasants.
Settlement patterns in Malaysia, in Vietnam and Cambodia, and elsewhere in
Southeast Asia, changed to take account of the new infrastructure that developed
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and made ease of movement an
expectation for large numbers of the population. Comfort may not be the most
striking feature of travel by local bus or third-class train in the region, but no one
who has used such transport in modern Southeast Asia can doubt the importance
and relative ease of the travel that has become such an accepted feature of daily
life.

There can be no room in anything less than a full-length study of Southeast

Asia’s economy to provide more than the briefest mention of some of the other
features of the vital transformation that began in the nineteenth century. A longer
examination of the economic changes would need to dwell on the development
of the banking system. Space would need to be found for discussion of the
contrasts in development from country to country and region to region, as well
as the broad similarities that have been given emphasis in this chapter. And
attention would certainly need to be paid to complex questions concerning the
interplay of economic and political forces—a point that will be examined later in
relation to the rise of nationalism.
From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, the broad lines of
development are clear, as is the importance of those developments. Southeast
Asia in a period of less than one hundred years changed from being a region in
which exports played a relatively minor role and subsistence farming was
essentially dominant to a vital area in the world economy as a whole as its
exports met European and American demands that had been fuelled by the
changes following the industrial revolution. As Southeast Asia’s export economy
developed, so did more general economic and social change penetrate into
almost every level of society, leaving only the most remote regions and
populations untouched. The growth of the great metropolitan cities, the rise of
exports and the development of a cash economy, the institution of new
communications systems—all these are products of economic change in a period
beginning only one hundred and sixty years ago. Indeed, during the years
between the mid-nineteenth century and the outbreak of the Second World War,
Southeast Asia’s economy underwent greater change that at any time in the
region’s entire history.
SEVEN
THE ASIAN IMMIGRANTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Almost anyone who visits Southeast Asia for the first time will be struck by the
variety of ethnic groups encountered in any of the major cities of the region. The
‘mix’ will vary considerably from city to city. But there is scarcely an urban
centre in which a visitor will not readily recognise the wide range of differing
groups that make up the city population. Sometimes the clues to the existence of
differing ethnic groups will be in terms of physical appearance. Descendants of
dark-skinned Tamil immigrants from southern India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) are
quickly identified as different in appearance from the descendants of immigrants
from China or, indeed, northern India. At other times the fact of ethnic diversity
is made apparent through the clothing worn by one set of immigrants rather than
another, or in contrast to those worn by the descendants of the original
inhabitants of the country in which the immigrants now live. Other indications of
ethnic differences abound. The places of worship of one group are usually in
stark architectural contrast to those of another. A visitor has no difficulty, in
Singapore for instance, in seeing the difference between a Malay mosque, a
Chinese or Indian temple, or the imported European architectural style of a
Christian church, the religious symbol of yet another immigrant community.
Technically, of course, the term ‘immigrant’ applies only to the first
generation of settlers who left their own lands to come and live in a foreign
country or region. In using the term in this present chapter, an extended meaning
is being given to the word. In discussing immigrant communities this chapter
will focus on the important phenomenon of modern Southeast Asian history that
has involved those groups of settlers who established new communities that
were, for generations, regarded as being in but not really part of the country in
which they were located. To put the matter another way, difficult though it may
be to believe at the beginning of the twenty-first century, most of the ethnic
Chinese living in Malaya (peninsular Malaysia) in the 1930s were not regarded
as permanent settlers. The majority of the Chinese population had not at that
stage been born in Malaya and, so far as their political interests were concerned,
China rather than Malaya was where these interests lay. A similar series of
comments could be made about the Indian immigrant community in the same
colonial situation. The majority had been born in India rather than Malaya and
those in the Indian immigrant community with political interests directed these,
almost exclusively, towards India.
Even the brief amount of information provided so far will alert a reader to
some of the most important features of Asian immigration into Southeast Asia.
The major immigrant groups involved came from China and India, though as
will be made clear later in this chapter there were very considerable variations
within these two broad ethnic groups. Large-scale immigration from India and
China into Southeast Asia is a relatively modern development, dating from the
second half of the nineteenth century in most cases. And finally, though far from
exhaustively, many of those who made up the immigrant communities in
Southeast Asia settled in cities or were involved in occupations linked to the
commercial centres of the region.

Immigration in its various forms is as old as Southeast Asia’s history, in fact

older. During prehistoric times successive waves of immigrants moved
southwards through mainland Southeast Asia so that the area of modern
Cambodia probably experienced two major immigrant waves before the Khmer
or Cambodian ethnic group established its political dominance in the fifth and
sixth centuries CE. (Some scholars would argue that what was involved was the
passage of new cultures rather than of people; for the moment the matter is
unresolved.) In the maritime regions of Southeast Asia, also, there were broad
movements of population in prehistoric and historic times. Specialists still argue
about the nature and direction of these movements. As an example of such
controversies, it is only quite recently that scholarly agreement has been reached
on the fact that both the Melanesian and Polynesian islands of the Pacific were
settled by people who migrated out of Southeast Asia in prehistoric times. Part
of the significance and scale of these early migrations may be grasped from the
fact that outposts of Indonesian culture may be found in as distant a location as
the island of Madagascar lying off the east coast of Africa.
As prehistory blends into history so do we become aware of another form of
migration—a much more limited and selective form of population movement
than the large-scale changes that appear to have taken place, for instance, when
Australoid peoples were succeeded by Indonesian peoples moving through the
Southeast Asia mainland several thousands of years ago. The migration in
question involved the limited but very important movement of priests and traders
from India into the early states of Southeast Asia. These men, for few if any
women were involved, were not part of any massive wave of population
movement. Instead, by their command of specialist knowledge, they came to fill
vitally important roles in the emerging Southeast Asian states and so to implant
the Indian cultural contribution to Southeast Asia’s historical development that
was discussed earlier in this book. (As noted in that earlier discussion, some
scholars now place more emphasis on imported ideas being brought back to
Southeast Asia from India by Southeast Asians themselves.)
In general, the Southeast Asian classical world does not seem to have been
marked by large-scale voluntary migration. In the still generally accepted view, a
limited but highly important number of Indians settled in the area and made their
mark. From an early time, too, there were Chinese visitors to Southeast Asia,
some of whom became settlers. Writing about Cambodia at the end of the
thirteenth century, but in all probability describing a situation that had existed
for some hundreds of years, the Chinese diplomat Chou Ta-kuan (Zhou Daguan)
reported on his countrymen whom he saw in the Cambodian capital at Angkor.
They were mostly sailors who had settled in Cambodia and become traders,
marrying local women with their descendants becoming, we must presume,
thoroughly absorbed within the population in a generation or two.
The advance of the ethnic Thai (that is, people speaking the Tai language) into
the territories of modern Laos and Thailand was a major instance of migration
that did take place in the latter part of the classical age. Just what was involved
in this migration is a subject for the familiar controversy associated with so
much of Southeast Asia’s history. Did the advance of the Thai people into the
fertile lowlands of Southeast Asia involve a mass movement of population? Or
was the process more subtle, involving the spread of the Tai language and
culture by an elite that succeeded in imposing a new Thai identity on others?
The answer is less important for the moment than the contrast the Thai case
provides with the rest of Southeast Asia. Leaving aside the forced movement of
large numbers of persons from one area to another as prisoners of war, Southeast
Asia by the end of the classical period was not an area in which major
migrations any longer occurred. Developments involving Vietnam once again
were an exception. From the achievement of independence from China in 939
CE the Vietnamese population slowly but surely moved southward into
territories that had been controlled by Champa and Cambodia. This nam-tien
(southern march, or advance) was still in progress when the French colonists
arrived in the nineteenth century. For the rest, what had begun to develop very
slowly was the type of immigration Zhou Daguan saw at Angkor: the settlement
of individuals and families in response to the opportunities these persons saw in
foreign lands. Some of these immigrants were quickly absorbed into the existing
population. Others, most notably the communities of traders associated with a
great port city such as Malacca, maintained their very sharply defined ethnic
identity. At the height of Malacca’s power and fame in the fifteenth century
there were major communities of Chinese, Arabs, Indians of different regions,
Indonesians and Persians, to mention only some of the cosmopolitan inhabitants
in the city, each living in their own clearly defined quarters within the city. It is
almost certain that most of these people living far from their homelands did not
think of Malacca as their home. They might die or have children in Malacca, but
their home remained in a distant region across the sea.
This continued to be the attitude of the great majority of non-indigenous Asian
communities living in Southeast Asia until very recent times. Individual
immigrants might become important within a particular state so that their
descendants blended completely into what had been a new culture for their
ancestor. The Thai kingdom provides such a case in which a Persian family, the
Bunnags, settled in Ayuthia in the seventeenth century and rose by the
nineteenth to be among the most powerful in the land. (Members of this family
continue to be prominent in Thai official life to the present day.)
Singapore Malays, Chinese and Indians
Three faces of an immigrant society—Malays, Chinese and Indians in Singapore.
Singapore provided the most dramatic examples of an immigrant society in Southeast Asia. Sparsely
settled by less than two hundred Malays when Raffles took possession of Singapore for Britain in 1819, it is
today a thriving state of more than 5 million. Chinese compose 74 per cent of the population, Malays 13 per
cent, Indians 9 per cent and the balance of 4 per cent other races.
In these photographs dating from the late 1970s, Malays are seen returning from Friday prayers, Chinese
watch traditional theatre, and Indians stand by their doorway in the predominantly Indian Serangoon Road
area.

There were others who did not conform to the general pattern. The Baba
Chinese of Malacca were a case in point. These descendants of immigrants lived
in a special world that was half Chinese and half Malay, never completely one
nor the other. But perhaps as their most distinctive characteristic they did regard
themselves as permanent settlers in Malaya. In a somewhat similar way the
Chinese mestizo community in the Philippines, and most notably in Manila,
came to be a group that sank deep roots into what had originally been an alien
land. This mestizo community was already important by the eighteenth century
and the descendants of the mixed alliances involving Chinese and Filipinos
played a vital role in Philippine life that continues to the present day.
Yet despite these and other exceptions to the general pattern, including the
refugees from Qing (Ch’ing) rule in China who fled to Vietnam and settled there
in the seventeenth century, the situation throughout Southeast Asia had a broadly
uniform character. In the port cities and to a much lesser extent in the urban
centres of the interior there were small immigrant communities engaged in
commerce that was, for the most part, shunned by Southeast Asians themselves.
Of these immigrant communities the Chinese were by far the most important.
The range of Chinese business and financial interests was immense, but their
numbers by comparison with later stages of full-scale immigration were limited.
At the end of the eighteenth century the number of Chinese in and around
Batavia (Jakarta), to take an example, was about 22 000. This figure, moreover,
related to one of the two major colonial cities in the whole of Southeast Asia—
the other was Manila. Outside of these two cities, the numbers were much
smaller.

Change came in the nineteenth century, and as the result of many factors.
Nowhere was the impact of Asian immigration more obvious than in the British
colonial possessions that came to be known as the Straits Settlements (Penang,
Malacca and Singapore) and Malaya. And of these Singapore provides, perhaps,
the most dramatic if atypical example of how Asian immigration into Southeast
Asia in the nineteenth century transformed the previously existing political and
demographic balance.
When Thomas Stamford Raffles took possession of Singapore for the British
Crown in 1819 his actions ‘removed’ a sparsely populated haunt of fishermen
and pirates from the surrounding Malay world. He claimed a legal basis for his
actions in terms of the agreements he concluded with one of the parties to a
succession dispute involving the Johore sultanate, within whose territory
Singapore island lay. Leaving these justifications aside, Raffles’ aim of making
Singapore the centre for international trade in Southeast Asia had a very
immediate consequence. Manpower was needed to turn Singapore into an
entrepôt and the hundred or two hundred Malay fishermen on the island were
neither inclined nor sufficient in their numbers to provide this. Chinese, and to a
lesser extent Indians, were ready to do so. Singapore’s census figures tell the
story. Within five years of its foundation Singapore’s population had risen to
more than ten thousand. Malay numbers had increased so that this group
exceeded 4500—a notable increase on the situation in 1819 and a figure
representing more than 40 per cent of the total population. But the trend for the
future was already clear in the fact that Singapore’s Chinese population was
already nearly 3500 persons (over 30 per cent) where previously there had been
no Chinese settlers at all.
Within twenty-five years of Singapore’s foundation the Chinese in the British
colony represented an absolute majority of the total population. Of the 52 000
residents in the mid-1840s, no less than 32 000, or 61 per cent, were Chinese.
Descriptions of Singapore written in the mid-nineteenth century make very clear
how dependent the growing settlement was on the labour and services of the
immigrant Chinese. It seemed that scarcely a trade existed that was not filled by
the newcomers from China. And as the years passed a growing number of
immigrants became men of substance, as wealthy as and even wealthier than the
European businessmen who had also found excellent prospects in Singapore.
Through being a barely inhabited island Singapore was a special case in the
Southeast Asian region as a whole. Nowhere else in the region experienced the
same combination of commercial success and Chinese immigration that
eventually formed the basis for a new state in which the descendants of ethnic
Chinese were and are the dominant ethnic group. Yet if the Singapore
experience must be noted as unique, this should not diminish the importance and
significance of Chinese immigration elsewhere in Southeast Asia in the
nineteenth century. In Singapore’s neighbour, peninsular Malaysia, for example,
the size of the Chinese immigration into that country during the second half of
the nineteenth century and up to the beginning of the Second World War created
political problems that are still present today.
In the mid-nineteenth century the political map of the Malaysian–Singaporean
world was very different from that known today. Britain administered its three
territories of Penang, Malacca and Singapore. But what was to become British
Malaya, the Peninsula, lay outside British control. The growth of Singapore was,
by the middle of the nineteenth century, playing a part in changing the British
reluctance to become involved in the often complex affairs of the various Malay
sultanates of the Peninsula. The sultanate of Johore, separated from Singapore
by less than a mile of shallow water, was one of the first of the Malay states in
the Peninsula to develop important links with Singapore. In economic if not
political terms, Johore by the middle of the nineteenth century might be
described as Singapore’s hinterland. Although many decades were to pass before
Johore became the essential supplier of much of Singapore’s fresh water and
produce, this role was foreshadowed in the steady expansion of agriculture by
Chinese settlers with close links to Singapore. In the middle of the nineteenth
century, most particularly, Johore was a base for the production of gambier, a
plant used to produce black dye, and for growing pepper.
Chinese agricultural settlement in Johore, important though it was, was much
less significant than another Malayan industry that developed rapidly from the
middle of the nineteenth century. From the 1850s onwards there was a rapid
expansion of tin mining and for this Chinese labour and Chinese capital became
vitally important. Tin had been mined in Malaya for centuries, but in an
essentially limited fashion. As the Western world moved more and more quickly
into the industrial age, however, the growing demand for tin changed the old
pattern of limited exploitation of Malaya’s vast reserves of the metal. But there
was a problem: who was going to mine the tin?
Already by the 1850s the Malay sultans, their noblemen and chiefs, had
recognised the value of Chinese labour and recruited Chinese workmen either
directly from China or through agents in Singapore. By the 1860s, as demand for
tin continued to grow, so did the number of Chinese tin miners in Malaya
increase, and with them Chinese merchants and businessmen. Tin mining was
not an activity that Malay peasants found attractive so that if the Malay rulers
and aristocracy wanted to expand the tin-mining industry the easiest way to do
this was to expand the Chinese work force.
This policy presented problems. The Malays did not regard the Chinese
miners as permanent settlers, nor did they think of themselves in these terms.
Equally, the miners did not think in terms of the rulers of the Malay states as
having any authority over them. Such authority as they recognised was exercised
by clan associations, self-help groups, and most importantly by secret societies.
This state of affairs had profound implications for Malaya, for the Chinese
miners, numbering in the tens of thousands by the 1870s, became a major factor
in the increasingly unsettled conditions in the Peninsula. As Malay factions in
the various sultanates quarrelled over succession disputes, Chinese secret
societies clashed with each other over the right to exclusive mining privileges in
one area or another. Not surprisingly, moreover, the disputes of the Malay
aristocracy came to involve the contending Chinese groups. When to this already
dangerous and unstable situation was added an increase in piracy along the coast
of the Peninsula one begins to understand the point of the arguments that were
increasingly heard in Singapore calling for Britain to play a part in the political
affairs of the Malayan Peninsula. For the Peninsula was, by the 1860s and 1870s,
an important market for commercial firms based in Singapore and Singapore
was, in turn, heavily involved in the tin-mining industry.
When British involvement did take place from the mid-1870s, one of the
clearly seen results was the continuing influx of Chinese workers and merchants.
The new colonial presence succeeded in establishing law and order and in doing
so created a more stable environment for commercial activity of all kinds. As
towns grew up in Malaya they were, on the west coast of the Peninsula,
overwhelmingly Chinese in character. Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Seremban, and
dozens of other smaller settlements were centres for Chinese commerce both
large and small. Yet, difficult though it may be to believe more than a hundred
years later, the Chinese who came to Malaya in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries saw themselves not as immigrants who had left their
homeland permanently but rather as persons who, however long the stay might
be, were only temporarily living in a foreign land.
Only if this is understood is it possible to explain the nature of the Chinese
community in Malaya before the Second World War and the policy, or lack of it,
on the part of the British colonial government towards that community. As late
as the 1930s the overwhelming majority of Chinese in peninsular Malaya had
either been born in China or were the children of parents born in China. The
political interests of the Chinese community lay, for the most part, outside
Malaya in China itself. Rather than pursuing political activity connected with
Malaya the great issue dividing the community was the clash between the
Nationalist and Communist Parties in China. While living in Malaya, the bulk of
the Chinese continued to think of China as their home, as a place to return to die,
and as the country from which they would draw their cultural values and which
would shape their political opinions.
The Second World War was to bring an abrupt end to this situation. Then,
after that war had ended, the momentous changes in China that followed the
victory of the Chinese Communist forces meant that the old relationship between
communities of ethnic Chinese overseas and the Chinese state could never be the
same again. But by the time the Second World War interrupted the apparent
colonial calm of Southeast Asia the Chinese population resident in Malaya had
grown to be nearly 40 per cent of the country’s total population, a formidably
large proportion and one that was increasingly seen as a threat by the growing
number of politically conscious Malays.

Why were Chinese immigrants so important in Malaysia and, if on a smaller

scale, in so many other areas of Southeast Asia? How does an historian, or any
other scholar, explain the repeated success of the Chinese communities in
Southeast Asia in a wide range of commercial and other undertakings?
There is a temptation, not always avoided in the past by those trying to find
answers to these and similar questions, to retreat into mystifying generalisations
about Chinese ‘commercial skill’ or the ‘innate capacity’ of the Chinese to
succeed in business by really trying. The attraction of such answers is obvious—
broad, general answers to big questions, without too much complicated analysis.
A more helpful and accurate set of responses to the questions can be offered, but
a warning should be given. These more accurate answers, particularly if they are
explored in any depth, are complex and even difficult to understand. The study
of China has always been the study of a world apart by a group of scholars
whose mastery of the Chinese language sets them apart from their fellows. To
some extent the same comment is true for those who study the Nanyang Chinese,
the ‘Chinese of the Southern Seas’ with their wide variety of dialects, and the
present writer’s readers should be aware that he has no specialist knowledge of
this field.
The effort of explaining the success of Chinese commercial activity in
Southeast Asia may be lessened by noting one vital fact that is often forgotten. A
large proportion of the Chinese immigrants into Southeast Asia came, worked,
and died as coolies—labourers, working for low wages and doing hard,
physically demanding work. The success of the Chinese immigrants who were
businessmen should not be allowed to obscure the existence of the poorly paid
and often ill-treated labourers. Other Chinese immigrants worked in occupations
far removed from the upper ranks of the commercial world, as market gardeners
or as kitchen hands, as carpenters and as clerks. In brief, success in business and
access to great wealth was not a universal feature of life for the Chinese
immigrant in Southeast Asia.
For those who were successful some general and straightforward explanations
are possible. Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia filled roles in society that
others would not or could not fill. The situation in Vietnam during the period of
French colonial rule makes this point clear. When the French invaded southern
Vietnam in the late 1850s and then captured Saigon in 1861 they encouraged
Chinese settlement because they knew that Chinese businessmen could play a
commercial role for which no one else in the colony—French or Vietnamese—
was equipped to play. What was true in Vietnam was true elsewhere. Chinese
immigrants were ready and able to undertake tasks that Southeast Asians
themselves either shunned or for which they lacked training and expertise. The
role of a rural shopkeeper provides a good example of the kind of position that a
Chinese immigrant occupied but which was, in general, shunned by Southeast
Asians themselves. Southeast Asians, with some notable exceptions, did not
regard commercial endeavour as an attractive way of life. Moreover, even to
engage in the business of small-scale shopkeeping in a rural area required capital
and an understanding of a cash economy. Chinese immigrants did have notable
advantages here. Even if a man of ability did not possess capital of his own he
could often gain access to funds through family or clan connections. And once
he possessed funds his knowledge of the workings of a cash economy enabled
him to become not simply a vendor of goods but in addition to engage in a broad
range of business, selling on credit to farmers in return for a share of their crop
and lending money. It is easy enough to see why Chinese immigrants were, on
occasion, the subjects of resentment. A successful shopkeeper with interests
extending into the rice industry, most particularly, could become a vital and
sometimes oppressive figure.
Resentment of Chinese immigrants was also felt, on occasion, because of the
links they had with colonial governments. As the presence of colonial
governments became more and more a matter of resentment among the peoples
of Southeast Asia, so did that resentment come to encompass those Chinese
immigrants, in particular, whose livelihood was closely linked with the alien,
European authorities. In Indonesia, for instance, there was bitter resentment of
the Chinese who acted as tax collectors and as the agents for the colonial
government’s opium monopoly. And feeling against these Chinese agents of the
government was given a sharper edge by their readiness to use the colonial
government’s laws to settle disputes rather relying on the customary or adat law
of the Indonesians.
Resentment of the Chinese immigrant communities in Southeast Asia was
more acute in those regions where a variety of social and religious factors made
any prospect of assimilating the immigrants into the existing community
extremely difficult, if not impossible. Only in Cambodia, Thailand and the
Philippines has there been major assimilation of Chinese into existing societies.
Elsewhere, with Vietnam as a partial exception, assimilation has been limited,
even rare. For the Indonesian and Malaysian regions of Southeast Asia the
reluctance of the Chinese immigrants to embrace Islam has been a major barrier
to assimilation. In Cambodia and Thailand, by contrast, the national religion of
Buddhism provided a flexible framework within which immigrant Chinese
found it possible to begin the assimilation process that was then carried through
by subsequent generations. The Catholic church in the Philippines may not,
perhaps, be described as flexible in the same way as the Buddhist church in
Thailand or Cambodia, but without Islam’s dietary restrictions and with, in
practice if not always in strict theory, considerable tolerance towards widely
varying degrees of religious observance, Catholicism in the Philippines played a
vital role in the assimilative process.
 As late as the mid-1960s it was still possible to see the process of assimilation
at work in Cambodia in a clear fashion. The experience of each family had its
distinctive features but the actual case that is described in the following
paragraphs may fairly be designated as representative of a process repeated
elsewhere hundreds upon thousands of times.
In the Cambodian seaport town of Kampot a few families dominated the
important pepper trade. One of these families still, in the mid-1960s, had a
founder member alive. He, by then in his nineties, had come to Cambodia with
his brother in the late 1880s. They were then in their early twenties and had left
their native Chinese island of Hainan to settle in an area where Hainanese had
begun to develop the cultivation of pepper before the end of the eighteenth
century. This old man, who spoke no Cambodian, was the great-great-uncle of
the youngest member of the family, three generations removed from the
immigrants of the 1880s. And this young man in his early twenties spoke
virtually no Chinese, was legally Cambodian, spoke Cambodian as his first
language, and was indistinguishable to an outside observer from the many
thousands of other Cambodians whose ancestry included ethnic Chinese
forebears.
To see the oldest and youngest members of the family together was to have
the reality of assimilation forcefully demonstrated. An equally striking insight
came in the vast shop-house that accommodated three generations. Depending
on the generation involved, there were subtle clues to the balance existing
between ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Cambodianness’. Buddha images, in the Cambodian
style, rested near strips of red paper painted with Chinese characters in gold that
offered the traditional wishes for health, wealth, longevity and fecundity. Of the
dwellers in the shop-house perhaps no more than half could read these
characters. A glance at a simplified family tree emphasises the subtle but steady
change from being Chinese to becoming Cambodian in the family just described.
Whether welcomed or resented, assimilated or kept as a community rigidly
apart, the Chinese immigrants into Southeast Asia played a major role in the
region’s history. Their economic role was most obvious but time and again that
economic role was one that had important political implications. Above all, the
presence of large numbers of unassimilated Chinese in their immigrant
communities was, whatever their role beforehand, transformed into a major
political problem once the Second World War and the establishment of the
Chinese People’s Republic in 1949 meant that a return to their homeland was,
for the great majority, a personal and a political impossibility.

Mention has already been made of the fact that the Chinese were far from being
the only immigrant community in Southeast Asia. Some of the other immigrant
communities were of minor importance in the broad history of the region,
however important individual members of a particular ethnic group may have
been. The scattered immigrant communities from parts of the Middle East are a
case in point. Other immigrant communities were important in particular areas
but not in others. In Cambodia and Laos, for instance, the French encouraged
Vietnamese migration since the Vietnamese were ready to undertake the clerical
duties required by the French colonial administration and engage in small-scale
commerce that only very rarely attracted Cambodian and Lao interest. Of all the
immigrant communities, however, only one other ethnic group played a part in
economic life that even approached that played by the Chinese. This was the
overseas Indian community; a community, moreover, that like the Chinese can
be discussed in general terms only so long as due weight is given to the great
variations within it.
Although we are aware of Indian immigration in Southeast Asia dating back
to the early period of written records, major Indian immigration into the region
did not begin until the nineteenth century. As was the case with Chinese
immigration, Indians came to Southeast Asia to fill positions that could not or
would not be filled by Southeast Asians themselves. And like the Chinese who
immigrated to Southeast Asia the bulk of the Indians who came to the region did
so because the chances for employment appeared better than in their native land.
 While Indian immigrants established themselves throughout the Southeast
Asian region, their numbers were greatest in Burma and the Malaysia–Singapore
region. The reasons for this situation are readily recognised. India was
administered by a British colonial government and emigration from India was
mostly to other British colonial possessions. The bulk of the Indians who
migrated were labourers, particularly plantation labourers. But Indian labour
became important in other spheres too—in road building and in railway work.
Right up to the present day the importance of Indian labour can be readily seen
in the fields just mentioned by any visitor to Malaysia.
Like the Chinese, however, Indian immigrants into Southeast Asia worked in
a wide range of occupations. Some were recruited in India to occupy military
and police positions that their caste or religious group had traditionally occupied
in India. Others, among them the moneylenders, came of their own accord to
practise a profession that frequently led to resentment when local Southeast
Asian peasants found themselves deeply in debt to an alien. The activities of
Indian moneylenders in Burma were among the reasons for the very great
resentment felt by the Burmese towards the Indians, a resentment that led, after
Burma’s independence, to a mass expulsion of Indians from the country.
As with other immigrants into Southeast Asia in the expanding economic
circumstances of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were some
who prospered mightily. Indian immigrants and their first-generation
descendants became successful businessmen, lawyers and doctors. Yet while it is
difficult to supply very satisfactory figures, it is quite clear that a smaller
proportion of Indian immigrants into Southeast Asia rose to the towering heights
of commercial success attained by some Chinese. The explanation for this
difference seems fairly clear even if a great deal more research into the question
still needs to be done. In general, Indian commercial success in Southeast Asia
appears to have been very much at the family level. As the result of a system of
values that included reluctance to become engaged in business ventures
involving joint stock operations, Indian commercial success was never so far-
reaching as for the Chinese.

Asian immigration into Southeast Asia was one of the most important features of
the great economic changes that took place from the middle of the nineteenth
century. The immigrants provided the physical muscle, the energy, and later the
finance for much of the development that took place as Southeast Asia moved
firmly, if unevenly, away from the traditional past. In Singapore, where the state
that ultimately emerged at independence was dominated by ethnic Chinese, and
in Malaysia, where the Peninsula of Malaya came to have a population that was
more than one-third ethnic Chinese, the arrival and settlement of Chinese was
and is of vital importance. Indian immigration into Malaya and Singapore was
less numerous and correspondingly less significant. That it was, nonetheless,
vitally important is beyond dispute, just as Indian immigration into Burma was
of great significance also.
As has been made clear, however, immigration into Southeast Asia has not
been free of problems and resentments. The point has been made several times
that the immigrants filled the jobs that Southeast Asians shunned or for which
they lacked the skill. This was true, but times changed and Southeast Asians
came to resent the difficulty in gaining access to jobs held by immigrants or their
descendants once they—the Southeast Asians—had gained the skills or training
they previously lacked. At the same time, and as part of the long and often
turbulent process leading up to independence, Southeast Asians often came to
see the Asian immigrants in their countries as an integral part of the colonial
regimes ruling over them. When, as in Burma, this perception was added to
sharp resentment of the dominant economic role many Indian immigrants had
attained the stage was set for reaction and retribution once independence was
achieved.
It would seem wrong to end a discussion of Asian immigration into Southeast
Asia without introducing a note of tragedy. For all of the many who prospered,
and continue to prosper, and despite the very special experience of Singapore,
Asian immigration into Southeast Asia has always had a risk of tragedy
associated with it. For the early immigrants in the nineteenth century, it was the
tragedy that would overtake them if they died in a foreign land. For later
immigrants and their descendants there was the special and very personal
tragedy of finding that they ‘belonged’ neither in the land of their ancestors nor,
in the eyes of many Southeast Asians, in the new land where they had been born
and established roots. On occasion the sense of tragedy linked to Asian
immigration has become powerfully apparent—in the forced deportation of
Indians from Burma, for example, or the large-scale killing of Chinese in
Indonesia in the 1960s when to be Chinese was to be regarded as a Communist.
The contrast between the experience of the Asian immigrants into Southeast
Asia and those immigrants from Europe who travelled to America and Australia
is instructive. For the European in the nineteenth century America and Australia
offered many challenges, but the states to which they migrated were
recognisably similar to those they had left. The Asian immigrants by contrast not
only moved to states that were different culturally and ethnically, but
additionally were undergoing transformation. Unlike their European counterparts
the Asian immigrants often found they could not become full members of the
state. The Asian immigrants were vital for the economic transformation of
Southeast Asia but for the most part, with Singapore as the notable exception,
they were not to be among its political masters.
EIGHT
THE YEARS OF ILLUSION: SOUTHEAST ASIA BETWEEN THE
WARS, 1918–1941

Until recently, and for those who gave Southeast Asia more than passing
thought, the years between the First and Second World Wars presented a striking
paradox. On the one hand these were the years that have provided the basis for
some of the most widely held views of the nature of Southeast Asia in the period
of colonial rule—‘British Malaya’, the ‘Netherlands Indies’, ‘French Indochina’,
were seen by many observers as having been at the height of their success during
these years. This was often a judgment present in descriptions of the late colonial
period written by the alien men and women who had lived and worked in the
colonies. To some extent, of course, this estimation reflected the sense of
nostalgia felt by those who had believed in their colonial role. And it is not too
cynical to suggest, additionally, that at times this nostalgia also reflected the fact
that many had found life in the colonies a great deal more comfortable than in
the homelands to which they had retired.
Yet even for a later generation, at least some of our sense of Southeast Asia
reflects an awareness of the interwar period. It is an awareness gained through
novels and travel books and in some cases still, through family association. It is
a period captured in the writings of such popular authors as Somerset Maugham,
and it is striking how often hotels in modern Southeast Asia choose to make
photographs from this late colonial period a feature of their decor. So the image
of the European planter or official, his white tropical suit spotless or stained and
shabby according to his personal character has become more than a figure in a
short story and, instead, an historically significant and representative reflection
of an age. In the same way, the 1920s and 1930s have, in the imperfectly formed
image of popular memory, been seen as a period when Southeast Asians,
‘natives’ in the terminology of the times, were stereotypes: self-effacing and
industrious peasants, faithful servants, courtly but ineffective princes, rare and
occasionally heroic rebels against modern colonial rule and the values that went
with it.
On the other hand, and here is the paradox, knowledge of the interwar period
at a deeper level, a level that penetrates below the easy generalisations of
popular literature and travellers’ tales, suggests a very different world from the
images that still have widespread currency. For all that we may think of the
1920s and 1930s as the heyday of colonialism, a time when, with the exception
of Thailand, all the countries of Southeast Asia were under foreign European or
American rule, these were years when the foundations of colonial rule in
Southeast Asia were under very considerable strain. Sometimes this was
recognised by those who exercised colonial rule. For others the threats to the
colonial position were hardly realised. Whatever the degree of awareness that
was present, however, the interwar years were marked by two notably
contradictory characteristics: at the very time when external powers held their
most extensive presence in the region, new and essentially internal forces were
beginning to operate that would help ensure the end of all the colonial regimes.

By the end of the second decade of the twentieth century Southeast Asia
possessed a pattern of boundaries that has changed little up to the present.
Various territorial adjustments in the early years of the century brought to an end
some long-standing disputes, and colonial expansion had virtually reached its
limits. On the mainland there was a British colonial government in Burma;
France ruled over Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Lao states, with the sum of these
possessions being described as French Indochina; and Thailand, alone, preserved
a tenuous independence. The modern states that exist in the Southeast Asian
mainland have, with only limited change, inherited the boundaries observed in
the colonial years. The same is true for the maritime regions, though rather more
qualification is required when discussing their case. The territories of the
Netherlands Indies were to become Indonesia. In the same way the boundaries of
the Philippines under Spanish and then American colonial control became the
boundaries of the independent Philippine state, and Portuguese Timor was,
eventually, to become the independent state of Timor-Leste. But in modern
Malaysia’s case there was no single predecessor state uniting the territories that
now constitute that country. True, Britain ruled over the Malayan Peninsula and
Singapore, but in Borneo there were two of the more unusual examples of
European control to be found in Southeast Asia. In what has become the
Malaysian state of Sarawak, rule by the Brooke family lasted until the Second
World War. And in modern Sabah, a chartered trading company provided the
apparatus of government, following in the pattern, if on a much smaller scale, of
the British East India Company. Yet even if Sarawak and Sabah were
administrative oddities, their links to Britain were clear and the eventual
foundation of an independent Malaysia between 1956 and 1963 provided another
example of a modern state assuming the boundaries laid down and stabilised
during the period of colonial rule.
With stable borders and the conclusion of the First World War, the most
terrible war in history, the European powers that controlled the colonised states
in Southeast Asia looked forward to a period of governmental calm and
economic expansion. So far as the second of these hopes was concerned, the
experience of the early 1920s seemed to match and even exceed their
expectations. The economic expansion of Southeast Asia that had begun in the
closing decades of the nineteenth century had transformed the region and left it
ready to meet the demands of the peacetime boom that followed on the heels of
the war. With Southeast Asia as a prime source for rubber, rice and tin, the
export earnings of those who controlled the plantations, mines and paddy fields
rose rapidly. Southeast Asian rubber made the tyres for a Western world that had
come increasingly to depend on motor transport. Southeast Asian tin played a
vital part in manufacturing, both in end products, such as those involving
tinplate, and as a component in specialist industrial equipment. The rice grown
in Southeast Asian countries fed populations from India to Europe. And in this
period of widespread economic expansion the other export products of Southeast
Asia enjoyed a comparable expansion.
If colonial officials hoped that a period of increased economic activity would
be matched by a lack of overt resentment of or reaction to their alien rule by the
populations they governed, these hopes also seemed justified initially. In the
early 1920s calm did seem to be the general, though not absolutely complete,
order of the day. Whether this calm grew out of a period of expanding economic
activity is, at the very least, open to argument. Just as much weight would have
to be given to the proposition that it was not until the mid-1920s that modern
political movements began to develop in Southeast Asia that looked beyond the
basic goal of regaining independence from foreign control and towards the
eventual establishment of a new state governed in accordance with new, even
revolutionary political theory.
This development, so often discounted and dismissed as insignificant at the
time, was what made the 1920s so important. Colonial governments had
encountered resistance before. The Dutch had fought bitter colonial wars as they
expanded their hold over the Indonesian islands in the nineteenth century. In
Burma the so-called program of ‘pacification’, pursued by the British for many
years, had been a testimony to the reluctance of large numbers of the population
to submit to foreign rule; while in Vietnam the record of resistance to the French
was almost continuous, ebbing and flowing according to circumstances, but
never absent for a significant period. Before the First World War, however, all
the movements that had resisted foreign rule in Southeast Asia had been
essentially traditional in character. And not only traditional, but in many cases
linked in one way or another to religious and millenarian movements. This fact,
of course, made it all the easier for sceptical colonial powers to dismiss these
resistance movements as lacking in real significance.
The change from traditional resistance to modern anti-colonial challenge has
usually been described as the growth of nationalism. Such a description,
however accurate it may be from some points of view, is unsatisfactory as an
explanation in itself because it begs too many questions. If one talks about
nationalism, what is being described? And was the rise of Southeast Asian
nationalism a process similar to or significantly different from the rise of
nationalism in Europe or Latin America?
Rather than giving a detailed account of the controversies that this issue has
generated, a more positive approach is to look at the areas of general agreement
that have been reached among those who study Southeast Asia—always
accepting that there is no absolute identity of view concerning such a complex
and, on occasion, emotion-charged subject. Most scholars now agree that the
political movements that emerged to challenge the existing colonial order after
the First World War were different, in important ways, from those that had
existed in the nineteenth century. To see the fact of difference does not mean
that those who sought independence from their colonial rulers in the 1920s and
1930s disregarded the more traditional opposition to colonial rule of other
centuries. Rather, the modern generation of Southeast Asians who opposed
colonial rule saw themselves building upon the traditions already established by
their countrymen, but doing so in a way that took account of changed social,
economic and political factors.
The development of the modern Indonesian independence movement provides
a particularly instructive example of an awareness of the past being joined to a
new political program that was directed both at ending colonial rule and towards
creating a new Indonesian state. The men who emerged into prominence as
advocates of Indonesian independence in the 1920s were very much aware of the
efforts of the men and women who had fought against the Dutch expansion of
control in such campaigns as the Java War (1825–30), the Paderi Wars in
Sumatra (1820s and 1830s), and the Aceh War, again in Sumatra (1872–1908).
But for a man such as Sukarno, who was to become the first President of
Indonesia, the campaign waged against the Dutch had new elements that had not
been dreamed of by the earlier anti-colonial leaders. First and foremost, for
Sukarno and the other leaders of his generation who emerged into prominence in
the 1920s, a clear link was now proclaimed between independence from foreign
rule and the establishment of a new Indonesian nation where none had
previously existed. This new nation, incorporating all the peoples and territories
ruled over by the Dutch, was acknowledged to be a diverse entity—the
Indonesian national motto is ‘Unity in Diversity’—but it was to be united by
more than a rejection of colonialism. Unity was to be forged through an
acceptance of new political values, some from Indonesia’s own past, some from
Europe, where the ferment of the nineteenth century had brought forth a host of
new political theories and immense practical change in the disposition of actual
political power.
In a loose but accurate sense, the new nationalism that emerged in Indonesia
and elsewhere in Southeast Asia did combine the old and the new, something of
the values of the West as well as the values of Southeast Asia itself. Nationalism
asserted that populations and territories ruled as colonial possessions had their
own independent right to existence, to the pursuit of national goals that were the
preserve of one particular group of peoples living in one particular area. The
colonial powers, unsurprisingly in terms of the values of the times, opposed
these demands for basic change in political control. Moreover, the obstacles that
lay in the way of achieving the nationalists’ goals often seemed formidable and
frequently led the colonial administrators to dismiss the force of the new
movements. For the nationalists themselves, a faith in their ideals enabled them
to believe that political power could be gained and that apparently unfavourable
and even impossible odds would be overcome.

Still the question remains: why did the growth of this new national spirit take
place in the 1920s and 1930s and not before? Some historians would reject the
basis for this question, preferring to stress the way that old forms of anti-colonial
resistance were transformed into new nationalist efforts. For most observers,
however, there seems not only to have been a significant difference between
traditional and more modern anti-colonial movements, but also some readily
identifiable explanations for why change came when it did. Central to most
explanations is the fact of awareness. By the 1920s, and increasingly thereafter,
there was a new sense of awareness among an ever-growing number of
Southeast Asians that the colonial relationship that dominated their lives was not
beyond question but, rather, open to challenge.
In a country such as Vietnam, where a sense of national identity had a long
history, this sense of awareness was particularly marked by an embrace of new
political theories that were seen as offering a program for ending their country’s
colonial status. In other countries, perhaps most particularly Indonesia, where a
new sense of national identity developed very much as a consequence of the
colonial experience, it may be argued that it was the awakening of a national
awareness, more than the adoption of one rather than another political theory,
that was most important. Throughout Southeast Asia, including Thailand, which
never experienced a formal colonial relationship, the 1920s and 1930s saw an
awakening of interest concerning the nature and purpose of government.
In stressing the growth of this sense of awareness, with all the different paths
that were followed by the new nationalist leaders in the different countries of the
region, attention is again focused on Southeast Asia’s role as a receiver and
adaptor of external theories and concepts. Political ideas relating to Socialism,
Communism, Democracy and a host of other theories and concepts, did not
develop in Southeast Asia, however much of these theories came to be used and
adapted. And here, moving beyond the global explanation of awareness, the
importance of the 1920s and 1930s is more readily understood.
Europe achieved its modern political configuration—the delineation of state
boundaries and the consolidation of national units—in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. This process was accompanied and followed by an
outpouring of writing on political theory. By the early twentieth century debates
that continue today were already joined between those in favour of revolutionary
solutions to political problems and issues and those who sought a variety of
evolutionary approaches. Not surprisingly, Southeast Asians who resented or
had become dissatisfied with their colonial status looked to the great body of
Western political thought to see whether it contained answers to their political
dilemmas.
It was an unsurprising decision since one important result of the major
political changes that took place in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries was the growth of a body of opinion—never particularly large but
always significant—that insisted that opportunities for education should be
extended to the populations in the colonised states. With education, for a few at
least, came the opportunity to read of the momentous political changes that had
taken place in Europe and of the political forces that had brought those changes.
No exaggeration is involved when it is observed that once a significant number
of Southeast Asians were exposed to Western education the development of a
new nationalist spirit received one of its most powerful boosts. Moreover,
education and changing administrative and social patterns led, by the beginning
of the twentieth century, to the development of a new and significant class, the
intelligentsia. Although arguments may be developed to suggest that such a class
had long existed in Vietnam, both in that country and elsewhere in the Southeast
Asian region, the new class that now emerged was distinguished from its
predecessors or precursors by a political as well as an intellectual commitment.
For the first time there was a significant group of educated Southeast Asians
who questioned the position of their rulers—the colonial powers—in terms of
political theory, and who were able to see themselves as part of a wider
intellectual community concerned to debate, discuss and act in the hope of
attaining their nationalist goals.
Exposure to Western education and through it to new political concepts took
many forms. For some the exposure came in a formal sense, through schooling
and study, sometimes culminating in years spent in Europe. For others an
understanding of Western political ideas came through less formal, but no less
important, contacts with the West. The careers of Mohammad Hatta of Indonesia
and Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam provide examples of the very different ways that
Southeast Asians came to know Western political theories and to see in them a
way to end colonial rule in their countries. Hatta, seen by the Dutch as a model
Indonesian student, spent nearly ten years of his early adult life studying
economics in Holland. He was an outstanding student. He was also a man who
increasingly found it impossible to reconcile the political ideas that prevailed in
Holland, not least the opportunity for an individual to cast a vote to change the
government, with those existing in Indonesia. When he returned to Indonesia in
1932 his advocacy of independence for his countrymen led to his imprisonment
by the Dutch colonial authorities, an imprisonment that lasted until his release by
the Japanese during the Second World War.
Ho Chi Minh’s acquaintance with the West came in a very different fashion.
Unlike Hatta, the French never saw Ho as a model student. Instead he was the
troublesome son of a minor but scholarly official who had refused to cooperate
with the colonial government. He left Vietnam at an early age to work as a
member of a ship’s crew and found his way to Europe and to a changing series
of low-paid jobs in London and Paris, and for a short period of time in New
York and Boston. It was in Paris that he slowly became acquainted with the
revolutionary literature of those who had adopted Marx, Engels and Lenin as
their guides to political philosophy and action. Convinced that Communism
offered the answer to the problems of the world, and most particularly those of
colonised peoples, Ho became one of the founder members of the French
Communist Party. This fateful step was to lead him along an extraordinary path
of personal hardship, imprisonment and eventual partial triumph in his battle
against French rule in Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh was one of the most remarkable of the Southeast Asian revolutionaries who challenged
colonial rule. Living as an exile from Vietnam for thirty years of his life, he embraced Communism in the
belief that it would provide the revolutionary philosophy that would drive the French from his country.
Photograph courtesy of Far Eastern Economic Review

For those in the colonised regions of Southeast Asia who came to learn of the
nature of government in the West, whether through personal experience or from
books and the accounts of their fellow countrymen, the most striking realisation
was how contradictory were the patterns of life and behaviour that applied in
Europe and the United States and those that applied in the colonies. In this
regard a well-known saying about the British in India could equally be applied to
the Europeans and Americans who lived their lives in Southeast Asia in the
1920s and 1930s. All Englishmen, the saying went, were sahibs east of the Suez
Canal. The very fact of being a white man, in other words, transformed
individuals who in their own countries might have been of very humble status
into ‘lords’ or ‘masters’. There is abundant evidence to show the ease with
which Europeans in the colonies of Southeast Asia readily slipped into a pattern
that presumed their moral elevation above the ‘native’ masses and ensured their
conditions of existence were fitting for such elevated status. Dutchmen and
Englishmen, to take two examples, found no more difficulty in regarding
themselves as tuans (tuan is the word for ‘lord’ or master’ in Indonesian and
Malay) than did their counterparts in India. This was a situation that more and
more came to cause resentment. And this resentment was further fuelled by the
growing realisation that the economic benefits of the colonies accrued
overwhelmingly to the distant metropolitan states and to the alien members of
the colonial community and those who had joined their interests to them.
Awareness of the inequities of colonialism was, for the bulk of those active in
the developing nationalist movements, increasingly focused on these two
features: the social and political dominance of the alien colonists over the
indigenous population and the economic dominance of those colonists.
When the obvious link between the various colonial political systems and the
economic situation in the colonies was discerned, thoughtful Southeast Asian
nationalists asked whether Western political and economic theory might offer an
answer to the problems they confronted. There should be no surprise that for
some an apparent answer to the problem of how to gain independence was seen
in Communism. Now, nearly one hundred years after the event, it is difficult to
sense the profound international concern and excitement that accompanied the
1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. What was seen by the conservative
politicians of the West as a terrible illustration of what could happen if too much
power fell into the hands of the workers was, of course, viewed very differently
by underprivileged and disadvantaged groups throughout the world. For some
men and women in Asia— not just in Southeast Asia—the Russian Revolution
offered not merely the spectacle of a corrupt, authoritarian monarchy being
overthrown by a political group that acted in the name of the workers of Russia.
It was seen as an event that signalled much more: the imminence of revolution
throughout the world, but most particularly in their own colonised situation.
How inaccurate that view was is apparent many years later. For some
Southeast Asians, however, the promise of independence through Communist
revolution seemed very real in the 1920s and 1930s. The force and appeal of the
revolutionary philosophy of Communism in Vietnam provides the best-known
example. But Communism had an important following in Indonesia and played a
small but significant role in the Philippines also. In British Malaya, Communist
organisers were active in the Chinese community, but developments in that
colony were very different from elsewhere in the Southeast Asian region. The
Chinese community in British Malaya in the 1920s and 1930s still saw its
interest as inextricably linked with the Chinese homeland. Since this was so,
those who supported Communism did so not in terms of challenging British
authority but rather in terms of raising funds and providing support for their
Communist countrymen in China.
Why was it then that only in Vietnam did a Communist party emerge as the
leader of a nationalist independence movement? There is no simple answer to
this question, but an attempt to provide some of the answers has much to tell us
about the development of modern Southeast Asia. Of all the countries of
Southeast Asia only Vietnam and Indonesia were forced to fight a protracted war
in order to achieve independence from their colonial rulers. These wars, fought
after the Second World War had ended, may be seen as a reflection of the
determination of France and Holland to maintain their colonial empires at a time
when other European powers had accepted that the age of colonies either was
passing or had passed. The wars of independence fought in Vietnam and
Indonesia after the Second World War may also be regarded as the logical
extension of the situation that had existed in those countries during the 1920s
and 1930s. For in both Indonesia and Vietnam the colonial governments had
made very clear their position that independence was simply not a possibility
that would be considered, despite the growing and insistent demands that
independence should be granted.

President Sukarno
President Sukarno was the first leader of independent Indonesia. Active as a revolutionary from the 1920s,
Sukarno was a man of remarkable talents mixed with personal weaknesses. Between 1946 and 1965
Sukarno dominated Indonesian domestic politics and played a prominent role in international affairs.
Photograph by Derek Davies courtesy of Far Eastern Economic Review.

But what was different about the Vietnamese experience when it is compared
with the events in Indonesia? Why did the Communists become the leaders of
the nationalist resistance to the French while in Indonesia the Communist Party
was only one of the various groups that combined to form the anti-Dutch
nationalist movement? Part of the answer may be given in terms of leadership
and personalities. The leaders of the small but determined Vietnamese
Communist Party—Pham Van Dong and Vo Nguyen Giap, to name but two in
addition to Ho Chi Minh—were men of exceptional talent. There were able and
dedicated Indonesian Communists also—men such as Semaun and Tan Malaka
—but the talent of non-Communist Indonesian nationalist leaders was at least
equal to that of their Communist allies. Another contrast between the
Vietnamese and Indonesian situations lay in the nature of their respective
colonial regimes. Both the French and the Dutch colonial regimes were
repressive, but it is arguable that the repression in Vietnam was fiercer than in
Indonesia. Although the Dutch did not hesitate to exile such men as Sukarno,
Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir, and to imprison hundreds of other less eminent
nationalists, it seems correct to note that repression in Indonesia was never so
complete, or indeed as brutal, as in Vietnam under the French.
To argue that because of the severe political repression that operated in
Vietnam only the Communist Party could survive and eventually succeed
because of its clandestine nature and organisational capacities would fall far
short of a satisfactory explanation. Repression in Vietnam during the 1920s and
1930s did eliminate or render impotent other political groupings. And the
Vietnamese Communist Party was aided in its efforts to survive by its secret
character—a bitter complaint of the French security services was of their failure
to penetrate the inner ranks of the party’s leadership. But there was more to the
party’s slow progress to power than this. For the party leaders and their
followers Communism seemed to provide both a political theory and a program
for action that was particularly appropriate for the conditions that existed in
Vietnam. The colonial economic system seemed to fit quite remarkably well into
the exploitative pattern described in the writings of Marx and even more
particularly Lenin, a fact seized on by Ho Chi Minh. Nonetheless, it is as well to
remember that, although the Communists had established themselves as the
leading nationalist group in Vietnam by the end of the 1930s, they were still far
from being in a position to seize power.
 The Indonesian nationalist opponents of the Dutch were not close to power
either, at the end of the 1930s. But if they shared this experience with the
Vietnamese, there was much else that was profoundly different. The Vietnamese
Communists had emerged as the leading political force in a country that had a
long tradition of national identity and in which the old absolutist values of a
Confucian society had first been under threat and then shown to be inadequate to
meeting the challenges of colonialism and the changing nature of the modern
world. By contrast, the development of a sense of Indonesian identity was
essentially a modern phenomenon in a society marked by all manner of pluralist
tendencies. Moreover, if it is possible by simplifying greatly to speak of
twentieth-century Communist political theory and practice filling the void left by
the collapse of traditional Confucian values in Vietnam, no such parallel could
be found in Indonesia. As Indonesian nationalists formulated their plans for the
future they did so in a situation in which traditional cultural values and both
traditional and modern religious values had not proved to be failures. A
Vietnamese might mourn the passing of a society in which Confucian values had
had their place but he had to seek something to replace them, most particularly
because even those who regretted the passing of the old order would usually
admit its inadequacies. Most Indonesians, on the other hand, did not see their
varied and rich cultural heritage or their Islamic religion as the cause of Dutch
colonialism, or as the reason for the failure of their countrymen to expel the
Dutch. Instead, and not even excluding the Communists so far as cultural values
were concerned, Indonesia’s nationalists drew strength from their heritage and
saw it as having at least as much importance as Western political theory.
Consider Sukarno. He embodied so many of the characteristics of his
countrymen, and particularly of his fellow Javanese, that one begins to
understand why a man who could be seen by unsympathetic outside observers as
a caricature was, to his fellow Indonesians, a reassuring figure in whom an
almost endless range of personal, cultural and political traits were harmoniously
combined. Sukarno’s defence of his nationalist position when the Dutch put him
on trial in 1930 is a remarkable testimony not only to his energy in reading a vast
and varied range of political writings but also to his readiness to look for a path
to Indonesian independence incorporating the widest scope of ideas on the state
and its character. In Indonesia, for the most part, those who opposed the Dutch
did not feel the need for an absolute set of political principles of the kind
associated with Communism. Nationalism in Indonesia accommodated a range
of political beliefs rather than becoming, as in Vietnam, a movement that was,
essentially, synonymous with Communism.
The very considerable contrasts between Indonesia and Vietnam serve as a
timely reminder of the slow progress of Communism elsewhere in Southeast
Asia. In Thailand, for instance, the gradual transformation of the traditional Thai
state that owed so much to the energies of two remarkable kings, Mongkut
(1851–68) and Chulalongkorn (1868–1910), reached its culmination in the
‘Revolution’ of 1932. This ‘Revolution’ did indeed represent a major change in
the system of governing Thailand, for from that date onward the Thai king was
to occupy the position of a constitutional monarch rather than be, in theory at
least, an absolute ruler. The aims of the ‘revolutionaries’ who insisted on this
new state of affairs—they were mostly younger men in the civil service and
military, many with experience abroad—were far removed from Communism.
Instead, with the various European models as guides to follow, they looked for a
means to end a situation in which the nature of the Thai political system
depended so much upon one man, the king. What followed the 1932
‘Revolution’ in Thailand could hardly be described as the implementation of
democracy. It was, however, an important shift in power and this shift was
sufficient to meet the interests of those who, in the late 1920s, had feared that the
ruler, King Prajadhipok, would not take account of the political aspirations of
those outside his tight royal circle. The political changes that took place in
Thailand, however, were achieved within a society in which a prevailing sense
of unity about the throne and within the Buddhist religion provided a basis for
stability very different from some other parts of Southeast Asia.
The limited success of Communism elsewhere in Southeast Asia need not,
however, be seen only in terms of the capacity of some nationalists to achieve
change peacefully while others sought change through violent means. Just as the
monarchy and the Buddhist religion were a unifying factor in Thailand, so were
other ‘models’ seen as offering alternative answers to the dilemmas of the
emerging nationalists. Long before the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution,
Southeast Asians had been struck by the success of the Japanese in challenging
and defeating the power of Tsarist Russia in the Russo–Japanese War of 1905. In
a similar way the Chinese Revolution of 1911 presented an example of
revolutionaries in an Asian country successfully achieving great political
changes. For some the success of the Japanese state and of the Chinese
revolutionaries were models to be followed closely. For others the success had a
more general importance. Japan’s defeat of Russia showed that Asians could
triumph over Europeans just as the Chinese Revolution showed that major
political change could be achieved by those seeking to institute revolutionary
goals even in the most traditional of circumstances.
 Beyond these general examples provided by particular events, there were
longer-term influences that played a significant role in stimulating the
development of nationalist policies and which might also be seen as having
provided alternative rallying points to Communism. To write in these terms is
not to suggest that the role of Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia, or of Buddhism
in Burma, was something consciously developed during the 1920s and 1930s in
opposition to the challenge of Communism. Rather, the existence of Islamic and
Buddhist movements in these countries meant that there were already important
rallying points about which nationalist thought could develop before
consideration was ever given to the possibility of finding an answer to the
problems of a colonial existence through the adoption of Communism as a guide
for both theory and action.

More than usual difficulty attaches to writing about the history of religious
movements in Southeast Asia. Religious experience is such a personal matter
that an historian often finds it hard to do much more than emphasise the barest
outlines of developments. Accepting that this difficulty exists, it is nonetheless
possible for an outsider to sense something of the force and impact of the Islamic
movements that were important in Indonesia and Malaya during the first four
decades of the twentieth century and to see their significance for the
development of nationalist politics. Islam, particularly Reformed Islam that
stressed the basic teachings of the Koran, gave an impetus to the growing
awareness of community felt by certain groups in Indonesia. Finding spiritual
comfort and support from their religion, these Indonesian followers of Islam also
found that shared belief formed a basis for shared political and economic aims.
The first truly important national organisation in Indonesia was the Sarekat
Islam, established in 1912, originally an association of Indonesian batik cloth
merchants who first came together in 1908 (with a slightly different name) to
advance their interests in the face of competition from Chinese dealers and who
found a basis for unity in a shared religious faith. For many Indonesians who
joined Sarekat Islam in its early, essentially economic phase, and for others who
through the 1920s and 1930s associated themselves with one or other of the
various Islamic organisations that emerged in those years, their religion became
more than a statement of personal faith and belief. The fact of being a follower
of Islam became a political statement as well. To be a follower of Islam was to
be identified with all the other members of an Indonesian community whose
interests were separate from, and indeed opposed to, both the Dutch with their
political power and the Chinese merchants who controlled so much commerce in
the islands.
 In Malaya, from the beginning of the twentieth century, Islam played a
similar, if less significant, role in emphasising the common interests of followers
of this faith throughout the Peninsula. Although those who had experienced the
impact of Reformed Islam, often in the course of study in the Middle East,
argued for its importance in efforts to bring a social renovation to Malaya,
religious organisations did not have the same impact in the slowly developing
course of Malay (not Malayan) politics in the 1920s and 1930s. In the face of
British Malaya’s development as a multiracial society in which there were major
Chinese and Indian immigrant communities, adherence to Islam was only one of
the factors that made up the sharply increasing sense of Malay identity that set
politically conscious Malays apart from the Chinese and Indians. The realities of
economic life as much as membership of the Islamic faith spurred men to find
some way of matching a sense of Malay identity to the need for gaining some
significant share of economic progress. Nonetheless, if Islamic movements did
not have the same impact in Malaya in the 1920s and 1930s as was the case in
Indonesia, they probably should be judged to have had a longer-term effect than
was realised at the time. In contemporary Malaysia, with Malay political
dominance firmly established, Islam plays a major role as a factor defining
political and social interests of the Malay community, though it should be noted
that there are two competing political parties that claim to speak for the Malay
Islamic community.
Among those for whom nationalist politics were important in Burma during
the years between the World Wars, Buddhism provided a central rallying point.
While it would be misleading to paint a picture of Burma in the 1920s and 1930s
that suggested the level of agitation for independence from colonial rule was of
the same order as that found in Vietnam and Indonesia, there was an active
nationalist movement and no account of it could neglect the Buddhist element
present. Buddhism not only was seen as setting Burmans apart from alien non-
Buddhists, including non-Buddhist Asians such as the Indians who had flocked
to Burma once British colonial rule was established, the religion also provided
an administrative framework for the nationalists to spread their ideas.
Propaganda in favour of independence could be circulated within the monkhood
and anti-colonial strategy could be discussed at Buddhist councils. Just as was
the case for dedicated followers of Islam in Indonesia, the Burmese Buddhist
activists found in their religion an affirmation of national identity as well as a
basis for spiritual comfort.

So far in this chapter the overwhelming emphasis has been on the emergence of
nationalist movements in Vietnam and Indonesia, with only a limited amount of
attention paid to developments in other parts of Southeast Asia. The reason for
this apparently lopsided approach is very simple. In the rest of Southeast Asia
the nature of nationalist movements was either very different from those found
in Vietnam and Indonesia, or, as was the case in some countries, nationalist
movements simply did not exist in any significant fashion. Cambodia and the
Lao states in the 1920s and 1930s could accurately be described as barely
affected by nationalist activity. In both these countries, in very considerable
contrast to Vietnam, the other French colony in Indochina, traditional society
and the traditional ruling class were preserved under the control of a French
administration. French rule brought changes to Cambodia and Laos, but these
were not of a kind to bring forth the nationalist reaction found elsewhere.
Consider the contrast between Cambodia and Indonesia. In the former the real
impact of French colonialism was not felt until the beginning of the twentieth
century. The King of Cambodia continued to reign and to remain for the
overwhelming majority of his subjects the almost divine centre of their world.
Western ideas and Western education had only barely penetrated Cambodia
before the Second World War, and the impact of the French-controlled colonial
economy had little clear effect on the bulk of the population. In Indonesia things
were very different. Although much of what was traditional in Indonesian
society survived in the 1920s and 1930s, the impact of the Dutch colonial
regime, particularly in Java, was profoundly greater than the French impact in
Cambodia. It was certainly the case that royal courts also remained important in
Indonesia in the interwar period, but whatever their significance the alternative
focus of a modern outward-looking city existed in Batavia (modern Jakarta).
Western education had had an impact in Indonesia by the end of the 1930s that
was of an order that simply could not be compared with the situation in
Cambodia, where by 1939 fewer than a dozen Cambodians had completed the
equivalent of a French secondary school education.
Cambodia, Laos, and to some extent Malaya, showed the degree to which an
alliance of interest between members of the traditional ruling class and the
colonial power could act to inhibit the development of nationalist activity. The
alliance involved did not just relate to personal concerns such as a measure of
power and wealth. In the political and social climate of the 1920s and 1930s it
was possible for Cambodian and Lao kings and princes, and for Malay sultans,
to feel that their countrymen were benefiting from the operation of the colonial
system. Who else but the French, a Cambodian or Lao prince might well have
argued, would ensure that the Vietnamese did not expand to subjugate
Cambodia? Who else but the British, in the view of Malay royalty, could be
relied upon to bolster Malay interests in the face of the energetic and resourceful
economic competition of the Chinese?
The Philippines presents a very different case. Like parts of Indonesia the
Philippines, particularly the northern islands of the country, had experienced a
long-term colonial impact. Of all the countries of Southeast Asia the Philippines
can lay claim to having developed the earliest modern nationalist movement, for
the attempted revolution against Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century
possessed distinctly modern characteristics in its aims. Nonetheless, the
Philippines remained in a colonial relationship with the United States until the
end of the 1930s with remarkably little manifestation of nationalist resentment of
this position. The explanation for this state of affairs may be found in the
following two broad sets of facts. On the one hand the United States
government, however much some of its citizens may have acted like the
colonisers of other nations, made clear from the start of its rule over the
Philippines its firm intention to grant independence to the country. There were
periods of hesitation as to eventual timing and various individuals pursued the
policy with greater and lesser enthusiasm. But the basic commitment to granting
independence was always there. On the other hand the Filipino elite, the group
most likely to furnish the nucleus of a nationalist movement should there have
been any doubt as to the eventual intentions of the United States, not only
believed that independence would come, but just as importantly found that their
personal economic interests were served perfectly well by the system that
evolved under American control. In 1936, the inauguration of the
Commonwealth of the Philippines reflected the shared interests of the Americans
and the Filipino politicians. The United States retained control over matters of
foreign relations and defence while almost all domestic matters were the
preserve of the Philippines congress. Most importantly of all, independence was
projected to take place in 1946. Once again, though in very different
circumstances from those existing in Cambodia and Laos, there was an alliance
of interest between the colonised and the coloniser.

To what extent, throughout the Southeast Asia region, did the prospect of
independence for the colonised countries seem near or far off towards the end of
the 1930s? Not only does the answer to this question vary from country to
country; equally obviously the answer varies whether one looks at the problem
from the point of view of Southeast Asians or colonisers. From some points of
view it is, perhaps, easier to attempt to recreate the assessments of the colonisers
rather than the Southeast Asians, though even in this case the fact of very
considerable variation from colony to colony and from individual to individual
must be stressed.
One of the chief factors that helped to convince many Europeans that the age
of colonial rule still had many years to run was the nature of the challenges that
were mounted against colonial governments during the years between the two
world wars. With the exception of a period of sustained Communist-led
resistance to French rule in Vietnam in 1930–31, all the other challenges posed
to colonial governments were essentially short term in character and relatively
easily overcome. Not only that, the various challenges that did emerge, including
the Communist-led risings against Dutch rule in the Netherlands Indies, had a
sufficient number of traditional overtones, sometimes including reliance on
magic and adherence to millenarian expectations, for the colonial powers to
dismiss them as having little modern political, let alone nationalist, significance.
The Saya San rising in Burma in 1930–31 appears to have been stimulated in
part by economic conditions that owed their existence to the fact of British
colonial rule over Burma, in particular a deep resentment of the taxes imposed
by the colonial power. But although the British-controlled administration
became the target for Saya San’s followers, they tried to achieve a traditional
aim through traditional methods. The former Buddhist monk, Saya San, was to
be installed as a new ‘king’ of Burma by peasants who were ready to confront
the firearms of the police with antique weaponry and a belief in magic amulets
that would protect them from bullets.
The protesters against Dutch rule who followed the lead of second-echelon
Communist activists in Java and Sumatra in 1926 and 1927, and briefly
succeeded in convincing the colonial authorities that there might indeed be a
serious threat to Dutch control, were only a little more attuned to the realities of
the modern world. As in Burma the case can be convincingly made that colonial
rule had brought about the general conditions that had led to a sense of distress
and disorientation being felt by sections of the Indonesian population. But the
hopes held for the success of these risings in Java and Sumatra by the followers,
if not the leaders, were far removed from the expectations of those thoughtful
nationalists who recognised that eventual independence would entail costs as
well as benefits. Men such as Hatta, Sukarno and Sjahrir thought about the
theory and practice of government in the new state that would be instituted after
independence. The participants in the 1926–27 risings in Indonesia thought of
the abolition of all taxes, of free taxi rides in the urban areas, and of Kemal
Ataturk, the reforming Turkish dictator, suddenly appearing in Indonesia to lead
the movement for independence after descending from a great aircraft.
These developments in Indonesia and Burma, as well as such affairs as the
rare instances of Malay protest against British administration in Malaya and the
Sakdalist peasant movement in the Philippines in the 1930s, could not be seen by
the alien colonial administrators as posing any true threat to their rule, however
troublesome such events might be at the time. The same observation could not
be made about the Communist-led challenge to French rule in Vietnam in 1930–
31 that has come to be known as the Nghe-Tinh Soviets. For nearly a year
French control over sections of two poverty-ridden provinces in north-central
Vietnam was resisted by peasants led by adherents of the Vietnamese
Communist Party who succeeded for a time in setting up their own soviet-style
administration. Only after the French Foreign Legion was sent to the area and
given an almost completely free hand to subdue this challenge to French
authority by any means, including the routine execution of nine out of ten
prisoners, were the Nghe-Tinh Soviets brought to an end. Even in this instance
there were some French officials who fell prey to their own propaganda. They
chose to believe that the challenge that had confronted them was more reflective
of the supposed ‘debased’ character of ‘Asiatics’ than of any true spirit of
nationalism or a desire for the establishment of a more modern society, let alone
a protest by peasants against their desperate economic circumstances.
Despite the unwillingness of colonial officials to believe that early
independence was a real possibility for the populations of the various colonised
regions of Southeast Asia, the 1930s seem, nonetheless, to have been a period of
considerable unease or at least uncertainty for these alien administrators. For all
the insistence of a man such as Governor-General de Jonge in the Netherlands
Indies that the Dutch would still be ruling over their colonial subjects for another
three hundred years, there were other more hesitant estimates about the future. In
British Malaya the remarkable failure of the colonial administration to think
about the future was slowly changing by the end of the 1930s, and with this
change came the first tentative thoughts about possible independence at some
undefined date. In Burma the British administration, conscious of developments
in nearby India and confronting a slowly increasing demand for an end to the
colonial regime from Burmese nationalist groups, was also no longer able to
pretend that independence was not an eventual possibility. Nonetheless, no clear
timetable for independence was considered. In the countries of French Indochina
attitudes towards the future were very different according to location. In
Cambodia and Laos the French saw little to suggest that nationalism would
undermine their rule. Vietnam was a different matter, but opinions vary on the
extent to which there was a French awareness of the size and force of the
Communist-led opposition to their rule. Possibly, in a brief survey, no better
summary can be provided than the observation that there were significant
sections of the French colonial administration in Vietnam—most notably the
security services—and certainly a range of individuals who doubted the public
official stance that French rule in Vietnam was likely to last for the indefinite
future.
Only in the Philippines, with little if any serious consideration being given to
the possibility of Japan’s armed expansion southwards, were the 1930s a time
when Southeast Asian politicians could look forward confidently to an
independent future and plan and bargain for that future with the colonial power.
Unlike the other colonial administrations in Southeast Asia, the United States
officials in the Philippines in the 1930s were working within a structure that had
accepted the inevitability of independence.
The other side of the story is more difficult to describe. In particular it is hard
for an outsider to strike a balance between an awareness of the burning
conviction that drove Southeast Asian nationalists on towards their goal of
independence and the effect upon their aims of the often tremendous obstacles
placed in their way by the colonial authorities. How close to independence and
national emancipation could the Indonesian political prisoners languishing in
exile feel during the 1930s? And what were the inner estimations of Vietnamese
held in the harsh jails and prison colonies of Indochina? Despite the memoirs
that some of these prisoners have published after their release there must be real
uncertainty as to their actual judgments of the likely progress of efforts to
achieve freedom from colonial rule. Whatever doubts or difficulties of remain,
however, the fact of these nationalists’ conviction in the rightness of their cause
and in the eventual inevitability of their success must be recorded. They may
have been uncertain about the speed with which they would obtain their goals,
but they never doubted their ultimate attainment of success.

The suggestion has already been made that the 1920s, and more particularly the
1930s, were years of uncertainty. There was uncertainty of various kinds,
political, social and economic, and this atmosphere of doubt and indecision must
be remembered when the interwar years are considered and put against the still
widespread picture of this period before the outbreak of the Second World War
being a time of colonial calm and untroubled European dominance. To the extent
that uncertainty did reign, this state of affairs might help to explain why so many
Southeast Asian nationalists could look to the future with confidence even if the
colonial powers still appeared to have a monopoly of physical power.
Southeast Asia did not escape the effects of the Great Depression that burst
upon the Western industrialised world at the beginning of the 1930s. The
dramatic slow-down of the economies of the Western nations had an equally
dramatic effect on the countries of Southeast Asia with their export industries
that were so dependent on Western demand. The Great Depression may often be
thought of in terms of Wall Street brokers plunging to their deaths as the market
collapsed, or of men, both skilled and unskilled, forming huge dole queues in the
cities of the industrialised world. But it should also be thought of as a time when
the markets for tin and rubber and rice collapsed so that the export economies of
Southeast Asia were temporarily crippled and employment opportunities for
hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians were also eclipsed.
Political uncertainty and economic difficulty were not the only deeply
unsettling factors at work in Southeast Asia before the Second World War. The
problem of overpopulation in certain areas of Southeast Asia, notably in Java
and in parts of Vietnam, was already apparent. And with overpopulation came
the threat of famine. Eyewitness accounts of areas of north-central Vietnam at a
time of famine in the early 1930s still make harrowing reading today. Skeletal
figures fought each other for a handful of potatoes in the provinces of Nghe-An
and Ha-Tinh when famine ravaged that area in 1930.
Social inequalities had been sharpened by the period of colonial rule and an
awareness of this situation was a further cause for unease and uncertainty.
Southeast Asian nationalists were aware not only of the dominance of their alien
rulers in economic matters, they were aware also of the growing inequalities that
existed between the small numbers of their own countrymen who did profit from
the presence of colonial rule and the vast mass that did not. Convincing
arguments have been put forward, moreover, to suggest that at least some of the
public signs of discontent that emerged in parts of Southeast Asia in the interwar
years were a reflection of the sense of frustration that existed among sections of
the population which believed they were prevented from participating in an
economic advancement that was rightfully theirs.
The changes that took place during the 1920s and 1930s are not always easy
to summarise. Nor were these changes always recognised as taking place, either
by the people of Southeast Asia or by the outsiders from Europe or America who
had come to live in and rule over the region. But changes of very great
importance did take place. The growth of nationalism may have been unequal
throughout the region but, however uneven, the subsequent events of the war
years themselves were to show that in every colonised country of Southeast Asia
the force of nationalism was such that in no case was it possible to put back the
clock, to return to how things had been before the war began.
The population of Southeast Asia was, by the end of the 1930s, one that knew
more of the outside world, of the extent to which the colonial powers depended
on their distant possessions for prosperity, and of the inequalities present in a
colonial situation. To write in these terms should not be regarded as meaning
that we should have a view of all Southeast Asians straining for independence
and poised for revolution just before the Second World War began. Quite clearly
this was not the case. But the numbers who had come to believe change must
take place had grown substantially. And even among those, such as the
peasantry, for whom modern political issues remained outside their knowledge,
an awareness that change had occurred was present. The slow but important
extension of education, the expansion of the modern economic sector into wider
and wider areas of each country, the dim but definite awareness of developments
elsewhere in the world, whether the momentous events taking place in China or
the constitutional developments in India, all of these and many others were
factors making for change or the desire for change.
How much of this was clear to the colonisers as they reviewed their position
over a ‘sundowner’ at the end of the day may remain a matter of debate. Did the
Dutch with their genever or the English with their whisky and soda sense what
was happening, sitting in their clubs or on their bungalow verandahs as the sharp
tropical change from day to night took place? Perhaps only a perceptive minority
ever did. For the others, who believed change was far away, the illusion of
continuity blinded them to the great changes that had taken place in just over
twenty years.
NINE
THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

During the years between the First and Second World Wars it was still possible
for the colonial powers to believe that their rule in most of the countries of
Southeast Asia had an unlimited future. An independent Philippines was not far
distant, it is true, and Thailand, of course, had retained its independence. But for
the rest of Southeast Asia, including Burma where there was inconclusive
discussion about possible self-government, the future, for the colonial
administrations at least, was charted in terms of their continuing, alien rule. Even
for the most optimistic and dedicated of Southeast Asian nationalists, at the end
of the 1930s, there could be little expectation of a sudden disappearance of the
colonial powers. Only when this general state of affairs is appreciated can we
begin to sense why it was that the Second World War had such a shattering
impact on Southeast Asia, on its peoples, and on the colonial administrators who
served in the region. The Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia transformed the
region and its politics, and the years between 1941 and 1945 must be judged as
among the most momentous in modern Southeast Asia’s history.
Why then, at least until recently, has so relatively little been written about this
period? Although the military history of the war in the Pacific and Southeast
Asia has received considerable attention, perusal of any bibliography will
emphasise that much less attention has been given to the political aspects of the
war years themselves as opposed to the events in the immediate postwar period.
One answer to this question, for scholars who studied Southeast Asia in the years
immediately after the Second World War, is that the period posed such great
psychological and political dilemmas that most historians preferred to avoid too
close an examination of a painful episode. In a fashion that may be difficult to
grasp at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the populations of countries
fighting against Germany and Japan during the Second World War believed with
virtually no reservation that their cause was a just one. The doubts expressed
about policy in the Korean War and the massive dissent sparked by the war in
Vietnam in the 1960s simply had no counterpart in the Second World War. It is
necessary to understand this to see why historians should have found it difficult
to face the complex and sometimes uncomfortable facts of the war years; to
come to terms with the welcome that some Southeast Asians gave to the
Japanese invaders; to deal with the fact that the Japanese interregnum provided a
vital boost for nationalist movements in the region.

War in a Malayan rubber plantation

Rubber made Malaya a major strategic prize for the Japanese. Rubber plantations were also the locations for
some of the bitterest battles between the advancing Japanese and the defending British and allied forces. In
this photograph the smoke of battle rises over a Malayan rubber plantation as the Japanese fought their way
south towards Singapore, at a speed that surprised and shocked the British commanders. Photograph
courtesy of the Australian War Memorial negative no. 11485

As memories of the Second World War have faded, so have problems of the
kind just noted been lessened. Other problems have, however, remained. The
sources that need to be consulted for a detailed history of any part of Southeast
Asia during the Second World War are formidable in their volume, in the
complexity of the issues they raise and in the linguistic abilities they demand. It
is still the case today that important Japanese studies of the Second World War
period have not been translated and so remain inaccessible to those who do not
possess the capacity to read Japanese. The result has been that although there are
a few outstanding studies of the war years, much has been left unstudied or
treated in only a superficial fashion. This present chapter must of necessity be
superficial too, but it seeks within its limited space to allot due importance to the
impact of the 1941–45 period in Southeast Asia.
JAPANESE VICTORIES

More important than anything else, the Second World War in Southeast Asia
marked a point of no return. Impossible though it may have been for politicians
in Europe, such as Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, to accept, the
events of the wartime years meant that the old pattern of European colonial
dominance could never again be re-established. For the Japanese invasion was
not just a military event, or series of events, of formidable proportions. It was a
political bombshell that shattered some of the most significant presumptions of
the past. The Japanese advance into Southeast Asia gave telling emphasis to the
argument that nationalists in the region had been advancing for years—Asians
could defeat the colonial powers and their representatives in Southeast Asia. And
not only defeat them. Following their defeat the white-skinned aliens could be
toppled from their privileged position in society to become no better off than the
coolies who had laboured to maintain the fabric of colonial society in the years
of peace. Probably it is impossible to place too much emphasis on the
importance of this radical transformation of relationships within the societies of
Southeast Asia. Even for those who had no strong nationalist leanings, the fact
that the myth of European superiority could be demolished almost overnight was
of the greatest importance. The world of Southeast Asia could never be the same
again.
Even the briefest recital of the principal events of the Japanese advance
stresses the extent to which humiliation upon humiliation was heaped upon the
colonial powers. The Japanese entry into the countries of French Indochina was
followed by the establishment of an understanding between the French
authorities and the Japanese army that was unique for the Southeast Asian
region. The French were allowed to retain control of the apparatus of
government in return for permitting the Japanese to use French Indochinese
territory as a staging, training and supply area. This was never the ‘victory’
claimed by the pro-Vichy French Governor-General, Admiral Decoux. On the
contrary, it provided an assurance to the nationalist forces, in Vietnam most
particularly, that hopes for independence rested on a firmer base than might have
been hoped for only a few years before. While the French flag continued to fly in
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the politically conscious members of the
population were well aware that the French administration functioned only at the
will of the Japanese.
The conquest of Malaya and Singapore in 1942 involved an even greater
humiliation. Years of planning neglect and a staggering unreadiness on the part
of British service chiefs to face up to the reality of Japanese military power led
to a debacle of the most formidable kind. The Japanese, it had been confidently
asserted in the 1930s, could not become adequate pilots because of an alleged
national disposition to weak eyesight. But their pilots not only inflicted the
dramatic attack against the American Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbour—they also,
in the context of the war in British Malaya and Singapore, sank the Prince of
Wales and Repulse, two British capital ships. Had this not happened, these
warships might have helped to adjust the balance of forces that pitched jungle-
wise Japanese soldiers against ill-trained and badly led British and
Commonwealth troops. The Japanese, it was said, could not conquer the
Malayan Peninsula since British forces could control the main roads and passage
through the jungle would be impossible. More than seventy years after the event
one can still see the pathetically inadequate pill-boxes that were placed beside
the north–south roads on the eastern coast of peninsular Malaysia in the
expectation that the Japanese army could not advance through the jungle. But, of
course, this was what the invaders did with skill and efficiency until they had the
overcrowded island of Singapore, the population swollen with refugees, the main
water supply from Malaya cut off, at their mercy. Singapore fell on 15 February
1942.

Australian troops preparing to defend the northern approach to Singapore

By the time the Japanese were approaching the southern tip of Malaya, in Johore, the fate of Singapore was
sealed. British defence planning had assumed that an attack on Singapore would come from the open sea, to
the south. Instead, the Japanese advanced from the north, across the Johore Straits and bypassing the
Causeway linking Johore and Singapore, which is here seen as Australian troops prepared to make their
final defence against the rapidly advancing enemy. Photograph courtesy of the Australian War Memorial
negatiave no. 12449
Death and destruction in Singapore
Well before the Japanese captured Singapore in February 1942, the largely Chinese civilian population
suffered heavy casualties from bombing. In this photograph, two Chinese women react to the cost of the
bombing in terms of lives and destruction. Once the Japanese entered Singapore they wreaked a savage
retribution on those local Chinese who they believed were hostile to them. Photograph courtesy of the
Australian War Memorial negative no. 11529/22

After the defeat of the British in Malaya and Singapore it was the turn of the
Dutch to face defeat in Indonesia. The Battle of the Java Sea, at the end of
February 1942, ensured the capitulation of the Dutch and Allied forces in Java
and the subsequent surrender of Dutch forces in nearly all of Indonesia by the
end of March. In a little more than three months, therefore, Japan was in military
control of the countries of French Indochina, the British possessions in Malaya,
Singapore and Borneo, almost all of the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia) and
was occupying Portuguese Timor. Thailand retained its independence at the cost
of permitting the Japanese the right to move troops through its territory. Unlike
the French administration in Indochina, however, the Thai government could not
be said to have held office at the pleasure of the Japanese, no matter how much
there was a need to take account of Japanese interests. Only Burma and the
Philippines had still not come under something approaching full Japanese
military control as March 1942 came to an end.
The end of resistance to the Japanese offensive in these last two countries was
not long delayed. Bitter fighting by American and Philippine forces delayed a
Japanese victory in the Philippines until the first half of May 1942. And in
Burma fighting dragged on into July as British, Indian and Chinese troops fought
to escape, not to hold ground against the advancing Japanese army. The speed of
these events, with the greater part of Southeast Asia falling to the Japanese in
less than six months of fighting, had never been expected by the colonial powers
and had amazed the Japanese themselves, anticipating more effective resistance.
With the old colonial masters removed and their prestige tarnished beyond
repair, the peoples of Southeast Asia found that they now had new colonial
masters, Asians this time it was true, but in other ways occupying the same sort
of position as those they had just defeated. Leaving aside independent Thailand
and the curious state of affairs that prevailed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos,
the rest of Southeast Asia saw one alien sovereignty removed to make way for
the implantation of another.
In only one of the countries of the region that had witnessed the defeat of a
colonial power had there been any effort on the part of nationalists to associate
themselves with the Japanese military effort. This was in Burma, where
members of the Burma Independence Army (BIA) accompanied the advancing
Japanese forces. With barely a thousand members when the Japanese invasion of
southern Burma began in January 1942, the BIA’s numbers grew as the Japanese
advance moved steadily onwards. But even at the end of the Burma campaign,
when the BIA claimed a membership approaching 30 000, the Japanese gave no
sign of allotting its leaders any real power. In Burma, as elsewhere, Japan saw its
interests as supreme and rapidly revealed the hollowness of earlier propaganda
couched in terms of an ‘Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ and of ‘Asia for the
Asians’.
THE JAPANESE INTERREGNUM

The fact that Japan filled a role that was in many ways not greatly different from
that of the colonial powers it had displaced must not blind us to the fact that
there were important differences. Nor should we ignore the extent to which,
particularly early in the period of the Japanese interregnum, there was much that
the Japanese did and said that was welcomed by Southeast Asians. The Japanese
wreaked savage vengeance on thousands of ethnic Chinese in Malaya and
Singapore, whom they saw not only as bitter opponents who could not be trusted
for the future but also as supporters of the Chinese armies that continued to fight
against their brothers-in-arms in China itself. But their treatment of the Malay
population was very different as they tried initially to gain the support of this
portion of the population of Malaya through careful respect for the Malay sultans
and their courts and by placing Malays in position of prominence, if not power,
in the administration they established to replace the British colonial regime.
Indonesia

In Indonesia the overthrow of the Dutch colonial regime led to the release of the
Indonesian nationalists who had languished in colonial prisons, some of them for
a decade or more, and this event, as well as the defeat of the former colonial
power, led many Indonesians to be well disposed towards the Japanese. Some,
such as Sukarno and Hatta, decided to pursue their goal of true Indonesian
independence by working with the Japanese. This decision, which involved both
the political judgment that such action was the most effective way to prepare for
independence and a readiness to cooperate with those who had defeated the
Dutch, was to bedevil relations between the Indonesian nationalists and the
Dutch government when the war ended. Instead of recognising that the
Indonesians could not have been expected to sympathise with the Dutch in their
defeat, strong voices in Holland argued at the Second World War’s end that men
such as Hatta and Sukarno should be regarded as ‘collaborators’ with the hated
Japanese enemy.
There could be no meeting of minds when this postwar clash took place. In
part this was so because, with the rarest exceptions, the defeated Dutch simply
had no appreciation of the complex and in many ways subtle relationship that
developed between the Indonesians and the Japanese during the course of the
Second World War. Hailed by many Indonesians as liberators, the Japanese soon
came to be seen as another alien power—only this time it was an Asian power.
Despite the fact that the Japanese showed very quickly that it was their interests
which were paramount, Indonesians during the Japanese occupation were able to
involve themselves in a far greater degree of political organisation than had ever
been possible under Dutch rule. This was one of the single most important
aspects of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. Nationalist leaders could
organise, establish chains of command and, with the sympathetic acquiescence
of some Japanese command, advance their nationalist aims through broadcasts in
favour of independence.
Japanese military men controlled the various efforts to develop support for
their country’s war effort, but for the Indonesians who participated in military
training, in Islamic organisations, or in youth groups, the fact of foreign control
was far less important than the opportunity to demonstrate their Indonesian
identity. The Indonesian national flag, banned from use by the Dutch, could be
flown and songs of independence sung. These were symbolic changes, but no
less important because of that. The reinforcement of a sense of Indonesian
national identity that transcended local, religious and class interests was an
essential accompaniment to such practical matters as the development of an
administrative framework and the creation, both clandestinely and overtly, of a
military organisation.
The Japanese occupation provided another important symbolic guide for
Indonesians, particularly for the young. Throughout much of Indonesia, and
most notably in Java, traditional Indonesian cultural values laid great emphasis
upon deference and saw ideal behaviour as non-demonstrative and lacking in
aggression. Now, the victorious Japanese offered a radically different model to
follow, one that admired the use of force and accepted that violence could not
only be necessary but also desirable. Nothing could have been further apart than
the ideals enshrined in Japanese military tradition and those associated with the
measured calm of traditional Javanese life. Yet because of this contrast young
Indonesians began to question the values of their elders, asking whether it would
not have been better in the past to have responded aggressively to Dutch
colonisation rather than acquiescing to it and so accepting its existence. The
young Indonesians who found themselves questioning the values of their elders
did not accept the contrary values of the Japanese in any total sense. They did,
however, see some aspects of Japanese behaviour that had relevance to their own
position. And in seeing these they came to feel themselves a separate generation,
most particularly separate from those older men who had acquiesced to Dutch
rule in the 1920s and 1930s and who under the Japanese occupation were
prepared to work unquestioningly with the new rulers. These new attitudes on
the part of the younger generations of Indonesia were to play an important part
in their readiness to fight against the reimposition of colonial rule once the war
ended.
Malaya and Singapore

A readiness to work with the Japanese was a feature of the wartime years
elsewhere in Southeast Asia. This did not mean, however, that the aims of those
who cooperated with the Japanese were the same from country to country, or
from group to group within each country. The complexity of the wartime years
was very apparent in Malaya and Singapore. In these British territories the
Chinese were regarded as enemies and were treated savagely, particularly at the
beginning of the Japanese occupation when some tens of thousands of Chinese
were executed. Less harsh treatment was accorded the Malays and the Indians,
with the Japanese occupying forces, at least initially, showing some deference to
traditional Malay leaders and in some areas instituting special education
programs for young Malays. The Japanese also had some success in recruiting
members of the Indian minority to enrol in the ‘Indian National Army’, a force
created to liberate India from colonial control. Yet while it was undoubtedly the
case that some sections of the populations of Malaya and Singapore suffered less
than others, the wartime years were marked by food shortages and Japanese
demands for labour that were deeply resented.
Burma and the Philippines

The wartime history of Burma and the Philippines was extremely complex and
only the bare outlines can be provided here. In both countries, in contrast to the
policies followed in the rest of the region, the Japanese encouraged local
politicians to become part of an administrative structure in which, in theory at
least, they had a significant part to play. When the Japanese gained control of
Burma in mid-1942 they found that an end to military hostilities was not
followed by the easy imposition of a new administration. Many thousands of
younger Burmese who had not played any part in the administration of the
country under the British now claimed the right to do so and matched actions to
their claim by seeking to control areas of the country on the strength of their
adherence to nationalist ideas. The results of these haphazard early attempts at
the establishment of a Burmese administration were very uneven. In some areas
the nationalist fervour of the moment was channelled into confrontation and then
bloodshed as Burmans harried the Indian settlers and members of the various
minority groups that form such an important proportion of the Burmese
population as a whole. It was in these circumstances that the Japanese
established a civilian Burmese administration headed by a well-known older
nationalist, Ba Maw, and sought through him to rally the support of the Burmese
civil servants who had previously worked with the British.
For a brief period this arrangement seemed to meet the divergent interests of
both parties. The Japanese saw the administration headed by Ba Maw as offering
the promise of Burmese cooperation in the difficult days of the war that still lay
ahead. From the Burmese point of view, in contrast, the arrangement provided
the possibility of laying a firm basis for a truly independent Burmese
administration once, as was judged likely, Japan emerged as the victor at the end
of the war. These Burmese estimations presumed a degree of restraint on the part
of the Japanese, a belief that the Japanese would pay due attention to Burmese
interests. In this they were wrong and the history of relations between the
Japanese and the Burmese from late 1942 until the end of the war in 1945 is one
of a progressive growth of distrust and the ever-sharper divergence of interests to
the point where there was no common thread to hold the two groups together.
What happened in Burma, so far as relations between the Burmese and the
Japanese were concerned, was in its essentials the same as what happened in
other parts of Southeast Asia. Japanese interests remained paramount and for all
the much-vaunted discussion of Burmese independence—something that was
actually proclaimed in 1943—power remained firmly in the hands of the
invading army. Moreover, even in Burma, where the Japanese professed to have
deep respect for Buddhism and to be ready to pay all due attention to Burmese
interests in more secular matters, the demands of the war soon led them to
follow a policy that mocked professions of religious piety and political concern.
Japanese interest in Buddhism was readily revealed as motivated by an effort to
use the Buddhist church as a vehicle for furthering the war effort. The supposed
‘independence’ that was accorded Burma did not stop the Japanese authorities
from making severe demands upon the Burmese population in terms of the
provision of food and other resources and, even more disturbingly, in terms of
coolie labour for their strategic rail and road building projects. The internal
results of this situation were apparent in the growing resentment by the Burmese
of the Japanese presence and the formation of a clandestine organisation by a
group of Burmese who were ready to oppose the Japanese once the fortunes of
war started running against them. This group, with the young military officer
Aung San as a prominent member, was at the same time preparing to work to
gain independence should the British seek to restore the pre-war situation.
The other country to experience the granting of ‘independence’ while the
result of the war in the Pacific and Southeast Asia was still undecided was the
Philippines. Just as the Philippines had experienced a very different historical
development from the rest of Southeast Asia because of its long period of rule by
the Spanish, so in the Second World War the history of the Philippines was once
again notably particular. When the American and Filipino forces were defeated
by the Japanese in 1942, a large proportion of the political and economic
leadership of the pre-war Commonwealth period decided to cooperate with the
conquering Japanese. Because the Philippines had already moved so far towards
independence before the war began, the administration that rallied to the
Japanese should have been a much more developed and effective body than was
the case in Burma. This did not turn out to be what happened. As students of
Philippines history have repeatedly observed, the rallying of the elite to the
Japanese, whether out of a particular vision of ‘patriotism’ or because of
undisguised self-interest, was not matched by a similar decision on the part of
the population at large. The proclamation of Philippines ‘independence’ in 1943
did nothing to transform the situation. The Philippines politicians who worked
with the Japanese never succeeded in seeming other than puppets. At the same
time, instances of Japanese brutality against the civilian population and the
heavy economic demands made by the conquerors only tended to reinforce a
widespread feeling among ordinary, non-elite Filipinos that their interests lay
more with their pre-war American rulers than with their supposed fellow Asian
‘liberators’. In brief, the wartime experience of the Philippines showed that there
as elsewhere Japanese interests were the guiding principle for all important
decisions and that talk of mutual interests uniting the Japanese and the
population of the lands that had been occupied was little more than cosmetic
propaganda.
Nevertheless, despite the presence of deep resentment of the Japanese among
Filipinos at large and the puppet-like character of those who chose to work with
the Japanese, the Philippines was the only country in Southeast Asia in which
there was both a significant guerrilla resistance movement that fought against the
Japanese throughout the war and a large group of politicians and administrators
who worked with the invaders and then were able to continue their careers once
hostilities ended. Collaboration or cooperation between the Philippine elite and
the Japanese had been on such a scale that the final practical outcome, which
was in effect, and after much bitterness, to forget about which side an individual
politician took during the war, should not be regarded as very surprising. At the
same time, the deep underlying divisions caused by the war were to trouble the
Philippines for many years.

French Indochina—Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

So far in this rapid review attention has been given almost entirely to those
countries in Southeast Asia that were occupied by the Japanese after the defeat
of the various colonial powers. In the countries colonised by France, however,
Vietnam, Cambodia and the Lao states, the French administration continued to
function until early 1945, at which point the Japanese seized power. There was
some small truth in the argument developed by those Frenchmen who continued
to serve in Indochina during the war when they asserted that their actions
preserved France’s colonial position. In Cambodia and Laos, in the short term at
least, the fact that the French continued to administer these territories and to prop
up the traditional rulers minimised the growth of nationalist feeling. But the
force of the argument was always limited since nationalism had not been a
notable feature of either Cambodia or Laos before the war and it was to grow
only with the rapidly changing political balance of the postwar world. Even
more of a qualification to the French position that argued for the ‘success’ of the
arrangement made with the Japanese were the developments that took place in
Vietnam, by far the most important part of France’s colonial empire in Southeast
Asia.
The argument has already been developed in the previous chapter that by the
end of the 1930s nationalist resistance to the French in Vietnam had become
largely, though not entirely, dominated by the Vietnamese Communists. When
war came to Southeast Asia and the French administration struck its dubious
bargain with the Japanese, the Vietnamese Communists were certainly in no
position to make a successful bid for power. Their numbers remained small and
the French security services waged an unremitting battle to contain and if
possible eliminate the one political force that they correctly judged to be the real
threat to continuing French rule. As the war advanced, however, the balance of
opportunity, though still not power, slowly began to tip in favour of the
Vietnamese Communist-Nationalists. To some extent the change came about
because of the altered political atmosphere. For all the speeches by Governor-
General Decoux and his subordinates arguing for the unchanging role of France
in Indochina, there was a growing awareness that France continued to administer
its colonial territories simply at the will of the Japanese. The French continued to
administer their colonial territories, but ultimate political and military power was
not in their hands. Japanese demands for resources and manpower had priority
over French policies and made clear the hollowness of claims by the colonial
administration that the Japanese presence was the result of mutual agreement.
To the pervasive sense of change was added the slow but nonetheless quite
tangible achievements of the Vietnamese Communists. Thwarting the efforts
made by the Chinese Nationalist forces to aid groups within Vietnam that did not
subscribe to their aims, the Communists under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh
succeeded in 1941 in establishing a political front organisation, the Viet Minh
(the Vietnamese Independence and Brotherhood League). This organisation was
dominated by party members but recruited to its ranks a broad spectrum of
Vietnamese united by the shared aim of gaining independence from the French.
The importance of this slow but steady political effort cannot be overestimated.
Nevertheless, the Vietnamese Communists themselves have readily admitted
that in terms of military power, or territory over which they were able to claim
any form of administrative control, their position was, until the dramatic
developments of 1945, very weak. But when the events of 1945 did take place
the Vietnamese Communists were quite clearly the most important political
group in the country and determined, as the subsequent bitter years of blood
were to show, to fight to maintain that position against both internal and external
enemies.
THE TIDE OF WAR TURNS

For all of Southeast Asia the events of the closing months of the Second World
War were of major importance. This was true both for those countries that had
experienced a form of Japanese occupation which had provided little opportunity
for political participation and for the other countries where the Japanese victories
of 1942 had meant the establishment of new administrations in which local
politicians played a part. The swift Japanese advance into Southeast Asia had
shattered myths of white supremacy and opened the prospect, briefly, to
Southeast Asians of participating in something close to true independence.
Disillusionment set in shortly afterwards as the hollowness of Japanese slogans
was revealed and the priority of Japanese interests became apparent. Then, as the
fortunes of war slowly but steadily turned against the Japanese, the peoples of
Southeast Asia began to contemplate the increasingly certain probability of a
Japanese defeat. Beyond noting the very broadly shared fact that the Japanese
interregnum had brought irrevocable change to the region, an account of the
outlook before the peoples of the various countries of Southeast Asia at this time
must give more attention to the differences than to the common aspects of their
experience. For if the end of the war was a dramatic development for the whole
of Southeast Asia, the problems and opportunities that it brought with it differed
greatly from country to country.

Australian POWs in Changi

Those allied soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during the war in Southeast Asia suffered terrible
deprivation and often appalling brutality. The prisoners of war shown in this photograph were Australian
survivors in Changi, the camp in Singapore in which malnutrition reduced healthy men to living skeletons.
The fact that the once-proud colonial overlords could be humbled by the Japanese during their conquest of
Southeast Asia was a major factor in making the Second World War period a turning point in modern
Southeast Asian history. Photograph courtesy of the Australian War Memorial negative no. 19199

In Thailand, which had aligned itself rather half-heartedly on the Japanese

side while the war had run in Japan’s favour, the implications of impending
Japanese defeat were particularly disturbing. Thai policy at the beginning of the
war had taken account of overwhelming Japanese military power and the chance
that enlisting on the Japanese side gave of regaining control of areas of
Cambodia and Laos, and later of Burma, to which Thai irredentists had long laid
claim. This policy had prevented Thailand from suffering the physical
destruction of war that was sustained by so many other areas of Southeast Asia.
As circumstances changed so did the Thai leadership begin its shift to a position
that signalled a clear defection from the Japanese camp, without its being of a
kind that could provoke a major Japanese reaction. Nevertheless, all of
Thailand’s traditional capacity for astute diplomacy was required when the war
did end and the Allied powers contemplated their policies towards a state that
had sided against them. Diplomatic skill and more demanding problems
elsewhere in Southeast Asia saved Thailand from any serious humiliation and
the country found itself at the end of the war much less affected than any other
part of the region. For Thailand the Second World War was important but not
the cause for overwhelming change either in its relations with the rest of the
world or in terms of the nature of its domestic politics. Such an estimation could
scarcely be made about any other country in Southeast Asia.
In both Burma and the Philippines, the closing months of the Second World
War became a time for preparation for the relatively swift transfer from colonial
status to independence. In Burma, as British and Indian military forces carried
on a successful campaign that led to the defeat of the Japanese army in 1945, the
Allied Supreme Commander in the area, Lord Louis Mountbatten, had agreed to
cooperate with the leading Burmese nationalists, men dedicated to complete
independence for their country. This wartime decision strengthened the
subsequent Burman conviction that the postwar political discussions held with
the British were concerned with technicalities for achieving full independence
and not about the issue of whether independence should be granted. The path to
agreement was not always easy and the policies of the first postwar British
government initially seemed a reversal of the approach followed by
Mountbatten. In the end, however, and with a minimum of bloodshed, Burma’s
passage towards independence was assured.
The reconquest of the Philippines took place at a time when the Japanese were
making desperate and largely unsuccessful attempts to rally Filipino support to
their losing side and against a background of increasing nervousness on the part
of those politicians and administrators who had chosen to work with the
Japanese throughout the war. The reconquest also took place with considerable
assistance from various guerrilla groups, among which was the Hukbalahap
group*, a Communist-led organisation that had fought with some success against
the Japanese in parts of Luzon. The Huks, as members of this movement were
usually known, reflected an important rural tradition in sections of the
Philippines, one that questioned the established patterns of patron–client
relationships and championed the interests of the poor peasant farmer. Their
emergence as a significant force in the latter part of the Japanese occupation
period had long-term political consequences since they combined excellent anti-
Japanese credentials with a program for social change that was radically
different from the accepted and essentially conservative values of Philippine
political life.
As the war drew to a close, two other issues dominated political life in the
Philippines. First was the need to make rapid progress towards independence, a
point on which American and Filipino politicians were essentially of one mind.
The other issue that had to be faced was the fact of large-scale collaboration or
cooperation with the recent enemy. The commitment that all had to the
achievement of independence made it easier to come to terms with the second
problem. Some have argued that American politicians and military leaders, most
notably General Douglas MacArthur, saw that conservative interests would be
served by disregarding the issue of association with the Japanese and accepting
that most of those who had such an association were to be relied on in peacetime
to pursue conservative, pro-American policies. Whether such an assessment of
MacArthur’s thinking is accurate is open to debate, though there would be little
grounds for disagreement over the suggestion that the Philippine elite, whatever
role its members had chosen to play during the war, was essentially conservative
in its political outlook. The elite was also relatively small and closely knit as the
result of intricate political and personal alliances. Assured that independence
would be granted, the members of the elite were able to come to terms with the
disagreeable features of the war by looking forward to the possibilities of peace.
In doing so, few of its members suspected how difficult those early years of
peace were to be when the Hukbalahap went into open rebellion against the
government.
FIRST STEPS TO INDEPENDENCE

While a difficult but still surprisingly smooth transition to independence was

being made in the Philippines and in Burma, as the war drew to an end, events of
the very different order were taking place in Indonesia and Vietnam. In neither
of these countries could the closing months of the Second World War be faced
by Indonesians and Vietnamese in the same way as was the case in Burma and
the Philippines, for the Dutch as the former rulers of Indonesia and the French as
the former rulers of the countries of Indochina were known to be determined to
reassert their sovereignty. The result in each country was a bitter war of
revolution and independence, one lasting for three years, the other for nine—and
some would say for thirty—years.
Well before the final Japanese surrender to the Allies in August 1945, the
course of developments leading to an ultimate Japanese defeat had become
apparent to Indonesian nationalists. Although various pressures were put upon
the occupying Japanese, including some attempt at the use of force, it was only
very near to the end of the war that the leading Indonesian nationalists were able
to persuade the occupiers that independence should be discussed and proclaimed
before the war’s end provided an opportunity for the Dutch to return. The
moment finally came on 17 August 1945 when Sukarno, with Hatta at his side,
proclaimed Indonesia’s independence and so served notice of his countrymen’s
readiness to fight against any attempt at the reimposition of Dutch rule. In their
proclamation the Indonesian nationalists declared their adherence to the concept
of a secular state within the Five Principles of panca sila: belief in God,
nationalism, humanitarianism, social justice and democracy.
The new independent Indonesian state did not have long to wait to prove that
it would fight, and fight with surprising effectiveness, against attempts to return
to the pre-war colonial state of affairs. Ironically, both in Indonesia and in
Vietnam the first armed confrontation in the battle to achieve postwar
independence was waged against the British rather than against troops of the
former colonial power. Barely two months after Sukarno had declared
Indonesia’s independence in Jakarta, troops fighting in the new republic’s name
sought to prevent British forces, acting as the Allied representative in this area of
Southeast Asia, entering the major port city of Surabaya. The ensuing battle for
Surabaya was prolonged and costly to both sides. It led to the British force
commanders, who had been ordered to maintain control until the Dutch were
able to return, adopting a very cautious approach to further contact with the
Indonesians. But more importantly the battle of Surabaya was a signal that the
Indonesians were ready and able, even if at heavy cost, to fight for the goal of
total independence. The events of the war had made anything less unacceptable.
As the Second World War drew to an end, the situation in Vietnam was
possibly more complicated than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. In March
1945, six months before the end of the war, the Japanese forces throughout
Indochina overthrew the French administration that had continued to function
throughout the earlier phase of the war and imprisoned French government and
military personnel. The Japanese acted as they did in an effort to maintain
maximum control over the economically and strategically important Indochinese
region as the possibility of defeat became more and more apparent. In Vietnam
the Japanese seizure of power was followed shortly after by the proclamation of
Vietnamese ‘independence’ under the leadership of the powerless Vietnamese
emperor, Bao Dai. The ‘independent’ state of Vietnam was, in fact, no more than
a device designed to disguise Japanese domination of the country, and this was
recognised by almost all politically conscious Vietnamese. But with the removal
of the French administrators, it became possible for the communist-led Viet
Minh forces, both military and political, to accelerate their efforts to gain power.
The Japanese remained in military control of the major cities and towns. In both
the cities and the countryside, however, the Viet Minh worked feverishly to
develop a political structure that could resist the expected return of the French
once the war ended in Japan’s defeat.
As they worked for the goal of future political power the Viet Minh were not
the only Vietnamese who thought about the opportunities of the postwar
situation. What seems undeniable, nevertheless, is that the Communist-led forces
were the most able and effective of the various political groupings that jockeyed
for power in Vietnam. They had gained a position of pre-eminence in nationalist
politics by the end of the 1930s, and they had no intention of losing their
position as the war drew to a close. When Japan surrendered, the Viet Minh were
ready to claim leadership of those opposing the return of the French and,
following a series of events now known as the August Revolution, the Viet Minh
leader, Ho Chi Minh, proclaimed the establishment of an independent
Vietnamese state on 2 September 1945. For a brief period in the early part of
September the success of the Viet Minh seemed complete, although there was
opposition from political and religious groups in southern Vietnam and the Viet
Minh’s military and political power was spread extremely thin. Despite these
problems the possibility seemed to exist that Ho Chi Minh’s forces would
succeed in establishing an administrative framework that would enable them to
convince the French that reconquest was not to be contemplated. The possibility
may have been there but, as the months immediately after the war were to show,
French policy towards Vietnam was set on a collision course that could only
lead, eventually, to war.

MacArthur receiving the Japanese surrender

Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 to end the Pacific War and its occupation of the countries of
Southeast Asia. The Allied Supreme Commander for the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, formally
accepted the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. The
Japanese surrender meant the victory of the colonial powers that had controlled Southeast Asia before the
Second World War, but the defeat those powers had suffered in 1942 ensured that the colonial era could
never again be reinstituted without challenge. Photograph courtesy of the Australian War Memorial
negative no. 19128

Events in the other countries that made up French Indochina, Cambodia and
Laos, did not have the high drama that marked the closing stages of the Second
World War in Vietnam. Important developments took place, it is true, as
Cambodia’s king, Norodom Sihanouk, proclaimed an ephemeral independence
for his country, and as a limited but important number of Lao demonstrated their
determination to resist the return of France as a colonial power. But in both these
countries the strength of the traditional leadership that had, for the most part,
linked its fortunes with the French administration before the war, continued to be
such that the experience of a brief period without colonial direction was not
sufficient to set the stage for a conflict of the sort that developed in Vietnam.
Individuals who emerged into prominence at this time were to be important in
the postwar history of Cambodia and Laos. For the moment, however, the events
of the war seemed less important than the re-establishment of the previous
patterns of close association between the traditional ruling classes and the
French colonial administration.
 High drama was also lacking in the history of Malaya as the war drew to an
end. The Japanese occupation of Malaya had differed from the occupation of
other countries in Southeast Asia to the extent that no effort was made to
promote even the most circumscribed form of ‘independence’. Malaya and
Singapore were seen as providing resources for the Japanese war effort. But in a
society made up of Malays, Chinese and Indians in which there was little shared
interest between the various ethnic groups, the Japanese saw no point in trying to
advance their aims by fostering independence movements. Moreover, unlike
some of the other countries of Southeast Asia at the time of the Second World
War, Malaya had no significant nationalist movement. One group did emerge
during the occupation that waged a limited guerrilla war against the Japanese in
the name of the ‘Malayan People’. This was a guerrilla force of ethnic Chinese
Communists and from 1943 onwards their armed resistance to the Japanese in
Malaya was linked with the Allied war effort through the infiltration of a small
British military group, Force 136. The significance of these Chinese guerrilla
fighters lies more in their later history, when they mounted an insurrection
against the postwar government of Malaya, than in their efforts against the
Japanese. For the rest, Malaya’s war experience was one of relative ease for the
Malay population, considerable cruelty and deprivation for the Chinese, and for
the Indian minority a chance, particularly for the less prosperous members of
that community, to enjoy a sense of improved status as the Japanese elevated
them to positions of authority that they had not held before.
In the closing months of the war Malaya was an exception to the rule in
almost every way. The Japanese had not promoted an independence movement
and there was little local interest in nationalism. No battles were fought to regain
Malaya from the Japanese since the war ended before a planned British invasion
took place. Despite these and other factors that made the Malayan experience so
different from some other sections of Southeast Asia, the impact of the war years
was considerable. The world, as one Malayan observer put it, had been turned
upside down during the Japanese occupation and there could never be a return to
the prewar pattern of British colonialism, even if there was no resistance to the
return of the British themselves once the war had ended. That return,
significantly, was not greeted with flag-decked buildings or by cheering crowds.
In the rest of Southeast Asia change of one kind or another came with the end
of the war. Singapore, after a period of military administration, reverted to being
a British crown colony separate from the pre-war Straits Settlements’
arrangements that had linked it to Malacca and Penang. These territories, it was
now clear, would henceforth be administered as part of Malaya. In Borneo the
unusual arrangements that had existed in Sarawak and Sabah, with the former
ruled by the Brooke family and the latter by a chartered company, came to an
end and both became British crown colonies. At the same time, the British re-
established their protectorate over the Brunei sultanate. In East Timor the
Portuguese half-heartedly resumed their colonial control in April 1946 and, as
before, treated this distant colonial possession as being good for little more than
a dumping ground for political dissidents.

Earlier in this book the argument was put forward that the eighteenth century
was a period that could be regarded as the beginning of an historical watershed
that stretched across the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The period of
the Second World War may be regarded as the end of this vast watershed. The
events of the war and the changes these brought in the attitudes and outlook of
Southeast Asians transformed the region. The war revealed the hollowness of
many of the claims made by the colonial powers concerning the ‘loyalty’ of their
colonised subjects and it dramatically and sometimes cruelly showed the
weakness of the white rulers when faced by a major military challenge.
Whatever words are chosen to describe the changes brought about by the war,
the vital point to be grasped was that these changes were fundamental. In
political terms the years of war ensured that there could never be a return to the
way of life that had seemed so permanent in 1939. Yet for much of Southeast
Asia independence was still a distant prospect that was only finally gained after
a heavy cost in human life. For the last territory to gain independence, East
Timor, this treasured goal would not come until after Indonesia’s withdrawal in
1999.

* Hukbalahap is a shortened version of the Tagalog words meaning ‘People’s Army Against the Japanese’.
TEN
REVOLUTION AND REVOLT: INDONESIA, VIETNAM,
MALAYA AND THE PHILIPPINES

The emphasis laid on complexity at the beginning of the previous chapter

dealing with the Second World War is equally appropriate when attention shifts
to the next important phase in Southeast Asia’s modern history: the period
immediately following the war that ended in August 1945. The experience of
each of the countries of Southeast Asia during the first postwar decade was not
only complex in itself but also of a character that defies easy regional
generalisation. In both Indonesia and Vietnam, for instance, independence from
the former colonial power was gained after bitter armed struggle. But the nature
of the revolutionary armed struggle in each country and of the politics of those
who led it was very different. This point is made apparent when one notes the
fact that the Indonesian forces confronting the Dutch had, at one stage, to put
down an attempt by their Communist fellow countrymen to seize control of the
independence movement. This important event—one that is still clearly
remembered by Indonesian army officers, more than sixty years later, as an
indication of the utter unreliability of the Communists—contrasts dramatically
with the situation in Vietnam, where the struggle for independence from the
French was led by the Communists.
The points of difference separating the experience of one Southeast Asian
country from another in the years immediately after the Second World War can
be recorded almost endlessly. Generalisations, if they are to be made, must be at
the broadest level, taking account of the fact that each country was facing the
problems of achieving independence or of dealing with the reality of
independence in its own way. Even Thailand, the country that never experienced
colonialism, emerged at the end of the Second World War having to deal with a
very different set of problems from those it had known in the 1920s and 1930s.
 Because of the importance of each country’s individual experience the next
two chapters will concentrate on the history of developments on a country by
country basis, with only a restricted attempt to dwell on the comparative
dimension. The concern of the present chapter will be with two revolutions,
those that took place in Indonesia and Vietnam, and with two revolts: the
unsuccessful revolt of the Communist insurgents in Malaya in the period known
as the Emergency and the revolt, again unsuccessful, of the Communist
Hukbalahap insurgents in the Philippines.
Indonesia

The Indonesian revolution has repeatedly held the attention of foreign observers.
Reasons for this interest are not hard to find. Indonesia is the largest of all the
Southeast Asian states, both in terms of national territory and population, and
this fact alone has led to wide interest in the country’s battle for independence.
But more was involved to spark the interest and concern that was given to the
Indonesian revolution between 1945 and 1949 when the Dutch finally gave up
their attempt to reimpose colonial rule. In part the external interest in
developments in Indonesia stemmed from the spectacle that was provided of an
economically poor and militarily weak nation seeking to achieve freedom
against formidable odds, for though the Dutch were numerically dwarfed by the
Indonesians they were able to make use of much more advanced and powerful
weapons and equipment. In part, too, many outside observers were aware that
the Indonesians, in fighting for their independence from Holland, were pursuing
goals that were the same as those for which the Allies had fought against
Germany and Japan—the right of a country to maintain its existence against
external interference. Although international interest in the events in Indonesia
never equalled the later world interest in the Vietnam war, for many, and not
least scholars with an interest in Southeast Asia, the Indonesian revolution and
war against the Dutch generated an interest and sense of involvement that has
continued to the present day.
Dutch troops and administrators began returning to Indonesia in late 1945 and
by January 1946 were in control of Batavia (Jakarta). They found the nationalists
were firmly committed to attaining independence, even if there were significant
differences of opinion among the various pro-independence groups as to just
what path should be followed to bring this about. Most importantly, there was
disagreement between those, many of them from the younger generation that had
already fought against the imposition of British army control in the major cities,
who wanted an immediate all-out fight for independence and those who were
prepared to pursue their goals through negotiation. The option of negotiation,
which initially appealed to most of the established nationalist leaders, offered the
possibility of avoiding bloodshed. Moreover, the first impression provided by
the returning Dutch was that they accepted the claim of the Indonesians to
independence, so long as due attention was paid to residual Dutch interests.
Fairly quickly, however, indeed well before the end of 1946, the divergence of
views held by the two parties became sharply apparent.
From the Indonesian point of view negotiation was to be concerned with the
implementation of independence. This was in direct contrast with the Dutch
position, which was that negotiation was to take place so that arrangements
might be made to allow Indonesia to achieve full independence at some
unspecified later date. Having already proclaimed independence, in August
1945, the Indonesians were impatient to match reality to the ideal that had so
often been discussed and for which many of their number had suffered long
years of imprisonment and exile. The Dutch, by contrast, simply could not shake
off the attitudes of the colonial period. Despite vague promises made by their
government while hostilities against Japan were still in progress, the Dutch
negotiators could not believe that their former colonial subjects were either
ready for complete independence or, in fact, really wanted it. Their assessments
in this regard were not only affected by an unwillingness to face up to the fact
that a Dutch administration was no longer welcome in Indonesia. In addition,
resentment of the role played by such men as Sukarno, who had been ready
during the war years to work with the Japanese to attain their own nationalist
ends, prevented many Dutchmen from looking at the postwar situation in a way
that took account of reality rather than out-of-date fantasies dwelling on a
Netherlands’ vision of the white man’s burden and the supposed wishes of
Indonesia’s silent masses.
The opposing Indonesian and Dutch points of view meant that negotiations,
when they were undertaken, would inevitably break down. It was simply not
sufficient that both sides were ready to negotiate when there was no shared
agreement over the essentials of what was under discussion. The two major
agreements concluded between the Indonesian and Dutch sides during the course
of the struggle for independence—the Linggadjati Agreement of November
1946, and the Renville Agreement (named after the naval vessel on which it was
negotiated) of January 1948—broke down as the result of basic Dutch
unwillingness to think in terms of a truly independent Indonesia existing in the
future. Certainly, it was never clear to the Indonesians that the Dutch were ready
to accept the nationalists as equal partners who would, with the former colonial
power, be co-sponsors of a projected ‘United States of Indonesia’. Moreover, the
Indonesian nationalists grew increasingly convinced that the Dutch advocacy of
a federal Indonesian state made up of various semi-autonomous units was simply
another effort to preserve their position. In pursuing this policy the Dutch were
taking advantage of the undoubted fact that there was, and still is, suspicion and
in some cases deep resentment of Javanese predominance among the inhabitants
of other regions of Indonesia—in Sumatra, Bali, Sulawesi and the other eastern
outer islands. But however much the Dutch might appeal to the existence of this
suspicion and find some response from conservative interests as they did so, it
became more and more evident that their attempt to implement a federal solution
was, in reality, an effort to maintain Dutch control, or at very least a Dutch
presence, through indirect means.
So the Dutch plans were not only bitterly opposed by the active nationalists
who, it should always be remembered, were drawn from regions throughout
Indonesia; Dutch policy was ultimately unconvincing for the populations of the
various regions where the embryonic federal states were established. Many
factors helped to change minds. The Second World War had already had a major
impact in spreading and for many firmly establishing the sense of being an
Indonesian as well as being an inhabitant of a particular region with its own
particular culture. Equally important in changing and forming opinions were the
so-called Dutch ‘police actions’ of mid-1947 and late 1948.

Four key cities of the Indonesian revolution

Jakarta (Batavia): The Indonesian nationalists proclaimed their country’s independence in this city
on 17 August 1945.
Surabaya: The fledgling Indonesian Republican army fought its first major battle in this city in
November 1945.
Madiun: Elements of the Indonesian Communist Party based in this central Javanese city attempted
to take over leadership of the revolution in September 1948. The attempted coup was crushed by the
Indonesian army, which has never forgotten or forgiven this event.
Yogyakarta: This ancient royal city in central Java was the capital of the Indonesian Republic as the
revolutionaries fought against the Dutch. In December 1948 the Dutch seized Yogyakarta, but this
action only reinforced the nationalists’ determination to continue their struggle.

As negotiations bogged down and both sides concluded that their opponents
were acting in bad faith, the Dutch launched what they described as a ‘police
action’ in July 1947. In military terms, for it was a military and not a police
campaign that was undertaken, the Dutch achieved some success. They gained
control over vital areas of Java and Sumatra and in doing so were able to deny
food supplies to the troops of the Indonesian nationalist side. But the price of
this ‘success’ was high, much higher indeed than the Dutch had contemplated it
would be. This was only one of the many instances in the post-Second World
War history of Southeast Asia, and indeed of other colonised regions as well, of
the alien colonial power failing to look beyond immediate military
considerations to the wider political implications. Although the first Dutch
police action gained territory, access to supplies, and to some extent control over
population, it also acted as a major factor in rallying yet further support to the
nationalist cause. For those who had doubted the estimations of the nationalist
leaders when they had argued that the Dutch were not, in fact, ready to grant real
independence, the armed advance of the Dutch forces was a convincing proof. In
brief, while the Dutch gained ground between July and August 1947 they also
raised the level of support given to the nationalists. The former colonial power
did more than this, for the decision to use military force excited the opposition of
important sections of the international community. From late 1947 onwards
international concern about the developing conflict in Indonesia became ever
more important until, in the end, it could be argued that international pressure
played the decisive part in making the Dutch abandon their efforts to postpone
the emergence of an independent Indonesia.
International opinion, expressed through the newly created United Nations,
was able to bring about an end to the first ‘police action’ and a return to
negotiations. These once again dragged on indecisively from the end of 1947
until late 1948 when, as before, the Dutch opted for an attempted military
solution in a second ‘police action’ that lasted from the middle of December
1948 until early January 1949. The pattern of events during this second military
campaign was similar to developments in 1947. The Dutch made military
advances but in doing so reinforced the political position of the Indonesian
nationalists and undermined the support they received from their Western allies.
And by the end of this second ‘police action’ there was little significant support
among the leaders of the outer islands for any further association with the Dutch.
The outcome was yet a further effort at negotiations that did, finally, lead to an
agreed transfer of sovereignty at the end of 1949. Before surveying that
development, however, some account must be taken of developments at the level
of internal politics during the Indonesian revolution.

Revolutions are remembered, in general, for their outcomes rather than for the
often complex history of developments from their beginnings to their ends.
Scholars may be fascinated by the details of politics within the history of the
French revolution, but in the broader historical sense a non-specialist knows that
revolution was important less for the factional fighting between Girondins and
Jacobins than for the fundamental political changes that occurred in France in
the years following 1789. For the non-specialist looking at the Indonesian
revolution, also, the vital point is certainly that independence was gained in
1949. But scholars do have some real justification in studying the factional
disputes of the French revolutionary period, for these were disputes over issues
that were unresolved when the revolution was completed. So, too, were there
developments in Indonesian politics during the revolution that were linked to
issues that have continued to preoccupy Indonesian politicians until the present
day. Two developments are particularly deserving of attention in this regard: the
role of the Indonesian Communist Party (often referred to as the PKI from its
name in the Indonesian language), and the efforts of the fundamentalist Islamic
grouping seeking to establish an Indonesian Islamic state, which was to be
known as Darul Islam, from the Arabic meaning ‘abode of God’.
The point has already been made that in Indonesia the Communists were not
the leaders of the struggle against the re-establishment of colonial rule, unlike
the situation in Vietnam. The Indonesian Communist Party was only one of the
many political parties and groups that joined together on the nationalist side,
united in their common opposition to the Dutch but seeking to promote their
own political programs at the same time. This concern with their own political
interests, as opposed to the interests of the nationalist anti-Dutch movement as a
whole, led elements within the Communist Party to attempt a takeover of the
revolutionary movement. The attempted coup ended in bitter failure. In less than
a month, during September 1948, the Communists operating from their central
Javanese base in Madiun experienced brief success and then suffered near total
eclipse. The best troops in the Indonesian revolutionary army, led by Colonel
A.H. Nasution, were sent in to Madiun to achieve this result. After their defeat of
the Communist forces in that town the army followed up this success by
ruthlessly mopping-up the remnants of those who for a brief time had sided and
fought with the Communists.
The Madiun Affair, as this event has been known ever since, left shock waves
that still agitate the surface of Indonesian politics more than sixty years later.
Even before the attempted seizure of power there had been many who had
argued that the Communists were not committed to the cause of Indonesian
nationalism so much as to the triumph of their particular political creed. This had
been the view of important figures in the Indonesian army, and events had now
proved them correct. The commander of the troops that defeated the
Communists in Madiun, Nasution, was to go on to be a major figure in post-
independence Indonesian politics and to hold, like so many of his fellow
officers, an unshakeable belief in the error of ever trusting Indonesian
Communists to place nationalism before their own political interests and beliefs.
At the same time, as many have observed in earlier analyses of this affair, the
fact that the Indonesian revolutionary government and its armed forces were
ready to suppress the Communist challenge at Madiun robbed the Dutch of any
possibility of making capital from the suggestion that their efforts to maintain a
position in Indonesia deserved support as part of a worldwide anti-Communist
crusade.
The other notable challenge to the evolving Indonesian political leadership—a
challenge that has probably not been given sufficient attention in the past—came
from the supporters of the Darul Islam, the ideal of Indonesia as a fundamentalist
Islamic state, a concept that had been decisively rejected by all the leading
figures in the nationalist movement. Darul Islam drew its support from those
areas of Indonesia in which adherence to Islam was strongest, regions such as
West Java, northern Sumatra, and parts of Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan). At
the time of the second Dutch ‘police action’, elements of those committed to
Darul Islam tried to gain control of territory through armed force. Although this
attempt was unsuccessful, Darul Islam continued to oppose the central
government until 1962. And as with the Madiun Affair the memory of Darul
Islam’s actions has remained with Indonesian politicians, both civil and military,
ever since, not least in very recent years when advocates of the transformation of
Indonesia into an Islamic state have begun to be heard again. Yet although it
seems correct to argue that there is still a general acceptance that a secular (non-
religious) nation is what is required in Indonesia, certainly among members of
the Jakarta-based elite, there is no doubt that Islam plays a greater part in
contemporary politics today than was the case it the early post-revolution years.
The challenge and the defeat of the Communists and the supporters of Darul
Islam showed that the Indonesian government opposing the Dutch was ready to
use harsh measures to maintain its internal position. Of at least equal importance
was the way in which Indonesian resistance to the Dutch military, in both the
first and second ‘police actions’, gave the lie to those in the ranks of the former
colonial power who had argued that a swift series of campaigns would eliminate
the nationalist capacity to fight. Certainly the Indonesian forces had no way of
resisting the modern weaponry and equipment of the Dutch. But what they could
and did do was to engage in constant guerrilla warfare that denied the Dutch
control of the population and severely reduced the availability of food or the
possibility of exploiting Indonesia’s natural resources. The role of the
Indonesian army at this time was vital for the continued existence of the
revolutionary government and left the army with a very special place within
society, one that recognised the army as the guardian of the state with its own
special right to play a political role.
The negotiations that followed the end of the second ‘police action’ took place
under substantially different conditions from those that had applied previously.
Most importantly, the Dutch were under increasing pressure from the United
States to make concessions to the Indonesians. In these circumstances the
Indonesian side accepted that it too would have to make concessions—the
acceptance of a massive debt, including the costs of Dutch military action in
Indonesia, and the postponement of a decision on the status of West New Guinea
(later known as Irian Jaya and today the provinces of Papua and West Papua).
After lengthy discussion the Dutch government finally handed over sovereignty
for all areas under its control to the revolutionary government in December
1949. Within a year the semi-independent states away from Java that had been
propped up by the Dutch throughout the three years of conflict and negotiation
were incorporated into the unitary, secular Indonesian state that had always been
the goal of the majority of the nationalists.
Having won independence from the Dutch the nationalists then had to
confront Indonesia’s many problems. As they did so the euphoria of success
dissipated and the fact and variety of these problems became ever more
insistently obvious. ‘Unity in Diversity’, the Indonesian national motto, is an
admirable statement of both fact and hope. It is also a reflection of the immense
diversity within the Indonesian state that will always pose challenges, some
great, some small, to central control and its authority. And the presence of
regional and other special interests had by no means been removed because of
the revolutionary struggle.
These were problems that were seen as lying ahead in 1949. More important
at that time was the fact that independence had been achieved. Success had been
the result of many factors and of the work of many millions, some important and
many humble. The leadership that held power at the end of the revolution
emerged with their previous identity as anti-Dutch nationalists enhanced by their
role during the 1945–46 period. Sukarno, in particular, as President of the
Indonesian Republic, now occupied a position of considerable power and
influence. In the same way, if to a lesser degree, others who played important
roles during the revolution, men such as Hatta, Nasution, and the Sultan of
Yogyakarta, were assured of prominence in the immediate post-revolutionary
years. The revolution had conferred authority on its leaders and it had ensured
that the army would be regarded as the protector both of the state and of the
revolution’s values. These were political benefits that were to last for many
years to come. Conversely, the period of the revolution was for the Communists
and for the supporters of the ideal of Darul Islam a time that left them weakened
and without either immediate or long-term prospects of achieving their goals.
While it may be a case of stating the obvious, the events of the Indonesian
revolution and the roles played by the various individuals and groups at the time
had a clear and direct importance in shaping the nature of Indonesian politics in
the decade that followed the departure of the Dutch.
Despite these clear indications of the importance of the Indonesian revolution
scholars continue to debate its character. What, they ask, was revolutionary
about the developments between 1945 and 1949? The answers different scholars
give vary considerably. Most accept that significant social and political changes
took place in addition to the fact that independence from the Dutch was
achieved. But there are dissenting voices that argue a different point of view and
suggest the degree of true revolution was really quite small, that the vested
interests which emerged at the end of the revolutionary period were not seriously
interested in achieving the major social changes Indonesian society needed. A
judgment concerning this question is, in the final analysis, likely to depend on
what an observer thinks ought to have happened rather than an attempt to
describe what did happen. Quite clearly a very large number of Indonesians
believed that their struggle against the Dutch did involve change that went
beyond the basic fact of attaining independence, and assertion of the importance
of the revolution remains widespread more than sixty years after it took place.
Vietnam

In Indonesia the experience of nearly four years of negotiation and fighting to

complete the struggle for independence left all but the remotest part of the
former Dutch East Indies (West New Guinea) in the hands of the nationalists.
The history of the Vietnamese struggle against the French in Vietnam was very
different, with a very different outcome. The differences did not only lie in the
fact that the Communists in Vietnam led the fight against the French. There was
a great difference also in terms of the length of time that the struggle lasted and
in the intensity of the military conflict that was joined. Moreover, at the time
when the French departed from Vietnam and abandoned their attempt to
maintain the posture of a colonial power, in 1954, only half of the territory of
Vietnam was under the control of the Vietnamese forces that had inflicted a
stunning defeat on their French opponents at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
As the prelude to the Second Indochinese War, lasting from the late 1950s
until 1975, the Vietnamese war against the French between 1946 and 1954 has
remained comparatively little known. The events of the period of major
American involvement in the 1960s and 1970s have obscured earlier
developments. But unless the years between 1946 and 1954 in Vietnam are
understood it is impossible to gain a true sense of why the Vietnamese
Communists should later have fought for so long to achieve their goals in the
years when the French were no longer the enemy.
The Vietnamese August 1945 Revolution and the subsequent proclamation of
independence could not prevent the return of the French. In southern Vietnam,
British troops prepared the way for the eventual re-establishment of the colonial
administration. In the northern half of the country Nationalist Chinese forces
acted as the Allies’ representatives until the French were ready to reassert
themselves. These occupying forces, in both the southern and northern sections
of Vietnam, prevented the Communist-led Viet Minh from pursuing its goal of
establishing a normal administration. But throughout the country, and in the
north in particular, where Communist strength was greatest, the Viet Minh
laboured to reinforce its position politically while the first of a long series of
negotiations was undertaken with the French.
Because of the long period of bitter fighting that followed, it is often forgotten
that much of 1946 was spent in Franco–Vietnamese negotiations. Here, at least,
there was a similarity between developments in Indonesia and Vietnam. In both
cases the anti-colonialist forces were prepared to undertake negotiations with the
former colonial powers. But in both cases the expectations of the Indonesians
and the Vietnamese were so different from those of the Dutch and the French
that there was never any real possibility of achieving a negotiated solution.
Perhaps even more than was the case with the Dutch in relation to Indonesia, the
immediate post-Second World War governments in France were determined to
reassert their control over the former colonial territories in Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos. Since the Viet Minh was determined to see that the independence that
had been proclaimed in 1945 was maintained and with the French still convinced
that Vietnam was part of notre Indochine (our Indochina), the only possible
outcome was war.
The First Indochinese War began as a series of guerrilla engagements, but by
its closing phases was a conflict fought at all military levels, from main-force
engagements to local skirmishes. It was, particularly from the Vietnamese point
of view, a highly political war. Defeating the French was not a goal to be
achieved merely through military means but by the mobilisation of all resources
that could be used to frustrate the enemy’s aims. The Viet Minh worked to
undermine the French position in Vietnam at every level, setting up a parallel
administration alongside that of the French so that Viet Minh tax collectors
levied taxes not only in those zones that were under Viet Minh control, but also
clandestinely in those areas that were supposedly the preserve of the French.
More than this, the Viet Minh view of the war as only one aspect of a broader
political struggle led its leaders to pursue goals that might not have appeared, at
first glance, to have had much military value but which, in the long run, were
vitally important for overall strategy. Such was the case with the Viet Minh’s
efforts to promote literacy. The eventual benefits of having a literate population
that could read its leaders’ explanations for the pursuit of a particular policy
meant that such a program should go forward despite the presence of war.
The general pattern of the war in Vietnam between 1946 and 1954 can be
described fairly readily, provided one accepts that such a generalisation
disguises the details and qualifications that would emerge in a full-length study.
The strength of the Vietnamese forces fighting against the French was greatest in
the northern section of the country, and it was in this northern region that most
of the major battles were fought. This fact should not be taken to mean that the
First Indochina War was simply a matter involving the inhabitants of northern
Vietnam and the French. Vietnamese fought against the French throughout the
whole of Vietnam, and by the last years of the war the military maps of the
French themselves showed much of southern Vietnam in the hands of the Viet
Minh. But whereas the initial guerrilla campaigns by the Viet Minh in the north
developed into campaigns involving thousands of troops and major battles, this
was not the pattern in the south. There, scattered units from both sides clashed in
frequent guerrilla and small force actions with ‘control’ over both territory and
population often in dispute.
A fundamental problem for the French in waging their war to regain colonial
control of Vietnam was that of time. Whereas the Viet Minh were prepared to
endure the cost of a long war, accepting that the costs of a prolonged struggle
carried with them the possibility of more effective pursuit of political goals, the
same point of view could not be accepted by the French. Their leaders in
Indochina, both military and civil, recognised that endless prolongation of the
war would lead to domestic disillusionment in France. Their efforts, therefore,
had to be concentrated on bringing the war to a swift end. But this was exactly
what Viet Minh strategy did not permit. The French were able to re-establish
themselves in Hanoi and in the Red River delta of northern Vietnam. They could
keep many, though not all, of the road and rail links open. And they could ensure
that Vietnam’s few cities of any size would not fall to sudden assault. Despite
this the French could not inflict a crippling defeat on their Vietnamese enemy,
led by General Vo Nguyen Giap, a man who like so many other Communist
leaders had been jailed by the colonial administration in the 1930s. Between
early 1947 and 1950 Giap’s forces fought a classic guerrilla campaign, with the
Viet Minh military leader demonstrating a clear grasp of the essentials of his
task. Attacks against the French were mounted only when the Viet Minh had a
clear numerical or tactical superiority. The Viet Minh chose its moments and its
locations to attack the French with care to avoid the possibility of swift French
reinforcement of its forces or the ready use of air power, a weapon that was
never available to the Viet Minh throughout the duration of the war.
By pursuing such a policy the Viet Minh not only cost the French vital time;
they were also able to develop both their military and political capacities. Here,
indeed, is part of the explanation for General Giap’s rise to military importance.
The man who had trained as a lawyer and taught history as a school-teacher did
not become a general whose campaigns are studied in military academies all
over the world by some sudden act of fate. Rather, Giap’s military experience
developed in such a fashion that he was able to match the growth of an
undoubtedly high degree of talent in military matters to the changing and
increasing demands of the strategic situation. Nevertheless, talented though he
was, Giap still suffered some significant setbacks in the 1950–51 period as the
Viet Minh more and more sought to operate in large-scale units against the
French. The fact of these setbacks is well worth emphasis for it draws attention
to the intricacies and costs of the Vietnamese revolution. Successful though this
Communist revolution was in the final analysis, any account of the post-Second
World War history of Vietnam is misleading if it does not take full account of
the difficulties along the way and the high costs that were endured for the results
that were achieved.
Such a point is particularly worth remembering in relation to the battle that
determined the outcome of the First Indochina War, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu
that ended in May 1954. The Viet Minh’s success in this battle played a major
part in bringing the settlement negotiated at the Geneva Conference in July 1954
that left the northern half of Vietnam under Communist rule and the status of
southern Vietnam a disputed issue that was only settled, finally, when the whole
of Vietnam passed under the control of the government in Hanoi in 1975. The
details of the battle fascinate military historians, not least because of the
fundamental errors committed by the French in choosing to seek a major
engagement with the Viet Minh in such a remote location—far removed from
French headquarters in Hanoi—and poorly sited in local terms to withstand the
siege that developed. Both sides recognised the vital importance of the outcome
of the battle, and both displayed remarkable courage and endurance under near
intolerable conditions. When the Viet Minh forces finally overran the French
positions their success had cost them dearly, their casualties being far in excess
of those sustained by the French. The cost had borne out Mao Zedong’s
insistence that a ‘revolution is not a tea party’.
The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu heralded the end of the French effort to
maintain a position in Vietnam. Ever since 1946 this effort had been pursued on
two levels, the military and the political. The military strategies failed, but the
outcome of the political policies followed by the French was, in the short term,
ambiguous. Although the French had not been successful in their efforts to
promote a truly significant political rival to the Viet Minh in southern Vietnam,
they were able to maintain the framework of an administration that could be
built upon once the First Indochina War came to an end and the United States
decided to bolster a state in southern Vietnam as part of a worldwide strategy to
contain Communism. There is a continuing scholarly and political debate about
this period in 1954 when the fighting came to an end in Vietnam but the political
issues remained unsettled. What can be said without contradiction is that once an
attempt was undertaken to established a separate state in southern Vietnam and
so to deny to the Communists the victory that they believed entitled them to
control over the whole of Vietnam, the prospect ahead was for further war.
Revolution in Vietnam in its first anti-French phase entailed by far the highest
costs of all the political changes that had taken place in the period immediately
after the Second World War in the former colonies of Southeast Asia. But
despite these costs, despite the political effort that the Viet Minh had waged
alongside their military battles, the Vietnamese Communists were not initially in
a position to risk a frontal collision with the southern anti-Communist state that
the United States supported from 1954. Most particularly the Communists were
unable to consider such an option since their allies, the Chinese and the
Russians, had made clear at the Geneva Conference that the interests of the
Vietnamese Communists had to be subordinated to those of the major
Communist powers. And these major powers, in 1954, were not prepared to risk
a wider conflict in order to ensure that the Vietnamese Communists achieved the
ultimate success that they believed should be theirs.

Vietnam at the end of the First Indochina War

The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 sealed the end of France’s colonial position in Vietnam.
Following the Geneva Conference that ended in July 1954, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet-Minh gained control of
northern Vietnam down to the 17th parallel and an American-backed state was established in the south.

In contrast to Indonesia, therefore, the first postwar decade did not settle
Vietnam’s postcolonial status and leave it unified under a single government.
Instead, two states emerged within the territory of Vietnam, each claiming the
right to control the whole of that geographic territory. For the Communists in
Vietnam the revolution had only half succeeded. There is little doubt that they
were confident full success would eventually be theirs. But there is equally little
doubt that neither they nor any other observers of Vietnamese politics in the
mid-1950s had gauged just how high the final cost of establishing a unified
Communist Vietnam would be.
The Philippines and Malaya

The rest of Southeast Asia had its share of revolt and rebellion in the period
immediately following the end of the Second World War, but in no other country
were there armed revolutionary struggles for independence to match what
occurred in Indonesia and Vietnam. To a considerable extent this was the case
because in no other Southeast Asian country had the former colonial power been
so reluctant to give up control as were the Dutch and the French. Nevertheless,
there is need to consider two other significant challenges to established authority
that did occur following the Second World War—the Hukbalahap (Huk)
insurgency in the Philippines and the Communist challenge to the government in
Malaya during the Emergency period.
When the Japanese war ended the Philippines rapidly attained full
independence and began to face up to the immense physical damage and social
dislocation that had been caused by the war. Among those who expected to play
a significant part in the postwar process were members of the Huk movement,
the Communist-led group that had waged a limited but successful series of
guerrilla campaigns against the Japanese in the central and southern sections of
the major island of Luzon. Few if any denied that the role of the Huks during the
war was admirable. But just as the French Communists, who had played an
important part in the Resistance against the Germans in occupied France, were
distrusted by those who had been their wartime allies once peace came, so in the
Philippines the largely conservative political elite looked warily at the Huks.
This wariness became even sharper when, in the 1946 elections, the Huks
successfully contested seven seats in the Philippines Congress. For small though
these election successes were, the prospect now existed of an outspoken group
working within the parliamentary system with aims that ran totally contrary to
the generally shared values of the Philippine elite. The Huks, most importantly,
were advocates of a program of ‘land to the tillers’ that would have radically
altered the established economic structure of the Philippines’ primary producing
industries, particularly the sugar industry. Fearful of change and doubting their
capacity to deal with the Huks at the parliamentary level, the other political
parties of the Philippine Congress refused to permit the men elected on the Huk
ticket to take their seats. This signalled the end of any possibility of an
accommodation between conservative and radical interests and the beginning of
the Huk rebellion.
In the early phases of their challenge to the government the Huks
demonstrated a continuing capacity to rally support among the peasantry as they
had done during the war. Within the areas of central and southern Luzon that had
been their wartime strongholds the Huks became, in effect, an alternative
government. The success that they enjoyed led their leaders to hope that the
movement could become a national one, instituting a radical revolution
throughout the whole of the Philippines. This estimation failed to take into
account the very local factors that had made success possible in central Luzon.
In that area of the Philippines, in very considerable contrast to most other
sections of the country, the structure of traditional society had already been very
weak by the time radical groups first sought to gain power in the 1930s. The
Huks had succeeded in this area since there was no real alternative to oppose
them. When such an alternative did exist, in the form of long-established and
entrenched landowning interests, the Huks found it impossible to rally support.
Although it was difficult for the Huks to understand why it should have been so,
the fact that a strong social structure existed, linking landowners with tenant
farmers and peasants in well-established relationships, was more important than
the inequalities that were part of that social system.
So it was that in early 1950 the Huks reached the height of their success but
were not able to move from the plateau of achievement that this success
represented. By the end of the same year the Philippines government was on the
offensive against the Huks and within a further three years the worst of the
insurgency was over. The reasons for this remarkable change are readily
recounted, even if there is room for debate concerning the importance that
should be accorded to the various factors involved. Of great importance was the
government’s success in capturing almost the entire Huk politburo (political
leadership) in a raid carried out in Manila in October 1950. Following
information provided by an informer, the government forces were able to seize
both personnel and plans in a blow from which the Huks were never able to
recover. This success took place at a time when a remarkable Philippines leader,
Ramon Magsaysay, was beginning to make his energetic presence felt as
Secretary of Defence. Critics of the Philippines and of its relationship with the
United States have argued that much of the energy that Magsaysay was able to
instil into his forces as they confronted the Huks was the result of American
advice and assistance. Such advice and assistance were certainly important, but
there seems no reason to diminish the part that Magsaysay played. A guerrilla
leader during the Japanese occupation and coming from a non-elite background,
his energy and personal bravery can scarcely be questioned and the loyalty he
won from his troops seems equally to be beyond dispute. Just as importantly, the
policies that he announced, even if their implementation was patchy, gave some
promise that the government was genuinely concerned with the problems of
rural poverty and inequality.
Magsaysay’s success in scaling down the Huk threat to the point where
control of the insurgent remnants was a police responsibility played a significant
part in his election to the presidency of the Philippines in 1953. His sudden
accidental death in 1957 came at a time when much of the program for rural
improvement that he advocated still waited to be put into action. But there was
no longer any doubt that the Huks were defeated by the time of his death.
Remnants of the Huk forces continued to oppose the government and rural
insecurity has remained a problem of fluctuating proportions to the present day.
But the threat to the unity of the Philippines from the Huks had ended, however
much other problems remained to be faced.

The events of the Emergency period in Malaya (the West Malaysia of the later
Malaysia Federation) between 1948 and 1960 posed a much longer threat to the
government of that country than was ever the case with the Huks, despite the
latter’s regional success. Having said this, and having noted that the Emergency
lasted officially for a twelve-year period, due account should also be taken of the
fact of how very different this Communist challenge was from that mounted by
the Viet Minh and discussed earlier in this chapter. In fact, both the defeat of the
Huks in the Philippines and the defeat of the Communist insurgents in Malaya
have all too often been taken as guides to action that might have been taken in
Vietnam once the Second Indochinese War was in progress. Such an erroneous
view misses several points that are of vital importance for an understanding of
the recent history of Southeast Asia. First, there is the failure to recognise how
very particular the Huk insurgency, the period of the Emergency in Malaya, and
the Communist-led anti-colonial wars in Vietnam each were. If one fails to take
account of the great differences that existed from country to country it is all too
easy to disregard the different issues that dominated the thinking of those
engaged in the various military and political campaigns that took place. And one
is likely to be trapped into thinking that insurgencies occur and can be
suppressed according to formula.
Several features of the Malayan Emergency period set it sharply apart from
developments in Vietnam and the Philippines. In both of these latter cases the
men who fought against the established government, whether it was the French
in Vietnam or a government of Filipinos in the Philippines, were members of the
dominant population group in each country. The Huks, in the one case, were
Filipinos fighting Filipinos. The Viet Minh, in the other case, were Vietnamese
fighting either the French or Vietnamese supported by the French. In the
Emergency, in great contrast, the insurgents were overwhelmingly Chinese in
ethnic composition in a country in which the Chinese population was itself a
minority and in which acceptance of Malay political dominance was regarded as
a matter beyond dispute by all but the smallest group among those who engaged
in the country’s political life.
Both the Huks, in their period of success, and the Vietnamese throughout their
war against the French, could make their appeals for support in terms of their
role as nationalists as well as Communists. This was never a convincing
possibility for the ethnically Chinese Communist insurgents in Malaya. They
claimed to be fighting for the ‘Malayan people’, and to be leading the struggle
against British colonialism. But these claims had to be made against a
background in which not only Malay politicians—with Tunku Abdul Rahman at
their head—but also Malayan Chinese politicians denounced their activities.
What was more, for all their claims to be fighting for the liberation of the
population of Malaya, the insurgents could hardly prevent that population from
realising that steady progress was being made towards attaining independence
from Britain throughout the Emergency.

Tunku Abdul Rahman

Tunku Abdul Rahman was the ‘father’ of Malaysia’s independence and its country’s first prime minister.
Born a prince, he became an active politician during the Second World War. During the period of the
Malayan Emergency Tunku Abdul Rahman exemplified the commitment of Malay politicians to work with
the British to defeat the Communist insurgents while preparing for independence. Photograph courtesy of
Far Eastern Economic Review

Yet despite the weakness of their propaganda the Communist insurgents in

Malaya gave striking proof of the heavy cost that could be exacted by a
determined guerrilla group fighting under geographical conditions that were
favourable to them and with the possibility present of gaining the passive
support of unprotected civilians. Once the Malayan Communist Party decided to
follow an armed strategy in pursuit of its goals, its forces faded into the dense
jungle that covers so much of the Malayan Peninsula. From there they were able
to mount raids against vulnerable targets, such as isolated police posts, district
administrative offices, the bungalows of planters and tin mine managers. Judged
against the horrifyingly high cost in human lives that marked the war fought in
Vietnam, the casualty figures from the Malayan Emergency appear relatively
small. But the number of men killed and wounded was not by itself a satisfactory
reflection of the impact that the insurgents achieved. That impact was also felt in
the threat they posed to Malaya’s economy as it gradually recovered from the
dislocation of the Japanese occupation period. The impact of the insurgents was
also significant in terms of the possibility that the granting of independence
would be delayed because of insecurity.
The response of the British colonial government to the Emergency recognised
the broad range of threats that the insurgency posed. Although the colonial
government’s initial reactions to the problems of the Emergency involved a
degree of uncertainty and even confusion, this was soon replaced by carefully
constructed military and political effort. The essentials of the effort involved
isolating the insurgents from the rest of the civil population and protecting that
population from attack or intimidation by the insurgents. At the same time as
these essentially military goals were pursued, the need to work for Malayan
independence was never forgotten, a fact reflected in the granting of
independence in 1957, less than five years after the most serious period of the
Emergency.
Isolating the insurgents from the rest of the population was of particular
importance in Malaya because of the existence after the Second World War of a
substantial squatter population that lived largely outside normal government
control. These squatters were almost all Chinese residents of Malaya who had
moved into squatter communities in the course of the economically depressed
years of the 1930s or during the Japanese occupation. Their importance to the
insurgents once the Emergency began lay in their capacity to furnish both
recruits and supplies. The total guerrilla force opposed to the colonial
government in Malaya never numbered more than around 9000, but many of
these were recruited from the squatter communities in which there were young
people who were readily persuaded that a revolution could transform their lives.
Almost as important as the supply of recruits was the capacity of these isolated
squatter communities to pass food supplies to the insurgents, since the latter’s
jungle retreats were mostly unsuited to food production and access to other food
sources was vital.
Once the importance of the squatter community was recognised and the
magnitude of the problem they posed appreciated, the British colonial
government undertook a resettlement scheme that has become known as one of
the most distinctive features of the Emergency. Nearly half a million squatters
were resettled or relocated in ‘new villages’ over a space of two years. Once
resettled the squatters became the responsibility of the police forces, leaving the
military to pursue the guerrillas in the jungles. This was a slow and tedious
business, costly more in terms of time and effort than in terms of lives. Even
with an overwhelming superiority of personnel on the government side, the tide
did not turn decisively against the Communist guerrillas until 1954. By then,
however, there was no doubt that the insurgents would be defeated and that
Malaya would gain independence with the capacity to bring the Emergency to a
final end. Acting as a minority of a minority, the ethnic Chinese insurgents never
succeeded in presenting themselves as bearers of the nationalist banner. Their
appeal was strong for a limited group, particularly young Chinese who felt that
there was little place for them in existing Malayan society. But for the rest of the
Chinese community in Malaya and for the overwhelming bulk of the Malay
community, the appeal of Communism launched by guerrillas who were ready to
resort to brutal punishment and killings of civilians was limited indeed. The
Emergency should not be dismissed as a relatively minor problem because of the
way in which, once the initial period of shock and confusion passed, the odds
against the insurgents became steadily worse. At the same time, the enormous
differences between the problems posed by the insurgency in Malaya and the
Second Indochinese War should be firmly recognised. In taking the successful
defeat of the Communist guerrillas in Malaya as an indication of what could be
achieved in Vietnam later, military planners came close to the hoary old error of
comparing a minnow with a whale.

In the four countries of Southeast Asia discussed in this chapter, Indonesia,

Malaya, the Philippines and Vietnam, the years after the Second World War
were marked by violence. But as has been repeatedly stressed throughout the
chapter the nature of the violence, the issues for which men fought and died, and
the results of the conflicts that were joined, differed greatly from country to
country. The differences that have been stressed are a forceful reminder of the
individual character of the states of Southeast Asia, whatever generalities are
noted at other times. The Indonesian nationalist revolution against Dutch
attempts to reimpose some form of colonial control reminds us that revolutions
need not be mounted only by Communists. The partial success of the
Vietnamese Communists by mid-1954 took place in conditions that had no
parallel in the rest of Southeast Asia. The unsuccessful Communist revolts in
Malaya and the Philippines demonstrated the futility of groups that sought their
ends through armed insurrection but which could not, again for different reasons
in each case, make their appeal beyond a limited section of the overall
population. Revolution and revolt have been a very significant feature of the
history of much of Southeast Asia since the Second World War but for different
reasons, in different countries, and at different times.
ELEVEN
OTHER PATHS TO INDEPENDENCE

Of the four countries considered in the previous chapter, two achieved

independence through revolutionary means—Indonesia and Vietnam. One,
Malaysia, prepared for independence while containing and then defeating a
major challenge from Communist insurgents drawn from the minority ethnic
Chinese community. The case of the Philippines was different again since an
independent government defeated the indigenous Huk insurgents. The varied
experience of these four countries once again emphasises the diversity of
Southeast Asia; an awareness of diversity is reinforced when reviewing the paths
followed to independence by the other countries of the region.
The case of Thailand need not detain us long at this stage since it was, as has
been noted many times, the only country in Southeast Asia that did not have a
history of colonial occupation. As already stated in the chapter dealing with the
Second World War, Thailand did for a period have to face the possibility that its
association with the losing Japanese side during much of the war might lead to
the victorious Allied forces seeking to impose punishment, either economic or
political. This did not take place, not least because of skilful Thai diplomacy,
and Thailand resumed its status as a free nation at the end of the war—freer, in
fact, in some ways since it was no longer encumbered with treaties that had once
given special privileges to foreigners in Thailand.
In the decade after the end of the Second World War, we are thus left to
consider the cases of Burma and the other two countries that went to make up
French Indochina—Cambodia and Laos. The future status of Singapore in this
period was still under discussion, with debate taking place as to whether it would
eventually be linked to an independent Malaya. Brunei remained as a British
protectorate, and Portuguese Timor, the future Timor-Leste, attracted little
attention, either from the metropolitan government in distant Lisbon or from the
international community in the early postwar period.
Burma

In Burma the history of the years following the defeat of the Japanese until the
proclamation of independence in 1948 was full of complex and often bitter
manoeuvring between the various groups active in Burmese political life. This
manoeuvring took place at the same time as frequently acrimonious negotiations
between the Burmese and British thrashed out the details of the final steps to
independence. The end of the Second World War revealed the deeply factional
character of Burmese politics. Some of the factional divisions depended on
ideological loyalties, with groups spanning a wide range of political positions
from conservatism to support for varying interpretations of Marxism. The fact
that it was clear the British were leaving Burma did little to minimise these
divisions. To the contrary, now that independence seemed assured, the various
groups felt a greater need to assert their positions. They saw the situation as one
in which there might still be advantage to be gained before the British departure
introduced a new and unpredictable state of affairs.
Other divisions resulted from the long-established rivalries between the
Burmans and the other ethnic groups making up the Burmese population, the
Shans, Karens, Chins and Kachins, to mention only the most prominent of these
minorities. Under British rule special arrangements had been made to govern
many of the minority peoples in a fashion separate from the Burman majority.
Now that independence was in sight politicians representing sections of the
minority peoples strove to ensure that they should continue to enjoy special
rights as they had done under the British. To a considerable extent the Burman
leadership under General Aung San, the leader of those Burmans who had
organised to fight the Japanese in the closing phases of the Second World War,
was ready to make concessions to the minorities. Although Aung San and his
colleagues were not ready to permit the establishment of independent states
delineated on an ethnic basis, they were ready to recognise that a sense of ethnic
identity and past administrative practice made it necessary for some alternative
to treating areas such as the Shan regions in northern and eastern Burma as if
they were identical with the Burman-populated Irrawaddy valley.
Because history can only tell us what did happen in the past, the question of
what might have happened in Burma if Aung San had been able to continue at
the head of the Burmese government after independence cannot be answered.
What did happen was that political rivals made the reality of Burmese political
factionalism tragically clear when they assassinated Aung San and six of his
closest associates. With Aung San’s death in July 1947, Burma lost its most able
politician, but progress towards independence was not checked. Aung San’s
place was taken by U Nu, the man who was to become the first prime minister of
independent Burma and the dominant figure in Burmese politics throughout the
1950s. But although progress towards independence was maintained it took
place in an atmosphere of increasing disunity and rising violence. When
independence was proclaimed in January 1948 it was the prelude to a period of
grave instability and finally full-scale rebellion against the central government
by several of the political and minority groups who were unready to accept the
political structure that independence had brought. The fact that Burma had
reached the goal of independence without the costly struggles that had marked
developments in Indonesia and Vietnam had not proved to be any guarantee
against major and costly disorder once the colonial power withdrew.
Cambodia and Laos

Of all the countries that had been studied in Southeast Asia few have received
such limited examination of their modern history as Cambodia and Laos. In the
case of Cambodia the record of this country’s magnificent and distant past has
tended to obscure the interest of more modern times, though the horrors of the
Pol Pot regime in the 1970s has qualified this judgment. In the case of Laos, the
small size of the country in terms of population, numbering less than three
million in the 1950s, has led to its being treated as little more than a footnote to
the dramatic events that have taken place in neighbouring Vietnam since the
Second World War. For by comparison with both Cambodia and Laos,
Vietnam’s history has indeed been a more demanding and apparently more
immediately important subject for study. Because of this relative lack of
attention to the history of these two countries, there is real difficulty for a casual
observer of Southeast Asian affairs to understand why there should have been
such momentous changes in such a short span of time since the Second World
War. How, both casual and specialist observer alike may well ask, did the
apparently sleepy monarchies of Cambodia and Laos become, in the space of
less than forty years, Communist states, with Cambodia undergoing one of the
most radical revolutions in modern history? Only now, sixty years after
Cambodia and Laos gained independence, can we begin to see some of the
elements in the period before the attainment of that independence that hinted at
the possibility of history following the course that it did.
The contrast between the history of Vietnam and that of the other two
components of French Indochina, Cambodia and Laos, could not be sharper. In
terms of modern political developments, Vietnam was always in advance in its
neighbours in opposing the French colonial presence. In the course of the 1920s
and 1930s in Vietnam the Vietnamese Communists became a vital if almost
constantly persecuted force. The same two decades in Cambodia and Laos saw
virtually no nationalist, let alone Communist, agitation against the colonial
administration. And as has been noted in an earlier chapter the French returned
to Cambodia and Laos at the end of the Second World War after encountering a
minimum of opposition. Once again the contrast between the tense period in
Vietnam in 1946 before the Franco–Viet Minh War broke out and developments
in Cambodia and Laos during the same period is sharp.
Despite this contrast and the apparent comic opera world of royal courts,
sacred elephants, ancient temples, and orange-robed monks to be found in both
Laos and Cambodia, the Second World War had wrought its changes in these
countries too. In Laos an anti-French group had emerged during the years of war
with a royal prince of radical persuasion, Souphanouvong, as one of its most
prominent members. When the war ended in 1945, Souphanouvong and a small
number of companions refused to accept the option that others of their wartime
companions embraced. Rather than agree to return of the French and to waiting
for the eventual granting of self-government and finally independence.
Souphanouvong and those who shared his views went into the jungle and linked
their goal of independence to the struggle that the neighbouring Vietnamese
were just beginning.
Much ink has flowed as writers of various views have debated whether or not
the Communist movement in Laos possessed an identity separate from the
Vietnamese Communists. The best short answer is that it was a Lao movement
first and foremost but that because of Laos’ geographical position and the
smallness and weakness of its population the Lao Communists have always been
dependent upon their ideological allies in Vietnam. Moreover, it was certainly
the case that some of the most prominent of the Lao Communist leaders were
married to Vietnamese women who were themselves Communists. During the
First Indochinese War, in any event, areas of northeastern Laos were vitally
important to the strategy of the Vietnamese Communists and the Lao
Communist forces, the Pathet Lao (‘Land of the Lao’ or ‘Lao Nation’) as they
called themselves, worked in close conjunction with, and at times under the
immediate direction of, the Vietnamese.
French policy in Laos from 1946 onwards aimed at minimising political
difficulties while contending with the strategic problems posed by the
Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces in the northeast. Their search for political
calm in the most populated area of Laos along the Mekong River was aided by
the general inclination of the Lao elite, a tiny proportion of the total population
of about three million, to accept the continuing colonial presence without much
hesitation. The royal family and the semi-hereditary traditional officials were
happy, for the most part, to cooperate in a system that brought them personal
rewards for a minimum of effort. Prince Souphanouvong with his political
commitment, his knowledge of the West gained in France, and his readiness to
accept the rigours of life in the jungle seemed very much the exception to the
elite Lao general rule.
The exception represented by Souphanouvong and the other members of the
Pathet Lao came to be of vital importance as the First Indochinese War drew to a
close. Suffering military defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French government that
negotiated for withdrawal from Vietnam at the Geneva Conference in 1954 no
longer had any interest in maintaining control over the weak Kingdom of Laos,
which had been theoretically independent since late 1953. But a problem existed.
The French wished to transfer power to those conservative Lao who had
cooperated with them between 1946 and 1954—the members of the traditional
elite. Yet neither the French nor the traditional elite controlled those northern
sections of the kingdom in which the Communist Pathet Lao were strongest. A
compromise was finally reached. Laos, now fully independent, was to take
special account of the Pathet Lao forces and to integrate them, eventually, into
the country’s army.
Like many compromises determined on paper this provision failed to work in
reality. The independence Laos gained in 1953– 54 was flawed from the
beginning. The conservative groups in the kingdom had little interest in
permitting the left-wing Pathet Lao to gain a legal foothold, while the interests of
the Pathet Lao most certainly did not lie in acting as the willing subordinates of
their political enemies. Just as Laos gained this flawed independence as a side-
effect of more important developments in Vietnam, so too was the next major
stage in Lao political history determined by the mounting pressures of the
Second Indochinese War.

Unlike Laos, Cambodia did not form a major strategic element in the First
Indochinese War. Nor did a clearly defined Cambodian Communist movement
emerge between 1946 and 1953, the date when Cambodia was officially declared
independent. The important domestic political controversies associated with
Cambodia’s progress towards independence related, instead, to whether the
traditional leadership of the kingdom under the then King Sihanouk would
control an independent government or whether power would pass into the hands
of men who, while less conservative, wished the king to act as a constitutional
monarch. As for relations with the French, once Sihanouk was able to
demonstrate his predominance in domestic affairs the task of persuading the
French to grant independence was essentially a matter of time. Just as Laos
gained independence in conjunction with developments in Vietnam, so was
Cambodia under Sihanouk able to press France for independence at a time when
the deteriorating situation in Vietnam in 1953 made resistance to Cambodian
demands scarcely worthwhile.
Norodom Sihanouk
Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia has been one of the most remarkable of Southeast Asia’s leaders.
Crowned King in 1941, he led his country to independence in 1953. He abdicated his throne in 1955 and
was overthrown by close associates in 1970. A prisoner of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, he was again
installed as King of Cambodia in 1993 before abdicating again in 2004. Photograph by David Jenkins
courtesy of Far Eastern Economic Review

By the time Sihanouk was making his demands he had gained the political
ascendancy in Cambodia and in doing so set the stage for more than a decade of
independence in which he was the chief political actor. Emerging from a timid
and sheltered childhood, he gradually moved from cautious interest to full-scale
involvement in the political affairs of his kingdom. Once he took the decision to
become closely involved in politics and with the benefit of some particularly
able older advisers—Penn Nouth and Son Sann notable among them—his status
as king made him virtually beyond challenge in the realm of overt politics.
As for clandestine politics before 1953, when Cambodia gained independence,
and 1954 when the First Indochinese War ended, there was little to suggest that
Cambodia would ever become the site for a full-scale clash between right and
left. Despite what has happened subsequently, the Communist movement was
not of major importance in Cambodia between the end of the Second World War
and the granting of independence in 1953. There were Vietnamese Communist
units that used Cambodia for a base and there were, undoubtedly, Cambodians
who were associated with these units. But to look back on the years 1946–53 in
terms of the clear emergence of a Communist alternative to Sihanouk would be
to commit a major historical error.
Individual names have been closely linked with the attainment of
independence in various of the countries of Southeast Asia. The name Ho Chi
Minh comes first to mind in relation to Vietnam. Aung San’s name will continue
to dominate discussion of Burma’s achievement of independence. When one
thinks of independence in Malaya one thinks of Tunku Abdul Rahman. The
matching of name to country and independence could go on, sometimes with
sharp argument as to which name should be chosen. A case can surely be made,
however, for the proposition that in no other Southeast Asia country was one
man so crucially important to and identified with the gaining of independence as
was Sihanouk in Cambodia. Hesitant to become involved in politics initially and
far from always astute once his involvement began, he came by 1953 to
dominate the scene. This was his triumph. The years that followed, some would
argue, were both his and his country’s tragedy.

By the late 1950s almost the whole of Southeast Asia was independent. Thailand
had never known formal colonialism. The Philippines had gained independence
from the United States at the end of the Second World War, while Burma’s path
to independence from Britain, gained in 1948, always seemed assured if
frequently made difficult by various obstacles along the way. Indonesia’s
revolution brought Dutch withdrawal by the end of 1949. And the countries of
French Indochina saw the departure of the colonial authorities in 1954, leaving
two rival Vietnamese states, and Laos and Cambodia.
Britain’s departure from Malaya was delayed until 1957, in part because of
the lingering problems of the Communist insurgency and in part, too, because of
difficulties associated with finding a political formula that would reconcile the
expectation of the Malay community of political dominance over a population
that included a very large minority of non-Malay (most particularly Chinese)
citizens. With a formula assuring Malay dominance achieved, while involving
ethnic Chinese in the open political process, the granting of independence to
Malaya left only a residue of British colonial rule in Southeast Asia. Singapore
and the territories of Sarawak and North Borneo (now Sabah) were all that
remained of Britain’s Southeast Asian empire. These, too, were shortly to end
their colonial status when, in 1963, the Federation of Malaysia came into being
uniting independent Malaya with Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah.
With the establishment of Malaysia only Brunei and Portuguese Timor (East
Timor) remained as non-independent states within Southeast Asia. The last
territory to have remained under Dutch control following Indonesian
independence in 1949, Dutch New Guinea, had been incorporated into Indonesia
in 1963 in controversial circumstances. Brunei was technically a protectorate
under Britain, not a colony. Oil rich, Brunei was offered the opportunity to join
Malaysia, but declined. The Sultan of Brunei feared that to integrate with
Malaysia would lead to the submerging of Brunei’s identity and to the loss of a
large proportion of his state’s revenues—revenues which made it the wealthiest
in Southeast Asia. Only in January 1984 did Brunei finally achieve its
independent status. As for Portuguese Timor, it remained as a neglected remnant
of Portugal’s far-flung overseas empire whose unexpected fate was to involve
invasion by Indonesia in 1975; incorporation into Indonesia in 1976; and then a
bitter war that finally brought the promise of independence in 1999.
For most, and possibly all of the formerly colonised countries of Southeast
Asia the attainment of independence was accompanied by a sense of relief, and
in some cases of euphoria. Even in the war-ravaged circumstances of Vietnam,
where the Communist administration only gained control over half of the
country it had hoped to govern, there was relief that the fighting had ended and
an expectation—false, as it proved—that extension of control over the south
would not be long delayed. The increasing violence and dissidence that marked
the final months leading up to Burma’s independence did not make it any less
important an occasion. Nor did the fact that the Emergency was still officially in
force and the difficulties associated with communal politics in Malaya make
Merdeka (Independence) seem less desirable in 1957.
Relief and euphoria were natural and readily understood emotions for those
who now enjoyed independence. But with that goal achieved the problems as
well as the pleasures of independence had to be faced. An attempt to assess those
problems and the various ways in which the states of Southeast Asia have
confronted them is provided in the next chapters.
TWELVE
AN END TO POSTCOLONIAL SETTLEMENTS, AND BEYOND
I: INDONESIA, VIETNAM, CAMBODIA AND LAOS

For those who have never known what it was like to live under colonial rule the
importance of achieving independence can only ever be partially understood.
Attaining independence, for the peoples of all the states of Southeast Asia, with
the recurring exception of Thailand, involved more than a simple change of
political control and leadership. These things were fundamentally important, but
if we, as outsiders, concentrate exclusively on the political changes involved in
the attainment of independence we shall fail to appreciate, however imperfectly,
the sense of there being an almost magical and certainly spiritual quality
associated with gaining independence for many Southeast Asians, leaders and
their followers alike, when either willingly or otherwise the colonial rulers
departed. For independence was seen by Southeast Asians as involving
transformation of all kinds, political, economic and social. But the history of
independent Southeast Asia has frequently involved the need to adjust the hopes
for change and progress that seemed so readily within reach as the Americans,
the British, the Dutch and the French handed over control of government to their
former colonial subjects. Even in the case of East Timor, where the hurried
departure of the Portuguese in 1975 was rapidly overtaken by the arrival of
another colonial power, Indonesia, there were hopes for change and progress.
These were hopes that were quickly doused by savage reality.
Southeast Asia in the twenty-first century is not unique in facing major
problems, many without clear or easy possibilities for solution. Indeed, the
decades since the 1960s have made clearer than ever before the error of any
Western observer who dares to look at Southeast Asia as a ‘problem’ area
without taking due account of the many and complex difficulties that afflict the
so-called developed world. Keeping this fact firmly in mind, the perspective of
more than fifty and even sixty years of independence for the countries of
Southeast Asia—with Thailand’s experience revealing some similar patterns of
development despite the lack of a colonial past—has shown that Southeast Asia
is a region that has faced, and continues to face, major problems. The persistent
presence of these problems goes some way towards explaining a fundamental
feature of developments in Southeast Asia’s post-independence modern history:
the fact that political settlements reached at the end of the colonial period have
subsequently been changed, in some cases quite dramatically. This has been a
process with great variations from country to country, so that in the case of
Burma, for instance, the postcolonial settlement survived for over a decade,
while in Vietnam it had come to an end in less than two years.

Some of the problems that have confronted the leaders of Southeast Asia in the
years of independence since the end of the Second World War, and which led to
the end of postcolonial settlements, are similar to those that have been
experienced by other countries in what has come to be known as the Third
World. In other parts of Asia, in the Middle East and in Africa, states that once
had been colonies emerged into independence, as did the countries of Southeast
Asia, with high hopes but frequently limited resources. In almost any field that
one chooses to examine the newly independent states faced formidable
difficulties. That this was so reflected the fact that the former colonial rulers had
failed to tackle major issues that seemed to demand immediate attention from a
new, independent leadership. For whatever high-sounding phrases were used to
justify colonial rule, it is simply the case that it was never introduced or
maintained in the interest of the colonised country or people—Rudyard
Kipling’s famous, or infamous, poem extolling the virtue of taking up ‘The
White Man’s Burden’ not withstanding. This basic fact meant colonial regimes
had different priorities from the newly independent regimes that followed them.
And this fact posed immense difficulties for the new leaders.
A few examples may make the point clearer. Although all the colonial
regimes in Southeast Asia paid some attention to the need to provide education
for at least part of the population they governed, none, not even the most
enlightened, felt it necessary to promote a system of universal education at the
primary level on the same basis as that operating in the regime’s home country.
However one chooses to judge the colonial regimes’ policies in education— and
different judgments would have to be made for different colonial governments
and in different colonised countries—the need to improve and expand
educational opportunities were seen as essential steps by all the newly
independent governments of Southeast Asia.
 At a rather different level, the colonial governments of Southeast Asia were,
in general, little concerned to prepare the populations of the countries in the
region to play a directing role in the economic life of the community. With the
colonies valued for their economic resources, there was a widespread pattern in
which European or American companies controlled major international
commerce, while internal commerce was shared between the colonisers and
immigrant Asian communities, usually ethnically Chinese or Indian. There were
variations on this theme and important exceptions to the general rule.
Nevertheless, it is correct to note that the leaders of the newly independent
Southeast Asian states found all too often that they and their countrymen had
only limited control over their own economies. The reference just made to the
immigrant communities which were such a feature of much of Southeast Asia
under colonial rule points to yet another instance of how the assumptions that
governed the pre-independent years changed dramatically once independence
came. For colonial governments the immigrant communities played a vital role,
particularly in commerce and in the provision of labour for plantations and
public works. For the independent governments of Southeast Asia the immigrant
communities represented something very different, at best a group posing
problems of assimilation, at worst a threat to the security and integrity of the
state.
The list of problems that confronted the new leaders of independent Southeast
Asia and have continued to confront them can only seem lengthy and daunting.
Not all of these problems and challenges confronted the newly independent
states immediately. In general, unrestrained population growth was not an acute
problem in immediate terms, but it was to become so, in some cases sooner
rather than later. More immediately the independent states had to decide how to
develop their economies once the colonial powers departed. And above all there
was the issue of how to achieve and maintain national unity. For in looking at
how postcolonial settlements were overtaken by events, whether gradually or in
dramatic fashion, the aim of maintaining national unity was central to what took
place. Yet central as this issue was throughout the region, the experience from
country to country differed greatly and over very different time spans. Once
again it is necessary to review developments in terms of the experience of each
country.
The aim in this and the immediately following chapter is to show how the first
major break with the essential features of the postcolonial settlements took place
and the manner in which there was a flow-on from that occurrence. Further
departures from those initial settlements are examined in later chapters. While
the emphasis in the account that follows is on the political changes that occurred
in each country, it should be remembered that social and economic factors
always played their part in shaping the nature of political events. In this chapter
attention is given to the two countries in which independence followed the
conclusion of a revolutionary war—Indonesia and Vietnam—and the two
countries—Cambodia and Laos—that gained their independence as part of the
settlement France pursued as the colonial power seeking to extricate itself from
Vietnam.
Indonesia

After their bitter armed struggle against the Dutch, the Indonesian nationalists
achieved their goal of independence in December 1949. A new state had come
into existence in reality, rather than as an ideal that had been proclaimed but still
had to be fought for. The Indonesians had won, but their victory still saw many
issues unresolved. The Dutch had ceded sovereignty, but the future character of
the Indonesian state was still not certain: was it to be a unitary state or one that
took account of separatist feeling in regions such as Aceh, northern Sumatra and
the eastern islands, including parts of Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sulawesi, where
there was resentment of the dominant and centralising role being played by
Javanese politicians? And there was uncertainty as to what would be the role of
Islam, for there was a continuing desire on the part of some political groups to
overturn that aspect of the 1945 constitution that had proclaimed Indonesia to be
a secular state. After a combination of vigorous political and military action to
assert central control throughout the archipelago by the newly independent
government in Jakarta, the Republic of Indonesia was proclaimed on 17 August
1950. Its writ now ran throughout the former Dutch colony, with one exception.
For the moment, the western half of New Guinea—what the Indonesians then
called Irian Jaya—was to remain under Dutch rule.
In the aftermath of the achievement of unitary independence the direction of
the Indonesian state was in the hands of a cabinet, headed by Sukarno as
President. It was intended that elections would take place for a constituent
assembly that would consider possible changes to the provisional constitution
introduced at this point. But these elections did not take place. Instead, the
leading Jakarta power brokers designated who was to form the membership of
the People’s Representative Council of 232 members which, for the moment,
functioned as the Indonesian parliament.
To simplify greatly, the history of the next five years made clear that the many
divisions within Indonesian society had not been resolved as the result of gaining
independence. No fewer than five prime ministers briefly held sway between
1950 and 1955 as a series of shifting political coalitions endeavoured to take
account of the conflicting interests of secularists and those who argued for a
greater role to be given to Islam, the religion of the overwhelming majority of
Indonesia’s population. At the same time, the army, which saw itself as the
guardian of the revolution’s success, worked to see its interests were not
neglected. And the Communists of the PKI struggled, with some success, to
overcome the taint attached to their party as the result of the Madiun Affair. All
this manoeuvring took place against a background of severe economic difficulty,
continuing separatist tendencies in regions away from Java and a determination
to find a way to wrest control of Dutch New Guinea (Irian Jaya) from the former
colonial power.
When elections were finally held in 1955 no less than twenty-eight parties
stood candidates. When the results were tabled, no single party could claim a
majority. The largest proportion of the vote, at 22 per cent, went to the
Nationalist Party of Indonesia. It was closely followed by the two major Islamic
parties, Masjumi, with 21 per cent, and Nahdatul Ulama, with 18 per cent. As a
sign of the continuing appeal of the PKI among the urban and rural poor, that
party gained 16 per cent of the vote. This result was a recipe for instability and
that was what duly occurred. For not only did the results of the election reveal
the weakness of the party system, it again emphasised the divisions that existed
between politicians linked to Java and those whose power base was in the other
islands.
The situation was one that ultimately played into President Sukarno’s hands.
He had long made clear his distrust of parliamentary government and in 1956, as
party jockeying continued at the parliamentary level, he stated his belief that
what Indonesia needed was not Western style ‘liberal democracy’ but instead ‘a
guided democracy, a democracy with leadership’. Various commentators have
suggested that is far from clear whether Sukarno, at this stage, had thought
through these ideas when he first presented them. If this was so, continued
political infighting in Jakarta and the outbreak of a separatist rebellion in
Sumatra hastened the implementation of his ideas. Faced with these challenges,
and backed by the army led by General Nasution, Sukarno declared martial law
in March 1957.
The success of the Indonesian army in suppressing the separatist rebellion
provided Sukarno with the opportunity to press ahead with his plans for guided
democracy. With the fractious constituent assembly still in existence he called
on it to vote for a new constitution, in effect the 1945 constitution that, tellingly,
gave greater powers to the president than the provisional constitution introduced
in 1950. When the assembly failed to vote in favour of the new constitution by
the required two-thirds majority, Sukarno, however, was in a strong enough
position, in July 1950, to declare that the new constitution—essentially the 1945
constitution—was in force. The period of Guided Democracy had begun and the
first major break with the postcolonial settlement had taken place.
Initially, Sukarno seemed beyond challenge. A truly charismatic figure and a
spellbinding orator, his personal prestige had been bolstered by the Asian–
African Conference held in Bandung in 1955, making him a familiar figure on
the international stage. Then, in 1962, he was able to claim credit for the
decision, backed by the United Nations, to hand control of Irian Jaya to
Indonesia. For the moment it appeared that a new settlement had been achieved,
one that left Sukarno triumphant in both domestic and international affairs. Only
a few short years were to pass before it became clear how hollow this judgment
was.
Essential to Sukarno’s survival as Indonesia’s leader was the support of the
army. Yet even before the successful campaign to gain control of Irian Jaya, an
event that had deeply involved the armed forces, Sukarno had embarked on
domestic policies that put him at odds with the military. In the international
field, and against the inclinations of many of the most powerful figures in the
military, Sukarno committed Indonesia to opposing the formation of the new
Federation of Malaysia—the amalgamation of Malaya with Singapore and the
British territories in Borneo, which is discussed in the next chapter. This policy
of ‘Confrontation’ made little sense to many in the civilian elite as well as
provoking military opposition. At the same time, and in domestic terms, Sukarno
showed himself increasingly ready to seek support from the left of Indonesian
politics, including the PKI. That this was a fatal mistake was made clear in 1965.
Following an attempted coup in September 1965, the details of which remain
obscure to the present day but which Sukarno’s opponents linked to the
Communists, the army with then General Suharto at its head moved decisively to
gain control of the Indonesian state, making Sukarno merely a figurehead
president as in March 1966 Suharto assumed effective authority over the state. In
1968, after assuming the position of acting president the year before, Suharto
became President of Indonesia. What was termed the ‘New Order’ had now
begun and Suharto was to maintain his control over Indonesia for two decades.
In the immediate aftermath of the failed September 1965 coup, and before
Suharto formally took office, Indonesia was racked by terrible violence. As the
army tightened its grip on power, tens of thousands of anti-Communists in the
population seized the opportunity to strike a devastating blow against their
political enemies. With the army either standing by or in some cases both
encouraging and participating, the violence began in late 1965 and continued
into the following year. Anti-Communist mobs embarked on an orgy of killing,
often using the most brutal means to achieve their ends. No certain figure exists
for the number of Communists and Communist sympathisers killed at this time.
And it seems certain that some, at least, of the killings that took place involved
personal as much as political motives. But most foreign observers would regard
the figure of 250 000 killed during the political upheaval of 1965–66 as the
lowest reasonable estimate. Some estimates would be a great deal higher. This
was a political legacy that could never be forgotten throughout the long years of
the ‘New Order’.
As Indonesia bound up its wounds following the fall of Sukarno and the
period of bloodshed that followed, few would have predicted that it would not be
long before it would embark on its own colonial adventure. In contrast to the
claims made by the independent government of Indonesia to rule over all of
what had been the Dutch colonial possessions, it had not made a similar claim to
the Portuguese territory of East Timor, a long-neglected part of Portugal’s
ramshackle overseas empire. But when the Portuguese administration abandoned
the territory in the mid-1970s East Timor was seen as a potential threat to
Indonesia’s security because of the leftist political positions of some of the
groups contending for power in the territory. This led to Indonesia’s invasion of
East Timor in 1975 and to the subsequent incorporation of the territory into
Indonesia in 1976. It was a development that was followed by a long guerrilla
war for independence and a disturbing record of Indonesian incompetence and
brutality.
Vietnam

Indonesia achieved the reality of independence from the Dutch in 1949.

Vietnam’s de facto divided independence came five years later. Viewed from the
vantage point of the passage of more than half a century, the events of 1954 and
the years immediately following have an almost unreal quality, since we now
know that the two Vietnamese governments that did emerge following 1954
were fated to become one in 1975. At the time, the issue was not nearly so clear.
This is despite the fact that the Geneva Conference, which was held in July 1954
to bring an end to hostilities, met on the basis that Vietnam was a single country,
whatever its politico–military divisions as the result of the First Indochina War,
the war fought between the Viet Minh and the French which was discussed in
Chapter 10.
When the Geneva Conference concluded in July 1954 the arrangements
agreed to by the participants were explicitly temporary in nature. This was
recognised in the Conference’s Final Declaration where it was stated that ‘the
essential purpose of the agreement is to settle military questions with a view to
ending hostilities and [with agreement] that the military demarcation line is
provisional and should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or
territorial boundary’. In short, the division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel was
not to be regarded as a frontier boundary between two countries. As to what
should happen following an end to hostilities in order to resolve outstanding
political issues, the Conference further agreed that ‘general elections shall be
held in 1956’. Under the Geneva Accords, therefore, and within two years, there
was to be an electoral contest between the Communist-led Viet Minh, who now
controlled Hanoi, and the State of Vietnam based in Saigon, which was receiving
steadily increasing American support. Opinion remains divided as to whether the
Communist leadership believed the elections would take place. Certainly, there
are strong arguments to be mounted to suggest that this was the case and that the
leadership in Hanoi believed they could gain through an election the spoils of
victory they felt had been denied them despite their successes against the French
on the battlefield.
The projected elections never took place. Despite some initial reluctance to
back a separate southern government, now headed by a long-time anti-
Communist nationalist, Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States soon became
committed to a policy that was shaped as much by Cold War considerations as
by the facts on the ground in Vietnam. In the event, and with American military,
political and economic support, Diem made clear his unreadiness to countenance
the elections provided for in the Geneva Agreements. Showing considerable
personal courage, Diem fended off challenges from sections of the Vietnamese
military who had fought with the French, from politico–religious sects who
maintained their own private armies, and from brutal gangsters who had run
Saigon’s gambling and prostitution rackets during the war between the French
and the Viet Minh. With United States support for the southern regime, it was
clear by mid-1955, well before the elections mandated for 1956, that the
Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) was going to ignore the provisions of the
Geneva Accords.
For South Vietnam the immediate aim was to rid its territory south of the 17th
parallel of any forces linked to the Viet Minh because of the threat they posed to
its control. And Diem’s armed forces and police pursued this aim with savage
efficiency, arresting and frequently executing those identified as Communists.
For North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam), led by the veteran
revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, the immediate problems challenging the Hanoi
government were possibly even more daunting than those confronting the
southern leadership, where American aid underwrote the regime. On the one
hand, Hanoi had to put in place an administration over the territory it now
controlled but which had suffered devastating damage as a result of the war. On
the other hand, it had to plan for the long-term goal that it had never abandoned,
control over the whole of Vietnam. As the government in Hanoi went about
imposing its will domestically it, too, showed a readiness to achieve its aims
through brutal means, seeking to impose its vision of socialism through a
program of ‘land reform’ which was achieved at the cost of thousands of lives.
Faced with popular resistance to this measure, and with splits over policy within
the Communist leadership, Ho Chi Minh was forced to admit that the
Communist Party and the government were at fault.
Yet even as Ho Chi Minh made public declarations of error in relation to land
reform, he and his colleagues were planning to gain control over the whole of
the territory of Vietnam. His early instructions to the Communist guerrilla forces
that had remained in the south were to wait patiently, but by 1959 he had
abandoned this strategy. Reorganisation of existing forces in the south and the
infiltration of new forces from the north enabled the Communists to begin
serious harassment of the Diem regime. With a series of hit-and-run guerrilla
raids, small in number but significant in their effect, the Second Indochina War,
the American war in Vietnam, had begun and with it the postcolonial settlement
of 1954 had been swept away forever. The stage was set for the longest and most
savage of any conflict that had racked a single country in Southeast Asia. Peace
would only come in 1975 after a terrible war and immense loss of life.
Cambodia

When Cambodia gained its independence in November 1953 there was no doubt
about who dominated its politics. As both king and the country’s leading
politician, Norodom Sihanouk had every right to claim responsibility for
Cambodia’s emerging into independence nearly a year before that divided status
was conferred on Vietnam. What is more, when the Geneva Conference was
held the following year Sihanouk and his conservative advisers were able to
prevent any special role being given to the limited number of Communists who
had fought as allies of the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War. (This
contrasted with what has already been described in relation to Vietnam, with the
Communist Vietnamese major participants in the conference and, as will be seen
later, with what happened in relation to Laos.)
In theory, at least, independent Cambodia was a highly qualified constitutional
monarchy, with the ruler’s power at least in part circumscribed by an elected
parliament. In fact, with the weight of tradition behind him and skilful
manipulation of constitutional arrangements, Sihanouk had shown in the years
leading up to independence that he could circumvent the power of parliament to
promote his own political agenda. Yet he still faced a measure of opposition
from politicians who argued against a system that they believed continued to
place too much power in the king’s hands. Reacting to this situation, Sihanouk in
February 1955 held a referendum that sought the Cambodian population’s
judgment on the efforts he had undertaken to gain independence, a period he
termed the ‘Royal Crusade’—in effect, the referendum was also, in Sihanouk’s
eyes, a judgment on his overall political performance. The result was an
overwhelming endorsement of his actions, but his pleasure in this result was
soon qualified by the evidence that some of the apparent enthusiasm shown by
the public for the successful result had been stage-managed. Added to his
annoyance was the fact that there were still politicians who were ready to oppose
his plans to amend the Cambodian Constitution to ensure that at all times the
king’s political wishes would prevail.
It was at this point, in March 1955, that Sihanouk dropped his bombshell;
indeed, he later called it his ‘atomic bomb’. Without any prior notice he
announced that he was abdicating the throne, which henceforth was to be
occupied by his father. He was now free, he later said, to engage in politics as
‘citizen Sihanouk’, unconstrained by his position as king. His abdication was a
brilliant move. It meant that he brought to his new activist role as politician all
the traditional respect accorded a Cambodian monarch without his being
handicapped by ceremonial duties and limitations on his freedom, which were
part and parcel of occupying the throne. His next major decision, in April, was
no less bold and, for the moment, no less successful. Tired of the factional nature
of Cambodian politics he next announced the formation of the Sangkum Reastr
Niyum (People’s Socialist Community), a political movement, not a party, to
which people of all political persuasions could belong, so long as they pledged
loyalty to the throne and to Sihanouk’s policies. In the space of two months
Sihanouk had rewritten the rules of Cambodian politics and set in place
arrangements that defined the parameters of Cambodian politics for the next
decade. These were the essential domestic political arrangements that were still
in place in 1970 when Sihanouk’s right-wing opponents tipped him out of office
and set in train the tragic events that led to the triumph and terrible tyranny of
the Pol Pot regime.
Laos

Somewhat surprisingly, given its character as the smallest of the countries that
once formed French Indochina, the post-independence history of Laos was
notably more complex than was the case for Cambodia, or even for Vietnam. In
Vietnam’s case, and once it was clear that the elections proposed in the Geneva
Accords were not going to take place, the central issue of Vietnamese politics
was clear: would the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) under its
Communist leadership succeed in extending its control over the whole of
Vietnam and in so doing defeat the United States-backed Republic of Vietnam
(South Vietnam)? In Cambodia, Sihanouk’s pre-emptive political decision to
abdicate, and so to become a committed actor in his country’s politics, set the
direction of his country’s politics for more than a decade. Nothing nearly so
straightforward may be said about the immediate postcolonial developments in
Laos, where politics and hostilities intersected in a bewildering fashion. Some
hint of the complexity of the problems that existed in Laos is gained through
knowledge of the fact that two royal half-brothers assumed opposing political
positions in the politico–military history of Laos after the Second World War
and into the years after 1953: Prince Souvanna Phouma as a neutralist, Prince
Souphanouvong as a Communist.
As noted in an earlier chapter, the independence Laos gained in 1953 was
flawed from the start, so that the very concept of a postcolonial settlement is,
perhaps, not really applicable in this case. At the Geneva Conference, and in
notable contrast to what happened in relation to Cambodia, recognition was
given to the right of the Lao Communists to play a part in the political life of
independent Laos. This reflected the fact that, with the vital backing of the Viet
Minh forces, the Lao Communists’ military arm controlled two key provinces in
northern Laos, though their actual numbers were small, perhaps 2000 troops in
all. Tellingly, these were two provinces that bordered North Vietnam.
In the agreements negotiated at the Geneva Conference, the intention was that
the Royal Lao Government in Vientiane and the Communists should strike a
modus vivendi that would result in a unified government for the whole of Laos.
At the political level this briefly appeared to be achieved, with representatives of
the Lao Communists contesting an election held in 1957, and gaining seats in the
national parliament. But Laos could not escape the pressures of the Cold War
and the steadily deteriorating security situation in South Vietnam. On the one
hand, the United States made clear its intention to back those conservative Lao
politicians opposing a role for the Communists. On the other, with North
Vietnam’s backing, the Lao Communists refused to surrender their military
control over the northern provinces and to integrate with the rest of the Lao
army. The result was a situation in which little was done for the well-being of
the bulk of the Lao population as successive governments in Vientiane
manoeuvred for personal and political advantage.
The pattern was broken for a short period in 1960 when a young Lao army
captain, Kong Le, mounted a coup d’état with the aim of making Laos a truly
neutral state. This was a critical moment for all the external parties with an
interest in Laos and resulted in another Geneva Conference that, once again, had
the proclaimed aim of establishing a neutral Laos. It was not to be. None of the
parties, with the exception of a few individuals genuinely dedicated to a neutral
solution, were ready abandon the goal of defeating their opponents. The
conservative Lao politicians, who were mostly drawn from aristocratic official
families and whose views were set along very traditional lines, saw their
political and material interests as linked to the United States while the Lao
Communists, with the support of the North Vietnamese, were equally unready to
compromise. Increasingly the civil war in Laos became linked to the larger war
taking place in Vietnam as the political contest in Vientiane steadily tipped in
the Communists’ favour.

In each of the four countries considered in this chapter the weaknesses of the
postcolonial settlements were exposed within a relatively short time after
independence was achieved. The next chapter examines how the achievement of
independence without hostilities and the pursuit of political aims through
parliamentary systems in Burma, Malaya, the Philippines and Singapore resulted
in equally important changes to the postcolonial settlements in each country.
THIRTEEN
AN END TO POSTCOLONIAL SETTLEMENTS, AND BEYOND
II: BURMA, MALAYA, SINGAPORE, THE PHILIPPINES AND
THE THAI EXCEPTION

The end of the postcolonial settlements in the four countries considered in the
previous chapter came in circumstances in which a system of government based
on anything approaching Western democratic parliamentary forms was either
never instituted (Vietnam), was so weak that it could be subverted, as was done
by Sukarno and Sihanouk (Indonesia and Cambodia), or never really functioned
separate from great power politics (Laos). Circumstances were different in
Burma, Malaya, Singapore and the Philippines. In the case of each of these
countries it appeared that the various postcolonial settlements, which were
parliamentary in character, would continue to function, even with the sometimes
difficult problems faced by successive governments. For it was certainly not the
case that the parliamentary systems instituted in these countries after the Second
World War operated in perfect circumstances. As has already been described,
there was the Emergency period in Malaya and the Huk rebellion in the
Philippines. Yet in each country’s case, though in very different ways, the
postcolonial settlements came to an end or were substantially altered.
Burma

The events in the period immediately following the end of the Second World
War have already been discussed. With the defeat of the Japanese there was no
doubt that Burma was going to become independent. The British government
had been hesitant to address the demands for independence made by Burmese
nationalists in the 1930s, but a very different atmosphere prevailed following the
end to the Second World War. Not least, the newly elected Labour government
in London was committed to decolonisation in India and, by extension, in
Burma, where there was an almost universal commitment to independence on
the part of the Burman ethnic majority (the attitude of the various minority
ethnic groups was another matter). Yet within the existence of this commitment
on the part of Burman politicians there were intense factional divisions among
the political parties as they planned for independence, while other political
divisions resulted from the long-established rivalries between the Burmans and
the various ethnic groups making up the rest of the Burmese population, the
Shans, Karens, Chins and Kachins, to mention the most prominent of these
minorities.
As recounted previously, political rivals made the reality of Burmese
factionalism tragically clear through the assassination of Aung San and six of his
associates. With Aung San’s death in July 1947, Burma lost its most able
politician, but progress towards independence was not checked and his place was
taken by U Nu, who became Burma’s first prime minister.
Despite serious separatist challenges to Rangoon’s authority, the government
survived throughout the 1950s, to a considerable extent because those opposing
it were divided in their aims. But there was also division at the heart of the
central government. The prime minister, U Nu, was disposed to introduce
policies that took some account of Burma’s ethnic diversity. He was, for
instance, ready to sanction some degree of autonomy for the Shans. Thinking
along these lines flew in the face of the policies advocated by the Burmese army.
Its leaders were committed to a firmly centralised state and believed that their
view should be accepted since they had borne the brunt of combating the
separatists’ armed challenges. With continuing political squabbling among
civilian politicians and the ongoing threats posed by demands for autonomy
from the minorities the army, led by General Ne Win, took matters into their
own hands and deposed U Nu and his government in March 1962.
The coup was almost bloodless—only one person was killed— but the death
of parliamentary government was profoundly important and an event of long-
lasting significance. As U Nu was sent into exile the military established a
Revolutionary Council that was to rule by decree for the next twelve years. The
introduction of a new constitution in 1974 did not mean the end of rule
dominated by the military. In the 1980s it briefly appeared that the military
leadership was prepared to relax its control over Burmese life, but throughout
the 1990s, and despite a degree of economic liberalisation, the army continued to
hold power. In part it justified its actions in light of continuing challenges to
central authority from the still-powerful minorities. Developments in the first
decade of the new century, and the persistence of democratic campaigners
associated with Aung San Suu Kyi, finally saw the introduction of a new
constitution in 2008 and civilian government in 2011. Elections in 2012 were
marked by Aung San Suu Kyi’s participation and her taking a seat in parliament.
At the time of writing, the extent to which the government, which still has close
links with the military leadership, is ready to embrace full-scale democracy is far
from clear. Against this background the high hopes that were held by many
Burmese for the success of an independent Burma, given its natural wealth and
the widespread literacy of its population, vanished with the military takeover of
1962, an event that dealt a death blow to the settlement that had brought
independence with a parliamentary system in 1948.
Malaya

When Malaya gained its independence in August 1957 it did so on the basis of a
series of understandings between the political leaders of the two most important
ethnic groups within the country, the majority Malays and the biggest ethnic
minority group, the Chinese—understandings reached with the concurrence of
the smaller Indian ethnic minority, which was less important politically and
economically. To a considerable extent the nature of these understandings
reflected the amicable personal relationships between the Malay and Chinese
leaders of the time, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tan Cheng Lok respectively.
Written into the constitution was an acceptance of Malay privilege as a result of
their being the ‘people of the country’. In practice this meant that Malays were
reserved positions within the civil service and given special access to
educational scholarships. The religion of the Malays was also recognised by the
constitution’s enshrining Islam as the state religion, though the right of citizens
to practice other religions was also recognised. The traditional rulers of the
Malay states, the sultans, continued to play an important part within the new
constitutional arrangements so far as state, rather than federal, responsibilities
were concerned. Moreover, one of their number was to occupy the essentially
ceremonial position of King of Malaya on a rotating basis.
The essentials of these arrangements could be summed up in the following
fashion: Malays were to be dominant in the field of politics while the
commercially powerful Chinese were to continue as the privileged group in the
economic sector. Together, the leading Malay and Chinese political parties—the
United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the Malayan Chinese
Association (MCA) respectively—dominated Malaya’s parliament and were
known as the Alliance.
The first break from the constitutional arrangements of 1957 came in
September 1963 with the establishment of the new Federation of Malaysia,
composed of Malaya, the two British territories in Borneo, Sarawak and Sabah,
and Singapore. The idea of forming this new federation came from Tunku Abdul
Rahman, the Prime Minister of Malaya, but it was a concept eagerly embraced
by Britain, which still had imperial responsibilities in the Borneo territories and
in Singapore and was anxious to be rid of them. Although Singapore
enthusiastically joined the new federation its leaders appear, at the time, not to
have recognised the extent to which their participation, as a majority ethnic
Chinese state, was unsettling for many in the Malay political establishment
based in Kuala Lumpur. For these Malays Singapore was seen as a potential
Chinese fifth column, likely to undermine Malaysia’s identity with its privileged
position for ethnic Malays and a commitment to Islam as the state religion.
When it became clear that Singapore leaders believed that they had as much
right as the Malay leadership to aspire to the highest offices in the federation and
actively campaigned with this belief in mind, Tunku Abdul Rahman and his
colleagues decided to expel Singapore from the federation. This they did in
August 1965, leaving Singapore to pursue its own future as an independent
country.
This separation of Singapore from the Malaysian federation was an event of
great importance, but it may be argued that the most profound break with the
postcolonial settlement came four years later. By 1969 there was growing
discontent within both Malay and Chinese circles with the terms of the
understandings that had been behind the terms of the 1957 constitution. It
became increasingly clear that from the point of view of many Malays an
arrangement that effectively ceded economic power to the Chinese in return for
political dominance was no longer an acceptable bargain. From the point of view
of some Malays the ruling Malay party, UMNO, was both insufficiently attuned
to the interests of its ethnic constituency and was failing to promote Islamic
values in a sufficiently vigorous fashion. Views of this kind lay behind the
slowly growing importance of a Malay party—known as PAS from its Malay
name—committed to the goal of making Malaysia an Islamic state. At the same
time there was a growing resentment among younger Chinese at what they saw
as their second-class status by comparison with the Malays. For some ethnic
Chinese it was no longer enough to be allowed to prosper but to be forever
prevented from holding true political power. With the presence of criticisms and
concerns of the kind just noted, electoral backing for the main Malay and
Chinese political parties that had supported the 1957 constitution began to flag.
When elections were held in May 1969 Chinese voters deserted the Alliance in
favour of opposition candidates linked to new parties which were
overwhelmingly Chinese in ethnic character. At the same time, PAS succeeded
in winning parliamentary seats that had previously been held by UMNO
politicians. So while the Alliance continued in control of parliament it did so
with sharply reduced numbers and with the sudden rise to importance of the new
Chinese-dominated parties.
The flashpoint came immediately after the elections when supporters of the
new Chinese opposition parties celebrated their success in gaining seats in
parliament with a victory parade in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. This provoked a
counter-demonstration on 13 May by supporters of the governing Malay party
which was followed by four days of savage communal rioting that pitched
predominantly young Malays and Chinese against each other and led to an
admitted death toll of over two hundred—unofficial estimates of the death toll
were considerably higher. The immediate results of these events were the
proclamation of a state of emergency and the suspension of parliament, with all
essential executive powers placed in the hands of a National Operations Council.
The longer-term effects of the communal rioting that took place on 13 May
involved the reshaping of the understandings that lay behind the 1957
constitution. With Malay opinion deeply disturbed about what had taken place
and already worried that their special position within Malaysian society was
being eroded, a series of changes was introduced to amend the constitution.
These changes reinforced the privileged position of the Malays by, for instance,
making their special rights an issue that could not be debated, including in
parliament. Regulations were introduced to increase, by quota, the number of
Malays who entered university. And, perhaps most importantly of all, changes
were made to the way in which Malaysia’s economy was regulated under what
was known as the New Economic Policy—usually referred to by its initials as
the NEP. This policy sought to redress the situation in which commercial
success was seen as the essential preserve of the country’s ethnic Chinese.
Malay ownership of commercial enterprises, including those run by the state,
was to be encouraged and assisted by government intervention.
No mention of this vital period in Malaysia’s modern history following the
events of May 1969 can fail to make reference to Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who as
a member of the ruling Malay party lost his seat in parliament at the time to a
candidate from the Islamic PAS party. Still relatively unknown at this point, the
medical doctor turned politician sprang into prominence by writing to Prime
Minister Abdul Rahman accusing him and his colleagues of failing to stand up
for Malay rights. In the short term this led to Dr Mahathir’s being expelled from
UMNO, the ruling Malay party. In the longer term it was one important step
along the route that took him to the prime ministership of Malaysia in 1981 and
to a remarkable career as leader of his country for twenty-two years.
Singapore

As has just been noted, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in August 1965.
This climactic event should be seen as the final step in a long-running and
complex political debate that had at its core the difficulty of deciding just what
place Singapore, with its ethnic Chinese majority, should occupy in relation to
the Malay Peninsula, where power was in the hands of its ethnic Malay majority.
Earlier in this book Singapore’s remarkable rise to become Southeast Asia’s key
commercial entrepôt was charted, with the observation that from early in its
modern existence Singapore was closely linked economically with Johore, the
Malay state just across the narrow straits that lay between the two. By the
interwar period Singapore was administered as part of the Straits Settlements
that linked it with Malacca and Penang, but it had close commercial links with
the rest of Malaya. Moreover, from the point of view of the colonial power,
Britain, the Straits Settlements and the states that made up Malaya were
essentially a single political unit, whatever the differences in the ways in which
parts of this unit were administered. Before the Second World War and without
any pressing calls for independence, either in the Straits Settlements or in the
Malay states, there seemed little reason for Britain to think about Singapore’s
future status or to reflect on the fact that it was an entity with a majority ethnic
Chinese entity in a region that was dominated, in terms of population, by Malays
and Indonesians.

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew dominated Singapore’s politics after 1959, and remained a powerful influence despite
stepping down from the position of prime minister in 1990. A brilliant British-trained lawyer, he presided
over Singapore’s extraordinary transformation from a colonial entrepôt into a thriving modern city.
Photograph by S.T. Tan courtesy of Far Eastern Economic Review

As was the case in so many other ways, the Second World War changed this
situation. With peace achieved in 1945, the newly elected Labour government in
London was determined to embark on a program of decolonisation. Plans in this
early post-Second World War period to include Singapore in a scheme that
would have joined it to Malaya were rejected by Malay leaders. As a result, and
as Malaya steadily moved towards the independence it achieved in 1957,
Singapore occupied a uncertain position as a British colony with a majority
ethnic Chinese population and with its emerging political leaders apparently
firmly left-wing in character. By this stage there was no longer an entity called
the Straits Settlement, since Malacca and Penang had been absorbed into the
Malayan Federation.
The image of Singapore as a colony with a dangerously left-wing character
was to change as the People’s Action Party (PAP) under Lee Kuan Yew and his
lieutenants came to dominate the island’s politics and as they vigorously
embraced the view that Singapore’s future lay in merger with Malaysia.
Moreover, by the late 1950s, the Singapore government was increasingly
showing its readiness to combat its domestic left-wing opponents, some of
whom undoubtedly were Communists, including through their detention without
trial. In September 1962 Lee’s government won a referendum on the desirability
of joining a future Federation of Malaysia. Then, having proclaimed that
Singapore was independent, on 31 August 1963, fifteen days before the new
Federation of Malaysia came into being, Singapore joined with Malaya and the
British Borneo territories to be part of this newly established state. This, for
Singapore, was the postcolonial settlement that that its leaders had most
earnestly desired. To add gloss to what they believed was their triumph, the PAP
won a resounding victory in the domestic elections held on 21 September 1963.
Taken together, these developments represented Singapore’s postcolonial
settlement.
The fact that the end to this settlement came so rapidly, in just under two years
from the date of the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia, reflected a
series of fundamental misunderstandings and misjudgments on both sides of the
causeway linking Singapore to peninsular Malaysia. As already recounted, the
Malay leadership of the new federation believed that Singapore politicians
would not seek to play a role outside their own territory until after elections due
in Malaysia in April 1964. Indeed, members of the Singapore government had
suggested that this would be the case as late as the end of 1963. But Lee Kuan
Yew and his colleagues changed their minds, for at least two main reasons. First,
they had been disturbed for some time by a concern that the MCA, the Chinese
component of the Alliance in the federal Malaysian parliament, might seek to
make political inroads into their control of Singapore. Secondly, and more
importantly, the PAP leaders came to believe that they could play an important
part at the federal level in Malaysia, perhaps even as ministers. Against a
background of tensions caused by Indonesia’s policy of ‘Confrontation’ and Lee
Kuan Yew’s efforts to spearhead a united opposition to the ruling Alliance at the
federal level, the Malaysian leadership headed by Tunku Abdul Rahman decided
that there was no place in Malaysia for Singapore. The expulsion took place on 9
August after Lee Kuan Yew had unsuccessfully pleaded with the disillusioned
Tunku in Kuala Lumpur not to take this action.
By any standards Singapore began its renewed independence existence facing
great difficulties. It was a state without natural resources, dependent on water
piped in from the Malayan peninsula. Its entrepôt trade was important but it
desperately needed to diversify its economic base. Nearly sixty years later these
handicaps have been overcome. Hard though it is for a visitor in the early
twenty-first century to believe, much of Singapore’s population in the 1960s was
housed in what can only be described as a tropical slum. The modern city a
visitor sees today reflects the skills and the commitment of two political
generations of extremely able leaders who have never hesitated to make clear
their view that the interests of the population in general frequently require a
substantial limitation on the exercise of individual freedom.
Philippines

The fact that the Philippines gained its long-promised independence shortly after
the Second World War ended has already been noted in relation to the challenge
posed to the country’s independent government by the Hukbalahap movement
(Chapter 10). At one level the emergence of an independent government took
place with remarkably little constitutional difficulty. The United States had
promised independence in 1935 so that the formal event, celebrated on 4 July
1946, was a foregone conclusion to America’s colonial endeavour. Just as the
date echoed Independence Day in the United States—Philippines National Day
celebrated on 12 June refers to the country’s earlier struggle against the Spanish
—so, too, the constitutional arrangements adopted reflected the American
legislative model. The independent Philippines was ruled by an elected president
who shared power with a bicameral legislature consisting of a House of
Representatives and a Senate. As with the United States, the president was the
dominant figure in post-Second World War political life. But in contrast to the
United States, the Philippines Senate was elected on a nationwide basis, a fact
that led to the Senate’s becoming the natural launching pad for politicians
aspiring to the presidency. It was also a constitutional arrangement that made the
relatively stable basis of party politics, to be found in countries such as the
United States, Britain and Australia, foreign to the Philippines. Party allegiances
were weak and politicians were ready to switch from one party to another if it
appeared to be in their personal interest.
Note has been taken already of the manner in which the issue of collaboration
with the Japanese was handled after the Second World War in the Philippines. In
essence, too many of the elite had cooperated with the Japanese for the political
class to engage in protracted trials and subsequent punishment to expunge that
memory. Bolstering this approach was a fundamental fact of Philippines political
life, one that continues to be of the greatest importance to the present day.
Politics in the Philippines was, and to a large degree still is, the preserve of the
elite, notwithstanding the role played by a limited number of individuals who
enter politics from a non-elite background. The elite are mostly members of, or
connected to, the large landowning families whose interests spread into every
sphere of life, whether political, economic or social. And in 1945–46, as
manoeuvring for both presidential and later legislative elections took place, it is
not an overstatement to say that there was scarcely a single elite politician who,
even if he had not collaborated with the Japanese himself, did not have a relative
or other close connection who had done so. This, as recounted earlier, contrasted
with the role that had been played by the Huks during the war. They had fought
against the Japanese and their peasant support represented a political and social
challenge to the elite. This was why the Huks who were elected to the
Philippines Congress were denied the opportunity to take up their seats in the
elections held in 1946 by their elite opponents.
The first president to be elected in the independent Philippines was Manuel
Roxas. A quintessential member of the elite, with strong links to the country’s
powerful sugar interests, he had been prominent in the pre-war Commonwealth
period and was associated with the ‘independence’ granted by Japan to the
Philippines in 1943. The negative implications of this latter association was
neutralised by the support he received from General Douglas MacArthur, the
American Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, who played the role of proconsul
in the Philippines in the months immediately after the defeat of the Japanese.
In the years immediately following Roxas’ election to the presidency in 1946
—he died in 1948—Philippines politics followed a familiar but depressing
course, recalling the elite struggles of the 1930s, but without the political buffer
that the United States’ colonial presence had provided. Indeed, most historians
would argue that at this period, and subsequently, American support for the
country’s essentially elite political structure stood in the way of reform. The
Huks remained a dangerous challenge to the central government’s authority,
particularly in Luzon, and bribery and corruption were accepted as a normal part
of political life in the postcolonial settlement.
The challenge to congressional politics as usual came from an unexpected
quarter, from Ramon Magsaysay, a distinctly non-elite figure. In contrast to so
many in Philippines politics, Magsaysay had been an active guerrilla fighting
against the Japanese during the war. Perhaps even more strikingly, he was the
son of a teacher who had turned to blacksmithing to earn a living. Capitalising
on his wartime record, he entered politics and was named as Secretary of
Defence in President Quirino’s cabinet following the 1949 elections. In this
position he revitalised the fight against the Huks and then went on to win the
presidential election in 1953.
For a period it appeared that the grip of the elite on Philippines politics might
be broken as President Magsaysay promoted men of talent to government
positions. It was not to be. When Magsaysay died in a plane crash in 1957, much
of the spirit of change that he had tried to inject into politics died with him. Very
importantly, and despite his success in neutralising the challenge of the Huks,
most of the land reform he promised had not been instituted. Without change in
this vital area of social and economic life, control of politics remained in the
hands of an elite that drew both its wealth and power from connections with
great landed estates. Nevertheless, important change did begin to take place in
other sectors of the Philippines economy from Magsaysay’s presidency onwards.
With multinational companies seizing opportunities to invest in the Philippines
and working with the established elite there was a surge in construction in urban
areas and in particular in Manila. At the same time, as relative stability replaced
the chaotic years of the war, an increasing number of young men and women
went on to tertiary education following high school.

Ferdinand Marcos
As President of the Philippines between 1965 and 1986, Marcos dominated the political life of his country
until he was overthrown in February 1986. Photogaph courtesy of Far Eastern Economic Review

The event that was eventually to lead to the end of the postcolonial settlement
in the Philippines took place in 1963. In that year Ferdinand Marcos, an
ambitious lawyer who falsely claimed to have been a prominent guerrilla leader
during the war, won election to the presidency of the senate. Using this position
as a base to campaign for the presidency of the nation, he gained that post in
1965 with the proclaimed aims of rejuvenating the Philippines. During his first
term in office it appeared that Marcos might achieve his stated goal of
transforming the body politic. Despite the fact that little changed fundamentally
and the old elite continued to dominate the country’s economy, the financial
spin-offs the Philippines received from the Vietnam War as the result of the
major American bases sited in Luzon provided a cushion of prosperity, even if
the amount of benefit that trickled down to the poor was very limited. Marcos’
promises of better government combined with judicious pork-barrelling were
enough to ensure his re-election as president in 1969 and so to be the first
president to serve a second term. His claims to wartime heroism were still
unchallenged and his flamboyant wife, Imelda, successfully projected an image
of concern for the disadvantaged in society, while living a life of indulgent
luxury herself.
The break with the postcolonial settlement came in the third year of Marcos’
second term. Until then, and despite the vicissitudes of Philippines politics, the
essentials of the constitutional arrangements introduced in 1946 had remained in
place. Then, in September 1972, Marcos broke with this established pattern and
declared martial law in order, he said, to preserve democracy and in the face of
what he claimed to be a threatening Communist-led revolution. The reality was
very different. He was a year away from the end of his second term as president
and the constitution forbade him from running a third time. He had convinced
himself that he was indispensable to the future of the Philippines and to this end
he was ready to jail thousands of his opponents without giving them recourse to
the courts to challenge their imprisonment. He knew that many in the elite had
grown critical of his policies and his lifestyle, but he also knew that other
sections of the elite, particularly those with connections to the business
community, and conservatively inclined members of the army officer corps were
sympathetic to his views. Middle-class opinion gave some support to his
decision, and even those who campaigned on a better deal for the urban and rural
poor drew hope from his apparent readiness to introduce reform, particularly
land reform. Moreover, with President Richard Nixon in the White House,
Marcos’ strongly avowed anti-communism assured him of support from the
United States.
The apparently positive aspects of the introduction of martial law were soon
shown to be fragile, even ephemeral. As Marcos became ever more firmly
entrenched in the presidency his claimed commitment to reform was
increasingly called into question. Bold ideas of land reform stalled at the same
time as Marcos dispensed benefits to his close associates in a style that came to
be known as ‘crony capitalism’. Imelda Marcos, with her flamboyant personal
indulgences and unfettered spending of state funds on pretentiously grand
buildings, such as hotels and cultural centres, that were supposed to add to the
regime’s prestige, epitomised all that was politically hollow about the Marcos
period. And while corrupt indulgence and crony capitalism was a way of life in
the capital, developments in the countryside were eating away at the
government’s authority.
 By the early 1980s a resurgent Communist party was gaining recruits and
asserting increasing regional power through its armed wing, the New People’s
Army. At the same time, the difficulties that had always existed between the
Catholic-dominated government in Manila and the minority Muslim community
in the southern islands of the country, particularly in the large island of
Mindanao, were growing more intense. The army’s response to these challenges
more often than not appeared to involve ruthless, indiscriminate violence that
made little if any effort to distinguish between the state’s enemies and guiltless
peasants who lived in areas where the army was operating. Meanwhile, the
economy was faltering and Marcos was increasingly affected by chronic disease.
Nevertheless, he was able in 1981 to lift martial law temporarily and to stage a
corrupt presidential election that entrenched him in power for a further four
years.
The period from 1981 to 1985 was one of the darkest in the history of the
modern Philippines. As the economy lurched into further disarray and security in
the provinces was increasingly compromised, political life in Manila became
ever more bizarre and corrupt. With Imelda Marcos continuing her indulgent
lifestyle, still claiming to be the voice of the ‘little people’, Marcos himself was
absent for long periods as he underwent medical treatment. Key members of the
military continued to support Marcos in return for the favours that this support
brought them, led by General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s right-hand man, a Marcos
cousin who had risen to his elevated rank from a lowly beginning through
unstinted loyalty.
The whole fragile house of cards began to fall apart in the wake of a ruthless
assassination. In 1983 Benigno Aquino, an avowed political enemy of Marcos,
returned from exile in the United States with the aim of challenging the
president. As he left his aircraft at Manila airport a gunman linked to the military
shot him down. This was the beginning of the end for Marcos. Aquino’s murder
mobilised a broad coalition against Marcos including, very importantly, both
disaffected members of the military and outspoken members of the broad
Catholic community, including many, but initially far from all, of its powerful
bishops. At the head of this coalition was Aquino’s wife, Corazon Aquino. Like
her dead husband, and emphasising the extent to which some essential features
of Philippines politics remained unchanged, she was a member of the powerful
Cojuanco family, a mestizo family with large landholdings in Pampanga
province north of Manila.
An unlikely candidate to lead a political revolution, Mrs Aquino was named
as the opposition candidate to run against Marcos in the election held in
February 1986. There is no doubt that on a fair counting of the votes she won the
election, but an increasingly ill Marcos and his supporters refused to admit this
was the case. The result was an extraordinary outpouring of popular resentment
against Marcos and his regime, with former Marcos allies, hundreds of
thousands of Manila’s population and, of the greatest importance, large numbers
of religious, both priests and nuns, surging onto the streets to protest against the
proclaimed election result and calling for Marcos’ departure. After some initial
hesitation, the Catholic Archbishop of Manila, Jaimie Cardinal Sin, lent his
voice to these demands at the same time as most of the military refused to
confront the demonstrators. By the end of February Marcos had fled the country
and Mrs Aquino was installed as president. In one sense the postcolonial
settlement had been restored, but the period of martial law under Marcos had
shown how fragile Philippines politics had become before 1972. This fragility
has far from disappeared in the years that have followed the triumph of the
‘People Power’ revolution of February 1986.
Thailand

As repeatedly emphasised, Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia that

did not experience colonial rule. So to look for a ‘colonial settlement’ and to
make judgments about when there were departures from it, as has been done
with other countries in the region in this and the previous chapter, is not an
option. But it is possible is to chart the broad outline of developments affecting
Thailand’s constitutional history since the 1932 coup that ended the system of
absolute monarchy existing up to that date. In doing so, it is necessary to
concentrate on the essentials of a period of great complexity in which rival
political groups, almost all of them elite in character until very recently, have
struggled to shape the character of the Thai state. While the events described are
distinctively Thai, they have some general similarities with what occurred in
other Southeast Asian states, particularly after the Second World War, as
individuals and groups manoeuvred to find new political answers to changing
times.
Despite the quite radical aims of some of those who played a part in the 1932
coup—a group led by an academic lawyer, Pridi Phanomyong, and which even
extended to considering the possibility of establishing a republic—the men who
held power in Thailand during the 1930s continued to be deeply conservative in
outlook. The power of the monarchy had been constrained, but the traditional
respect for the institution did not disappear. A system of government was
instituted that had an electoral element, but ultimate power lay with the military
and their civilian associates. Conservative though they were, they did make
some progressive changes, including the introduction of compulsory, universal
primary education and a reduction of taxes at the village level.
The accession to power of a prominent military man, Phibun Songkhram, in
1938 reflected a swing back to even more conservative politics. This was
apparent both in domestic politics and in the sphere of international relations.
Under Phibun, Thai values were promoted as superior to those of Western
nations and there was admiration for the aggressive nationalism of Japan. (This
was also the time when the name ‘Thailand’ was introduced to replace ‘Siam’ as
the name of the country.) With France defeated in Europe, Phibun seized the
opportunity afforded by French weakness to attack French forces in Indochina
and gain control over frontier regions of Cambodia and Laos. This boosted Thai
pride, but it was a result that had involved mediation by the Japanese who by
1941 were the controlling power in French Indochina. When, in December 1941,
the Japanese used Thai territory to mount their attack against British Malaya,
Phibun’s government could only acquiesce in their actions and subsequently, at
Japanese urgings, declare war on the Allies. For the moment and in the light of
Japan’s apparently unstoppable advance in the rest of Southeast Asia, Thailand
appeared firmly in the Japanese camp. It was not, nevertheless, ready to fight on
the side of the Japanese. As it had shown in its previous dealings with the West,
when it made concessions to preserve its independence, Thailand once again was
ready to ‘bend with the wind’ when no other course of action seemed possible.
Three years later, as the war drew towards an end and the defeat of Japan
appeared inevitable, Thai policy changed again. Through skilful diplomacy and
as the victorious Allies faced major preoccupations elsewhere, Thailand paid
only minimal costs at the end of the war for its dalliance with Japan. It had to
give back the territory it had gained in Cambodia and Laos, but its success in
putting the past behind it was reflected in the country’s admission to the United
Nations in 1946. By the time this occurred the revolving door quality of Thai
national politics had seen Pridi once again become prime minister, only to lose
power after the mysterious death of the young King Ananda in June 1946. In
1948, with the military continuing to occupy an important place in Thai politics,
Phibun, by now with the rank of field marshal, again became prime minister. In
a pattern emphasising underlying elite instability, there were no fewer than four
failed coup attempts led by military men between 1948 and 1951. Phibun and his
government survived these attempted coups and he continued to rule until 1957
when, after narrowly winning a general election for a new parliament, he was
deposed in yet another coup by a long-time rival, General Sarit Thanarit.
Sarit had little patience with the parliament elected in 1957 and dissolved it in
1958. His authoritarian bent and determined assault on the influence of the
Communist Party of Thailand was softened by his readiness to promote men of
talent within the civil service and to bolster the role of the Thai king. At the
same time, Sarit presided over the development of ever-closer ties with the
United States. His policies were inspired by security concerns over
developments in the former states of French Indochina but led, as a major side-
benefit, to increased American investment in Thailand. When Sarit died in 1963,
to be succeeded by Thanom Kittikachorn, military-dominated rule continued and
ties with the United States became even closer. A brief flirtation with
parliamentary rule at the end of the end of the 1960s ended in 1971 when
Thanom, backed by conservative elements in the military, again took power. In
doing so he set the stage for an eruption of anger from those in Thai society who
were no longer ready to accept that the military and their allies had an inherent
right to dominate Thai politics.
 Resentment against these arrangements boiled over in October 1973, with
violent demonstrations against Thanom and his associates that led to his going
into exile and to new parliamentary elections. The events of this time were
testimony to the emergence of a new element in the equation of Thai politics: the
educated urban young who were either the children of the growing middle class
or aspired to become part of that group. Many were university students who
enthusiastically, if not always practically, sought to widen democratic
participation among previously unrepresented groups such as urban workers and
the rural poor. In this time of social ferment and the uncertain international
situation following the Communist victories throughout Indochina, it briefly
seemed that a vigorous Thai parliamentary system would be entrenched. But in
October 1976 the still powerful right-wing and conservative elements linked to
the police and sections of the military struck back. They savagely attacked
students at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, claiming the students were
promoting extreme radical politics. In the chaos of this period, and as many
dissident students fled into exile in remote rural areas, the military again took
charge, appointing a civilian, Thanin Kraivichien, as prime minister. Within a
year the military acted again, pushing Thanin aside to install one of their own,
General Kriangsak Chomanand, as prime minister.
Although it was far from clear at the time, the appointment of Kriangsak, who
was succeeded in the 1980s by another military man, General Prem
Tinsulanonda, marked a real turning point in Thai politics, one that might
reasonably be termed the equivalent of the fundamental breaks with the
postcolonial settlements that occurred in other Southeast Asian states. At the
beginning of the 1980s there seemed no certainty that a parliamentary
democracy would emerge in Thailand. Yet this was what eventually happened as
Kriangsak and, more particularly, Prem successfully shepherded the country
through both political and economic challenges. Dissidents in the countryside
were encouraged back to mainstream politics by offers of amnesty and, where
this did not work, by harsh military action. Increasingly the Bangkok
government showed itself ready to take account of the interests of farmers,
particularly those living in the poor provinces of the northeast of the country.
But following elections in 1992 there were widespread and violent protests in
Bangkok when it appeared that the military was again planning to seize power.
This tested the secular trend towards democratisation that appeared to have
become established, but the decisive intervention of the king ensured the
continuation of parliamentary rule.
Given this background, only a supreme optimist would have suggested that
what had taken place in the 1980s and 1990s had satisfactorily addressed
Thailand’s problems, though the institution of a new constitution in 1997 was
hailed by many as offering a ‘new beginning’. Subsequent events have qualified
the hopes engendered by the fairly brief period of relative stability that followed
1997. As Thailand enters the second decade of the twenty-first century it seems
fair to judge that it still has not settled on a political system that fully matches
the undoubted vigour of its people.

By the beginning of the 1980s there were eight independent states in Southeast
Asia. Cambodia’s independence was gravely compromised as the result of the
Vietnamese invasion that had driven Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime from power
in 1979—a development considered in the next chapter. But elsewhere, for
better or worse, independent governments ruled with a widely varied set of
constitutional arrangements. Brunei, never technically a colony, was to end its
status as a British protectorate in 1984. This left East Timor as the only territory
in which the inhabitants’ claim to independence was denied by an occupying
power, Indonesia. More than a decade was to pass before Cambodia could again
be classed as genuinely independent. In East Timor’s case it was not until the
passage of more than two decades that the treasured goal of independence was
finally achieved.
FOURTEEN
THE CHALLENGES OF INDEPENDENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

As will be clear from the previous two chapters, the way in which the various
postcolonial settlements in Southeast Asia came to an end varied greatly from
country to country. Consider two of the instances which were discussed that
underline this point. The sweeping aside of the assumptions that lay behind the
Geneva Accords led into the bitter years of the Vietnam War with its terrible loss
of life. In great contrast, Singapore’s brief postcolonial association with
Malaysia and its subsequent expulsion from that federation did not lead to
hostilities between the two countries, however robust some of the verbal
exchanges between them since 1965. So while it is possible to discuss the
challenges posed by independence in a general fashion for Southeast Asia as a
whole, it is also essential to recognise the very particular and different
experiences of each country as its leaders have endeavoured to come to terms
with a wide range of problems.
Mention has already been made of the problems associated with rapid
population growth and the difficulty this poses for the governments of Southeast
Asia. Larger populations mean greater demands on governments for the
provision of services and the maintenance of security—demands faced by some
countries in which services are already stretched to their limits. Whenever the
issue of population growth is discussed developments in Indonesia, and most
particularly on the island of Java, take centre stage. For not only does Indonesia
have the largest population in Southeast Asia, with roughly half of the country’s
population concentrated in Java, it is estimated that the current population of
upwards of 250 million will increase to over 280 million by 2025, and the
gloomiest estimates are that Indonesia’s population will not stabilise until it
reaches more than 400 million by the end of the twenty-first century. This is
despite the fact that the rate of growth has slowed in the past two decades.
 Indonesia is not alone in having to deal with the consequences that flow from
an increase in the size of its population. The old image of Thailand as a country
with open frontiers is no longer valid as the demand for agricultural land
continues to grow as the size of the population increases. Population pressure is
already a major problem in the Philippines where the pervasive role of the
Catholic Church, with its opposition to contraceptive measures, has meant that
the country’s population is likely to double over the next thirty years. Rapid
population growth is also taking place in smaller Southeast Asian states. Despite
its terrible experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, which are discussed later in this
chapter, Cambodia’s population, which was about eight million when Pol Pot
was overthrown in 1979, seems set to increase to double its present size of over
fifteen million by about 2025.
Expansion of education, containing the threats posed by rapid growth of the
population, the need to provide adequate health care—all these are social goals
that have been proclaimed by the independent governments of Southeast Asia.
But such goals are costly and place heavy demands on national budgets that have
frequently been sharply and adversely affected by changing patterns in the world
economic situation and by the difficulties involved in transforming a colonial
economy into a national economy. A country such as Indonesia is staggeringly
rich in resources that range from oil and copper to rubber and tin. Finding a way
of exploiting these resources and developing an economy that can balance the
costs of administering and defending a population of some 250 million spread
over a vast distance from Sumatra to the provinces of Papua (formerly Irian
Jaya) has proved to be a daunting task. And what applies in Indonesia applies
elsewhere in the region, if on a smaller scale, as governments have had to
establish a set of priorities for economic development, find the personnel able to
manage the programs that have been decided upon, and find the finance to
change plans into reality. In pursuit of their development goals the role of
foreign aid has been important for countries throughout the region. Foreign
assistance should not, however, be accorded an importance that it does not
deserve. In the final analysis, success or failure in confronting the problems of
Southeast Asia’s economic development is a matter that will be decided by the
governments and populations of the region rather than by outsiders.
The determination to make its own decisions, no matter what the economic
cost, was the philosophy behind the policies followed by the Burmese
government for much of that country’s independent existence, with relaxation in
a policy that stressed self-reliance and the limitation of foreign economic activity
in the country only coming in the 1990s. The cost in terms of economic growth
has been considerable and none of the non-Communist states of the region have
sought to follow Burma’s example.
Against this background of demanding economic problems and of costly but
essential social programs in the fields of health and education there is another set
of problems facing the independent governments of Southeast Asia that is the
most serious of all: the problems associated with achieving and maintaining
national unity. No exaggeration is involved in the observation that without a
significant degree of national unity all the other goals of the independent states
are in jeopardy, if they can ever be attained. Working to attain national unity has,
for all the countries of the region, been the prime concern since the gaining of
independence.
The problem of achieving and maintaining national unity has existed on two
levels in most of Southeast Asia. On the one hand there has been the problem of
arriving at an agreed form of national government—a basic issue concerned with
such matters as which group or groups in the community should hold power and
under what limitations. On the other hand, there have been the problems
associated with the interests of regions and minorities. In this latter case the issue
of whether or not a central government’s interests should override those of a
group or region within the state has been at the heart of extended debate and on
occasion armed struggle. For an outsider the latter type of problem—that
connected with the clash of interests between the majority group and the
minority, or minorities, in the population, or between a central power and a
region—may be easier to comprehend. The extent to which regional and
minority interests have not disappeared in Western Europe and, even more
strikingly, in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, is an aid to our
understanding. Even as recently as thirty or forty years ago there was a tendency
to discount the importance of regional and minority interests within the
developed states of Western Europe, but at the beginning of the twenty-first
century no student of politics can take such a position. In Britain, one of the
most fundamentally stable of all Western democracies, the Scottish and Welsh
nationalists have shown that the special interests of their regions within a
governmentally unified state can no longer be met solely by the central
parliament in London. The importance of regional interests has been even more
strikingly demonstrated in Spain, following the end of the Franco dictatorship.
Consider the aspirations and demands of Catalonia and the Basque regions in
this regard. That the Balkans should once again have been a theatre for war is a
salutary reminder that conflict linked to ethnic and religious identification is not
the sole preserve of the less-developed world.
 There should not be very much surprise, therefore, when we discover that
regionalism and the interests of minority groups, who do not see their goals as
being the same as those of a central government, are very much a part of
contemporary Southeast Asia, and have been major problems for the countries
that gained independence since the Second World War. The problems that still
confront the central government in Burma, for instance, are not really new
problems though there are new elements involved. The fact that there are
substantial ethnic minority groups in Burma who wish to live independently, or
at least semi-autonomously, rather than be controlled by the central government
in Rangoon, is essentially a continuation of a long historical fact of life. The
history of Burma for many centuries has had as one of its dominant
characteristics the clash between the efforts of the Burmans to impose their
control over the non-Burman elements in the population and resistance to these
efforts. At best, in the past, the Burmans have succeeded in establishing a
tenuous control over the Shans, Kachins, Karens and other minority groups that
make up Burma’s diverse population. With British colonial rule removed, the
old tensions between the dominant Burmans and the other ethnic groups within
the state re-emerged and continue to pose a problem of real significance more
than seventy years after independence.
Regional problems are a continuing feature of the contemporary history of the
Philippines. This fact provides another example of the way in which an
independent Southeast Asian state has had to face a challenge that has developed
from clear historical antecedents but has assumed new and more challenging
characteristics in the postcolonial period. Under both Spanish and American
colonialism the southern islands of the Philippines were a world apart. In the
northern Philippines the impact of the Catholic Spanish rulers was considerable,
making the Philippines the only area in Southeast Asia in which Christianity is
the dominant religion. To the south, however, a different world existed, and
indeed still exists today. For in the southern islands of the Philippines Islam was
already established when the Spanish arrived. The Islamic faith—the religion of
about 5 per cent of the contemporary population—sustained the population of
large sections of the southern Philippines in their sense of separateness from
their northern Catholic countrymen. This sense of separate identity was a cause
of some problems, but as long as the government based in Manila, whether
Spanish, American or most recently Filipino, did not seek to impose too strict a
rule, means could be found to balance the interests of the central government and
those of the Islamic southerners. The independent government of the Philippines
has been concerned to impose its authority in the southern Islamic regions.
Moreover, with the increasing population a growing number of Catholic
Filipinos have settled in southern areas that once had a majority Muslim
population. The result has been an episodic struggle between the Manila
government and separatist Muslim groups that, as of 2012, may finally have
been resolved. Put in the simplest terms, this has been a clash between those at
the centre who believe that the integrity of the state requires a strong central
government and those outsiders who do not share the interests, religion or
identity of those holding power at the centre. Those in the southern Philippines
who have resisted the central government have not felt part of the complex web
of interests and shared obligations of those who look to Manila for leadership.
This lack of a sense of shared identity is to be found in other regions of
Southeast Asia. The Islamic minority of southern Thailand provides a parallel
example. In years gone by these ethnic Malay followers of Islam lived in a
buffer state region. It was a region in which the rulers of Thailand claimed
authority but seldom exercised it. Following the territorial adjustments that
accompanied the British colonial advance into Malaya a substantial number of
ethnic Malays, followers of Islam, found themselves under the control of a Thai
state that was increasingly concerned to see an administrative unity prevailing
within the kingdom. The proportion of the population involved in the case of the
Thai Islamic minority—about 4 per cent of the total—are a little smaller than is
the case in the Philippines, but the nature of the problem they pose is remarkably
similar. From their point of view the Thai government in Bangkok—ethnically
Thai, Buddhist in religion, and centralist in its aims—cannot easily be seen as
their government. From the point of view of the rulers in Bangkok, the followers
of Islam within the territories of the state have a right to freedom of religion but
not to any other special privileges. Recently, simmering tension has led to
increasing violence and the loss of many lives.
Lesser problems have faced the Thai state in its dealings with the tribal
minorities in the north of the country where, until recent times, the Meo, Karen,
Akha and other hill peoples had only the most limited contact with the central
administration based in Bangkok. With the passage of time and the expansion of
the ethnic Thai population, the government has increasingly impinged on
peoples and areas that had previously been little touched by modern
administration. Mostly this increase in contact has been peaceful but it has,
nevertheless, posed challenges on both sides of the changing relationship.
A different challenge to the central Thai government has become apparent in
very recent times. This has involved the emergence of political activism based
on regional, historical and linguistic identification. Most particularly, this
activism has been associated with a section of the Thai population living in the
northeast of the country, or Isan in Thai usage, and linked with the ‘Red Shirt’
movement that emerged in the first decade of the present century. This is not the
place to describe the complex political developments involving the Red Shirts.
Rather, it is important to note that what has occurred reflects the fact that much
of Thailand’s population in the northeast of the country see themselves, and are
seen by others, as a distinctive group. There are historical reasons for this since
many are the descendants of ethnic Thais who once were linked to rulers in Laos
but who were incorporated into the Bangkok-dominated Thai state in the
nineteenth century. Their dialect is different from that of Bangkok and the
central plain and, at least in popular culture dominated by the capital, they are
seen as rather ‘bucolic’ in character. To a lesser extent, the population of
northern Thailand, and in particular those living in and around Chiang Mai, also
see themselves as distinct in many ways when compared with their central
compatriots. At the time of the most active Red Shirt protests against Bangkok
policies Chiang Mai, too, was a centre of regional activism that had links with
the fact that it was not until the early part of last century that the region was fully
integrated into the Thai state.
For all the problems posed by its various minority groups, Thailand’s
experience since the Second World War has never matched the threat to the state
that occurred in Indonesia in the late 1950s. Very early in this book one of the
great differences between the mainland states of Southeast Asia and those of the
maritime regions was noted. While mainland Southeast Asia states have, very
generally, a dominant population group and a varying number of minorities, the
states of maritime Southeast Asia, and most particularly Indonesia, are
composed of a whole series of ethnic groups, so that no single group is as clearly
dominant as is the case, for instance, with the Thais in Thailand. This contrast
needs to be borne in mind when one looks at the threat to national unity that was
posed by regional interests in Indonesia in the late 1950s. What was involved
was not an attempted rebellion against one dominant ethnic group—as has been
the case with the Shans and Karens in Burma when they have confronted the
Burman majority. Instead, military and political leaders with regional interests in
islands away from Java sought to challenge the authority of a central government
in Jakarta that was supported by Indonesians of diverse ethnic background. The
rebels were proclaiming through action their belief that regional interests—the
interests of those in Sumatra and Sulawesi, particularly—were more important
than the national interests embodied in strong central control from Jakarta.
Despite clandestine backing from outside forces, the rebels failed and the unitary
character of Indonesia was maintained. The rebellion showed, nevertheless, that
regional interests were an important feature of Indonesia’s society and presented
an ever-present risk of division and disunity.
The truth of this judgment was underlined by the re-emergence of a ‘Free
Aceh’ movement in northern Sumatra in the 1990s which posed a major
challenge to the authority of the Jakarta-based government. This movement
received considerable support from the population of Aceh, where the deep
commitment to Islam in the province has led to its being known as ‘the verandah
of Mecca’. By 2004, with increasing clashes between government forces and the
armed followers of the Free Aceh movement, and despite efforts at international
mediation, there seemed to be little prospect of a settlement that would bring
peace to the province. Change came following the devastating tsunami that
ravaged Sumatra generally and Aceh in particular in the last days of 2004. The
loss of life and massive destruction proved a circuit breaker that led to renewed
efforts to find a solution that would take account of Aceh’s particular character
while preserving the overall authority of the Indonesia state, by this stage led by
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The passage of a new law governing
Aceh and elections held in the province in December 2006 together formed a
solution that took account of both provincial and central government interests,
including meeting Aceh’s long-held grievance that it was gaining insufficient
benefit from its major oil resources. And Aceh is not the only region of
Indonesia that has questioned the right of a government in Jakarta to make
decisions on its behalf. Papua, the western part of the island of New Guinea, is
another, while developments in East Timor have shown that it is possible for
even a weak but determined population to demand and gain independence from
the Indonesian state. Whether the achievement of independence now provides a
guarantee of the new East Timorese state enjoying an untroubled and peaceful
existence as one of the world’s newest countries would still seem in question.

The search for ways to achieve national unity has led to a wide range of political
formulas being tried and followed or rejected by the various states of Southeast
Asia in their efforts to find a system of government to meet each independent
state’s individual needs. Given the very different background that the states of
Southeast Asia have from the Western world, with different histories and
different pressures operating on the governments of the region, the fact that close
adherence to Western models is mostly absent should not be a matter for great
surprise. Western parliamentary systems have evolved over centuries. The
history of the twentieth century alone has shown how fragile democratic
parliamentary systems can be in many states of Europe. And universal suffrage
is, with the rarest exceptions, a twentieth-century phenomenon in the West.
These facts need to be kept firmly in mind when looking at the different
choices that have been made by the states of Southeast Asia as to how they
should be governed. In three of the non-Communist states of modern Southeast
Asia the military has been closely associated with government for lengthy
periods—Burma, Thailand and Indonesia. In the Philippines President Marcos’
declaration of martial law in the early 1970s depended for its effectiveness on
the close support of the military. In each of these cases the military has seen its
role in society as very different from the traditional role assigned to it in many
Western democracies. In those Southeast Asian states where the military has
played and plays an important political role, this is undertaken with the
conviction that the armed forces alone can be trusted to place national before
sectional interests.
Although the end of the Suharto regime in the late 1990s has qualified the
point, the army in Indonesia has continued to see itself as the guardian of the
revolution that gained independence from the Dutch as well as seeking to protect
its own interests through involvement in politics. During the years of Sukarno’s
rule, or misrule, the army became more and more disillusioned with the factional
fighting of the political parties and ever more concerned with the growth of
support for the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI. As recounted earlier, this
led to Sukarno’s downfall and the installation one of their own, General Suharto,
as President of Indonesia. The terrible events of the year that followed the
army’s assumption of power in 1965 strikingly illustrate the extent to which
politics in modern Southeast Asia can excite passions and violence. While the
Indonesian army ensured that it gained a tight control over the administration,
tens of thousands of anti-Communists within the population seized the
opportunity to strike a devastating blow against their political enemies.
Those events in Indonesia underline the extent to which political
developments and decisions as to where power should lie and how it should be
exercised often have little to do with the parliamentary patterns of the West. The
‘rules’ that are accepted in Western countries often do not appear to Southeast
Asians as valid for their own situation. The ballot box may indeed be used, and
parliamentary forms adhered to, but usually in a system that allows the party or
group that holds power to ensure that it retains that power. In Thailand, for
instance, the military remain a vital feature of contemporary political life despite
the increasing importance of a party system linked to a growing range of interest
groups. This fact was given sharp emphasis by the military coup that toppled the
government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s government in September
2006. And despite the return of civilian government in 2011, after four years of
considerable political turmoil, it is reasonable to judge that the military has not
abandoned its concern to play a role in Thailand’s politics. The Malay politicians
who have dominated the politics of Malaysia since independence have had no
intention of altering the system that allows members of the Chinese minority
within the country to participate in politics—and indeed to hold high office—but
not to play the role of equal partner. And in Brunei, after it became fully
independent in 1984, the ruler, in association with members of the royal family,
has exercised autocratic power without showing any intention of introducing a
participatory form of government.
So long as the challenges that the established governments of Southeast Asia
face include extra-parliamentary action such as insurgency, as well as opposition
of a legal character, then so long should an outside observer expect that these
governments in their search for ways to achieve their goals will pursue the
means that seem best suited in their judgment rather than in accord with any
model from the West. External criticism of the failure of Southeast Asian
countries to adhere to highest standards of behaviour, in terms of human rights
and unfettered parliamentary democracy, may lead to some modification of the
political process, but is unlikely to be a determining factor in the overall course
of decision making.

One of the most important challenges to confront the various governments of

Southeast Asia since the end of the Second World War has come from the
political left, from Communism, with the ideas of Marx and Lenin taken as a
guide to action. Given the instability that has plagued much of the Southeast
Asian region and the immense problems of social inequality that have existed
and still exist, the fact that there should have been a radical left-wing challenge
to governments that have often been conservative in character is hardly
surprising. But despite the immense importance of the Vietnam War it would be
wrong to assume that Communism has been an equally powerful force
throughout Southeast Asia. So while Communists have played a part in the
politics of much of modern Southeast Asia, only in Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos have Communist governments come to power.
No single chapter in a general introduction to the history of Southeast Asia
can do justice to the almost endless series of issues raised by any discussion of
Communism in Vietnam. For Cambodia and Laos, by contrast, another problem
arises. For Cambodia, in particular, we are still groping towards an
understanding of the deeper history of developments over the past forty years.
Gaps in our knowledge of the history of the Communist movement in Cambodia,
both before and after independence was gained in 1953, are slowly being filled,
but it is still the case that explanations as to why a shockingly radical
Communist movement finally gained power in 1975 remain incomplete. What
we do know for each of the three countries of Indochina is that their historical
experience from the middle 1950s onwards has been singularly different from
that of the other countries of Southeast Asia. In brief, the fact that Communist
governments came to power in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam tells us little about
the nature of left-wing politics elsewhere in the region, whether in terms of the
past or for assessments of the future.
The ultimate success of the Vietnamese Communists in establishing a
government over the whole of Vietnam reflects a long history of struggle and
effective organisation. Of all the groups that sought to play a political role during
French colonial times and to oppose colonial rule, only the Communists were
able both to survive severe French repression and to show that they had a
coherent program relevant to the facts of Vietnam’s colonial situation. To make
these observations does not involve endorsement of the goals the Vietnamese
Communists pursued. But history, as has been observed before in this book, is
about what happened, not about what might have happened. In Vietnam the
Communists, through a combination of outstanding leadership, political skills
that sometimes included ruthless suppression of their Vietnamese rivals, and
adherence to a political program that offered clear, if not always successful,
answers to problems posed by French colonialism, became the dominant
political group in Vietnam by the end of the Second World War. The experience
of the First Indochina War only served to reinforce that position. The subsequent
American attempt to develop a rival Vietnamese government in southern
Vietnam after 1954 failed to take account of the fact that however much an
outside power might be able to provide great quantities of material aid, and
ultimately massive military assistance, no other movement existed in the
Vietnam of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that could challenge the Communists in
the political field.
It is true, of course, that the Vietnamese Communists won their final battle
through military means, but those military means would never have been
successful if there had not been political cohesion in northern Vietnam. As for
the southern region of the country in which war raged for so many years,
argument can be joined as to how successful the Communists were in
establishing a political grip on the population as the war continued. There is little
room for debate, however, about the fact that none of the many governments in
Saigon between 1954 and 1975 was able to demonstrate a capacity for
associating the mass of the population with the goals they pursued. In contrast to
the national goals pursued by the Communists, non-Communist politics in
southern Vietnam were marked by squabbles between special interest groups,
and by an incapacity to forge a sense of national purpose such as was achieved
by the Communists.
This sense of national purpose did not vanish with the end of the war. But
peace in a united Vietnam quickly made it clear that the Communist leadership
which for so long had been geared for war lacked the economic managerial skills
demanded by the new situation. The costs of the long and bitter separation of
southern from northern Vietnam brought their own special problem, shown most
starkly and tragically in the flood of refugees, mainly from the south, seeking to
escape from a society in which they felt there was no place for them. Vietnamese
Communist leaders have repeatedly said that they value independence above all
else, and this they did, indeed, gain in 1975. In the years that followed, it
sometimes seemed that there was little else beyond independence that the Hanoi
leadership was able to offer its people, as the policies that leadership pursued led
to a regime of severe austerity. It was only in the late 1980s that the government
in Hanoi began to embark on a program of economic liberalisation that has
proceeded with stops and starts to the present day, but has still not been matched
by any relaxation of political control.
The final success of the Communists in Vietnam came only after thirty years
of war and more than forty years of political action. No comparable experience
is to be found anywhere else in the history of modern Southeast Asia. Events in
Laos after the Second World War did, it is true, have a certain parallel, inasmuch
as the Communist-led Pathet Lao forces were engaged in a political and military
struggle that began with the end of the Second World War and continued until
the Communist victory in Vietnam ensured that there would be a Communist
victory in Laos also. To make this observation is not to dismiss the importance
of the Lao element in the developments that took place in Laos. But it would be
foolish not to take note of the extent to which Lao military manoeuvring was
closely linked to developments in Vietnam. For here indeed was an important
example of historical continuity. Laos has traditionally occupied a role as a
buffer state between the two powerful states of Vietnam and Thailand. In
seeking to ensure the victory of the Lao Communist forces the Vietnamese were
also pursuing what had long been historical policy, that of ensuring that no other
hostile state could play a significant role in Laos, and in particular in those
regions of Laos that border Vietnam.
But if the accession to power of a Communist government in Laos was to
some extent a footnote to developments in Vietnam, the same cannot be said
with any accuracy of Cambodia. How then does one explain the dramatic change
involved in Cambodia’s history from the mid-1950s, when a king still ruled over
the country, to the installation of a radical revolutionary government in the mid-
1970s? At the outset it is wise to acknowledge that gaps still remain in our
knowledge of what happened in Cambodia in the 1960s when Prince Norodom
Sihanouk appeared to dominate political life but when, it is now clear, there was
a slowly developing group of men and women who were preparing themselves
to fight for a Communist revolution once conditions made such a fight possible.
Our knowledge of developments after Prince Sihanouk was overthrown in a
right-wing coup in 1970 is also incomplete. We do know enough, however, to
sketch a rough outline of the most important developments.
It appeared to many outside observers of Prince Sihanouk’s rule during the
1950s and 1960s that he had been remarkably successful in finding a
governmental formula that guaranteed control of domestic politics and
achievement of his foreign policy aims. Much of this success now appears to
have been an illusion. Internally Sihanouk provided no place in his state for
those who disagreed with his policies. For those who had embraced left-wing
politics this increasingly meant that there were only two alternatives. Either one
could remain silent or one could fade into the countryside and join the small but
growing band of those who were waiting for a time when changed circumstances
might make it possible to attempt a seizure of power. As it happened, it was the
politicians of the right who finally turned Sihanouk out of office in 1970 and in
so doing set the stage for one of the bitterest struggles by a left-wing group to
gain power in all of recent Southeast Asian history.
The coup by men of the right was followed by Cambodia’s involvement in the
war in Vietnam as the United States sought to buy time for the withdrawal of its
troops from that country. The American invasion of Cambodia in 1970 brought a
Vietnamese response, so that the new government in Phnom Penh found it was
having to face the challenge of Vietnamese Communist forces as well as the left-
wing Cambodians who now emerged to fight for their goal of controlling the
country. By the end of 1972 the role of the Vietnamese Communists in fighting
against the right-wing government in Phnom Penh was limited to supply and
training assistance for the Khmer Rouge, or Red Khmer (Cambodians). The
Cambodian civil war settled into a bloody pattern in which the government in
Phnom Penh, with massive American assistance— including bombing strikes of
unparalleled intensity, faced a much smaller but remarkably dedicated left-wing
enemy. If numbers and massive military and economic assistance could win
wars, then the regime in Phnom Penh should have won. Its army vastly
outnumbered that of the left, which probably never had more than 60 000 troops
fighting for their cause. But the outcome of wars depends on other things as
well. The Cambodian left-wing forces were able to sustain their efforts in the
face of tremendous odds— just how is still not really clear. The right-wing
forces under Phnom Penh’s leadership, on the contrary (and with some notable
exceptions), lacked effective direction and a general conviction of the worth of
what they were doing.
As the war continued so did it become clear that widespread brutality by those
fighting on both sides of the conflict was the norm and not the exception.
Perhaps the left-wing forces saw the use of harshly violent tactics against
civilians as well as soldiers as the necessary weapon of the numerically weak.
Possibly too their use of violence was not only to match the violence of the
Phnom Penh forces but also a response to the ferocity of the bombing by United
States aircraft. Whatever the reasons, the level of political violence and of
atrocities against both combatants and civilians that marked the actions of both
sides accelerated as the war continued. It seems clear that the leaders of the left-
wing forces were reinforced by the experience of these desperate times in their
conviction that once the war ended there could be no place for half measures.
Cambodia was to be transformed completely, and at whatever cost in human
lives and suffering.

(Top) Exhumed skulls, Cambodia

Mass graves throughout Cambodia are a ghastly legacy of the Pol Pot period of misrule over Cambodia.
Following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in late 1978, many of these graves have been exhumed
and the skulls of Pol Pot’s victims have been grouped by the graves as a reminder of the hundreds of
thousands who died by execution between 1975 and 1979. The skulls and bones in this photograph were at
a grave close to Phnom Penh that was being exhumed in late 1981.

(Bottom) Cambodian refugees awaiting food distribution on the Thai–Cambodian border

The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in late 1978 overthrew the Pol Pot regime and was followed by a
refugee exodus to the Thai–Cambodian border. More than two hundred thousand refugees grouped along
the border, dependent on international aid for their survival. The refugees in this photograph were waiting
for rice distribution in Nong Chan camp in 1980.

Total transformation of society was, indeed, what the new radical government
in Phnom Penh worked for after it gained power in April 1975. Led by Pol Pot,
the government of Democratic Kampuchea pursued a series of policies that had
as their justification the need to remove the corrupting influences of foreign and
capitalist societies and the goal of making Cambodia agriculturally self-
sufficient. The means by which these goals were to be achieved only slowly
became known to the outside world, as Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge victory
was largely sealed off from foreign visitors. It gradually became clear, however,
that Pol Pot and his associates were prepared to use shocking means in pursuit of
their ends. The mass forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in circumstances that
involved great cruelty and suffering was only the start of a pattern of
governmentally sponsored actions that were marked by brutality and a disregard
for human life. Herded into vast agricultural cooperatives, the bulk of the
Cambodian population was forced to work in inhuman conditions, risking
sudden punishment including execution for even minor infraction of the harsh
rules that now governed their behaviour.
Much research remains to be done on the period when Pol Pot’s regime
governed Cambodia. There do seem to have been some variations between the
degree of brutality shown from one administrative region to another within the
country. And it may never be satisfactorily possible to determine whether or not
some, or indeed many, of the executions that took place were the result of
government directive or the result of individual decisions in a society that placed
absolute loyalty to the state above all other moral standards. Whatever may have
been the case, the cost in human lives was staggering. It will never be clear
exactly how many Cambodians were executed during the years of Pol Pot’s rule.
Nor will it be possible to determine with any absolute certainty the loss of life
that took place between 1975 and 1979 as the result of the terrible conditions
under which the Cambodian population was forced to live. Informed observers
now suggest that upwards of two million Cambodians died as a result of the
policies followed by the government of Democratic Kampuchea. Of that two
million, between half a million and one million may have been executed.

Cambodian resistance fighter

In the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia that began in late 1978, a variety of Cambodian
resistance groups established themselves along the Thai–Cambodian border. The largest of these resistance
groups were the remnants of Pol Pot’s army, but others were loyal to Prince Sihanouk and to other non-
Communist leaders. The resistance fighter pictured here was a member of the Khmer People’s National
Liberation Front. He wears amulets and a Hindu god, Ganesha, about his neck as charms against death.

How long Pol Pot and his associates might have continued their bloody rule of
Cambodia is another of the many alternatives to what did happen that have been
raised in this book. The disturbing possibility is that the rule of Pol Pot’s
government might have continued its horrific course for some considerable time.
The reality is that the decision Pol Pot and his colleagues took to challenge
Vietnam’s control of areas of southern Vietnam brought an eventual Vietnamese
decision, in late 1978, to invade Cambodia and to place their Cambodian
protégés in government in Phnom Penh. The Vietnamese invasion was a tragic
deliverance for Cambodia that led to the Indochinese region becoming ever more
sharply embroiled in the Sino–Soviet dispute, for Vietnam was backed by the
Soviet Union while China had been a supporter of Pol Pot’s government. This
fact was underlined by China’s punitive invasion of Vietnam in February 1979
and the Soviet Union’s subsequent close support for its Indochinese clients.
Once the course of recent Cambodian history has been charted the questions
remain. How did a somnolent kingdom, even if it did contain much more social
inequality than was widely recognised, become the arena for such a bitter
struggle? Would the course of events have been different if the United States
government of the time had not acted to ensure Cambodia’s total involvement in
the Second Indochinese War? Was the bitterness of the years of combat
responsible for the new Cambodian leadership’s absolute determination to
introduce its radical program regardless of cost? The fact that these questions
have to be posed and for the moment cannot be answered with any absolute
certainty is clear testimony to the existence of areas of knowledge in the history
of modern Southeast Asia that remain quite outside our grasp. If nothing else,
what we do know about Cambodia’s recent history sets it apart from the rest of
the region. The way in which Communism came to Cambodia has little to tell us
of the possible success or failure of the advocates of Communism elsewhere.

Vietnamese conscripts training in Kampong Chhnang

The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia ended the Pol Pot tyranny but left Cambodia an occupied country.
Having won their war against the southern Vietnamese regime backed by the United States, the Vietnamese
Communists faced a new enemy in Cambodia after their invasion as Cambodian resistance forces, both
Communist and non-Communist, established bases along the Thai–Cambodian boundary. Many of the
Vietnamese troops in Cambodia were southern conscripts, such as these new recruits seen drilling in
Kampong Chhnang in late 1981.

One direct consequence of the Communist victories in the three countries of

Indochina was the strengthening of the shared interests of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the effective division between the
ASEAN states of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand
and the Communist states of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. ASEAN had been
formed in 1967, with the essential purpose of promoting economic cooperation
among its member states. But it was not until 1976 that ASEAN held its first
summit meeting of leaders, by which stage the Communist victories in Indochina
lent a new impetus to ASEAN leaders’ desire to develop a more coordinated
political response to the changing strategic situation in Southeast Asia.
Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia, beginning in late 1978, further solidified
ASEAN’s interest in a coordinated political approach to what was seen as a
shared interest in dealing with a common problem: the emergence of a
Vietnamese-dominated Indochina. At this stage, in the late 1970s, Burma was
the only non-Communist state in Southeast Asia that was not a member of
ASEAN. In failing to seek membership, Burma was following its established
policy of eschewing alliances with any power group in the region. In contrast,
Brunei joined ASEAN on attaining its independence in 1984.
Yet as an index of the rapid pace of events in Southeast Asia in the 1990s, not
only Burma but also Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia had become members of the
organisation before the end of the decade. This was a reflection most notably of
the end to rivalry between China and the Soviet Union as the collapse of the
latter forced the Communist states of the region to realign their foreign policies,
both with their Southeast Asian neighbours and with China. For a period, and
contrary to the hopes of the founding members of ASEAN, Burma’s admission
to the organisation in 1997 initially did little to alter the repressive policies of
that country’s military leadership. Subsequently, however, it seems correct to
judge that pressure from Burma’s ASEAN colleagues did play a part in the
changes that saw a measure of liberalisation within the country, including the
introduction of a new constitution, a transition to civilian rule, and the
parliamentary elections of 2012.

The nearer we come to the present day, the more complex Southeast Asia’s
history becomes, or at any rate appears to become. The difficulties of working
with too many facts seem at least equal to the difficulties associated with trying
to work with too little information. Certainly, consideration of independent
Southeast Asia suggests that whatever broad similarities one may find
throughout the region, such as the problem of assuring national unity, the details
of developments in the individual countries of the region often differ greatly.
The greater a student’s concern with more recent times the more difficult it
becomes to engage in generalities as particular issues and developments demand
attention. The need for recognising the general features of modern Southeast
Asia does, nevertheless, remain. In a region where the countries share many
common features of the historical past so too is there a need to see that the broad
patterns of their recent experience are often very similar, whatever differences
may be seen in the details of that experience.
For all the countries of Southeast Asia the modern period has been a time,
whether consciously or not, for attempting to strike a balance between the
demands of the present and the values of the past. This, a sceptical observer
might comment, is true of other, indeed all, regions of the world. There is a
difference, however, since in Southeast Asia’s case the road to the present for
the countries of the region, with Thailand as the one partial exception, has not
always been travelled at a Southeast Asian pace. The pace of many
developments in Southeast Asia during much of the nineteenth century and for
the first half of the twentieth century was largely influenced and sometimes
almost totally controlled by alien forces. This is not an argument in favour of the
view that Southeast Asians are an unimportant part of their own history. Quite to
the contrary, it is simply a recognition of the fact that the impact of European
and American colonialism was of immense importance in some areas of life. But
with the end of the era of colonial control Southeast Asians have, for the most
part, been able to make their own decisions and to determine how much they
should rely on their own values and the lessons they draw from history. The
results of this situation have not always been what Southeast Asians themselves,
let alone outside observers, have expected.
In the following chapter there is both a survey of very recent developments in
Southeast Asia’s history and an attempt to answer a final question: What have
been the essentials of Southeast Asia’s modern history?
FIFTEEN
SOUTHEAST ASIA’S MODERN HISTORY: AN OVERVIEW OF
THE PRESENT AND THE RECENT PAST

Throughout this book there has been a varying emphasis on the relative
influences of change and continuity in Southeast Asia’s history, with one aspect
at times appearing more important than the other, and at times both appearing to
play a part in unfolding events. A couple of examples make the point. In the
1950s and into the 1960s President Sukarno of Indonesia benefited from the
manner in which he was able to give the impression that his behaviour and his
style of government reflected the traditional qualities associated with a Javanese
ruler. And a similar comment may be made about Cambodia’s leader, Norodom
Sihanouk, during the same period. Yet the capacity of a particular leader to
reflect traditional values has not been a barrier to such a leader being at the
forefront of major change. Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam might also have been seen
as possessing the traditional leadership qualities of Confucian austerity and
literary ability, but he was also at the head of a Communist movement that
brought radical change to Vietnam.
These are points to be kept in mind when we consider the very recent history
of the Southeast Asian region. For just as the end of the postcolonial settlements
represented major breaks with the past, so have events over recent decades
underlined the fact that change is a vital and continuing feature of Southeast
Asia’s modern history. Because of the differing pace of change from one country
to another, some major developments in very recent times have already been
described in earlier chapters. And some, though not all of these major
developments are mentioned again in this chapter, which provides both a
selective overview of the recent past as well as some reflections on the broad
themes of Southeast Asia’s modern history.
Major political changes

In terms of Southeast Asia’s very recent history, few developments have been
more important than the changes that have occurred in Indonesia following the
collapse of the Suharto regime in 1998. By the mid-1990s it had become that
clear major problems lay beneath the prosperity that Suharto’s government had
engineered. Indonesia’s increasingly authoritarian style of government, which
was frequently marked by state brutality, was resented by a growing middle
class, and in particular by the large number of students who found that their
education was no guarantee of a future job. As revelations of corruption
circulated amid the Asia-wide financial crisis that developed in 1997, some of
Suharto’s key associates distanced themselves from the president. Then, in the
face of widespread demonstrations against his rule and the withdrawal of support
from the army, Suharto was forced to resign.
With new laws introduced to make the Indonesian political system more
democratic, four presidents have held office following Suharto’s resignation—
first Suharto’s former vice-president, B.J. Habibie, then Abdurraham Wahid,
Sukarno’s daughter Megawati Sukarnoputri, and finally in the first-ever direct
presidential election, held in July 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was
re-elected in 2009. In terms of past Indonesian political and cultural values
discussed previously, it is striking to note that President Yudhoyono is both a
Javanese and a former general. Indonesia’s transition to a democratic
parliamentary system in the years following Suharto’s depature has not, of
course, meant that problems existing in the 1990s have vanished in the first
decade of the twenty-first century. While separatism appears to have been
contained in Aceh, it remains a potent issue in Papua. Terrorism linked to
extremist Islam, such as the Bali bombing of 2002, has also been contained, but
not eliminated. For some observers the death of former President Suharto in
early 2008 has been taken as a symbol of the extent to which Indonesia has put
the problems of the past behind it. This is a classic case of the need to wait for
history’s judgment before any certain conclusion may be drawn.
To the extent that fundamental change has indeed occurred, one gauge of the
accuract of the view that Suharto’s passing marks an important milestone lies in
the manner in which the Indonesian government has come to terms with its loss
of control over Timor-Leste. In the face of international pressure to change its
policies and a continuing guerilla war in that territory, President Habibie
announced in 1999 that he would allow the East Timorese population to vote on
the issue of independence. Despite often brutal Indonesian intimidation, the East
Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence, a vote that led to further
violence by Indonesian troops and their local supporters in East Timor.
Following the pro-independence vote and the installation of a temporary United
Nations authority independence was finally achieved in May 2002. In the years
that have followed both senior Indonesian and East Timorese politicians have
established a working relationship that puts the antagonisms of the past behind
them.
In Burma (Myanmar), as already noted, substantial change has taken place
since 2007 with the introduction of a new constitution, the inauguration of a
civilian government and elections in 2012 which saw the long-time democracy
advocate, Aung San Suu Kyi, gain a seat in parliament. Ongoing economic
liberalisation has been taken as an index that there can be no reversion to past
repressive policies, but at the time of writing it is clear that the Burmese military
continues to play a dominant role within the state and it would be misleading to
ignore this fact.
The 1990s also saw a settlement negotiated to bring a shaky peace in
Cambodia following the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union, which had
previously sustained Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia. Few would have
predicted before 1990 that Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia would be
followed by United Nations-sponsored elections in that country and the slow but
steady decline of the Khmer Rouge as a political and military force. Even less
likely would have been a prediction that Vietnam would become a full member
of ASEAN. Yet this came to pass in 1995. (Burma joined the organisation in
1997, as did Laos; Cambodia became a member in 1999.)
Urban riots and demonstrations in Thailand in the early 1990s were followed
by what appeared to be an entrenchment of a democratic parliamentary system.
Yet that system was shunted aside by the military coup of September 2006 in an
action that emphasised continuing deep divisions between Bangkok middle class
opinion—backing the military’s action—and rural support for the populist
policies of Prime Minister Thaksin. The return to parliamentary government in
2007 was followed by a rising degree of political agitation, symbolised by the
actions of the pro-royalist ‘Yellow Shirts’ and the ‘Red Shirt’ supporters of
ousted Prime Minister Thaksin. This agitation culminated in the events of May
2010 when the military dispersed the Red Shirt supporters massed in Bangkok
with the loss of many lives. A return to calm, marked by elections in 2011 whcih
saw Thaksin’s sister becoming prime minister, has not provided any certainty
that the military will ‘remain in the barracks’ in the future. In West Malaysia, the
entrenchment of power in Malaysia’s parliament, and particularly the executive,
at the expense of the traditional rulers, the sultans, as the result of constitutional
changes in 1984 and 1993, is another example of an important change that has
gone largely unnoticed by the world outside the country in which it took place.
Economic crisis

No overview of the very recent past can ignore the economic crisis that gripped
the Asian region in 1997. Its impact in Indonesia was particularly devastating.
From a state that was economically broken-backed in 1965, with perhaps as
much as 50 per cent of the population living in poverty, Indonesia by the mid-
1990s appeared economically secure with the proportion of its citizens who lived
in poverty reduced to less than 20 per cent. But, as shortly became apparent,
much of the country’s prosperity had the character of a house of cards and when
Southeast Asia’s economic fortunes began to come under threat, that house of
cards rapidly collapsed.
The economic crisis of which Indonesia was such a prominent victim is now
recognised to have started in Thailand, where both the country’s national bank
and its commercial associates were found to have been burdened by a host of
non-performing loans and by severely depleted reserves. But the experience was
much wider, with the effects felt throughout Southeast Asia marked by similar
features. What has been termed ‘crony capitalism’ was revealed to have been
widespread, a situation in which politicians in government were closely
associated with commercial interests, favouring their supporters in the granting
of business contracts and licences, often without regard for the economic
viability of the businesses that were being promoted. These practices, combined
with routine corruption and the investment of large sums of money in
unproductive ventures (the most notable example being golf courses), could not
be sustained indefinitely. Once the flow of capital began to be restricted,
business after business foundered.
Yet for all of the serious effects that flowed from the Asian economic crisis, it
is salutary to recognise that the resilience of the region has been demonstrated in
the extent to which, more than a decade after it began, most of its effects have
dissipated. Although much of the recovery that has taken place is fragile in
nature, the predictions that suggested Southeast Asia would languish in a
depressed state for many years have proved to be far too pessimistic.
Demography

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Southeast Asia remains a region of

great diversity. Demographic statistics emphasise this point. Life expectancy in
Cambodia is 62 years, and Laos is 67 years. In Thailand, the geographical
neighbour to both these countries, life expectancy is 74 years, a striking
difference. Not surprisingly in terms of its very special urban character with a
high standard of living, life expectancy at birth in Singapore is now 81 years.
And as an index of general political stability and a long period of steady
economic growth, despite the other unattractive aspects of Suharto’s rule, life
expectancy in Indonesia is now 68 years.
Equally striking for the emphasis they give to Southeast Asia’s changing
character, are the statistics that show the extent to which urbanisation has
rendered any mental image of Southeast Asia as an overwhelmingly rural,
peasant-based region seriously inaccurate. While some 80 per cent of
Cambodia’s population still lives outside cities and towns, as is also the case for
Laos, the figures for Malaysia and the Philippines tell a very different story. In
Malaysia, 72 per cent of the population are urban dwellers; the figure for the
Philippines is lower at 66 per cent. And in the largest of all the countries of
Southeast Asia, Indonesia, over 50 per cent of the population now lives in urban
centres.

Individual identities, local values: how much change?

Yet for all the change that has occurred during Southeast Asia’s most recent
history, it is important to recognise a fundamental fact that can easily be
overlooked by a newcomer to the study of the region. Just because so much
change has occurred and just because there is so much evidence of modernity in
Southeast Asia’s burgeoning capitals does not mean that the countries and
peoples that make up the region have lost their individual identities and
succumbed to Western or global norms. A fascination—especially among the
urban young—with Western popular music and international fast-food chains,
coupled with the ability of members of the elite to speak and understand English,
should not blind outsiders to the continuing strength of tradition. Nor should
students of Southeast Asia fail to give importance to the part played by history in
shaping the views that the peoples of the region have of their countries’ place in
the world and how those countries’ politics should be ordered.
On occasion, the weight of distant history has been reinforced by recent
events. Such is the case in Vietnam, where the complex and often difficult
relations it has had with China over many centuries were given a modern edge
by the Chinese punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979 after Vietnam had invaded
Cambodia. At other times substantial change can affect what had seemed an
immutable aspect of a country’s national values. Such has been the case in
Indonesia where the military, for the moment at least, has abandoned its previous
determination to play a direct role in politics. This is the more remarkable when
it continues to have an active role in containing unrest in Papua, and only
recently played a similar role in Aceh.
Of necessity the areas and the peoples discussed in this book have been, for
the most part, the better-known examples. So there has been reference to the
Javanese and Java, rather than to the Sumbanese, the people living on Sumba,
one of the ‘outer’ islands of eastern Indonesia. It has been the lowland
Vietnamese and the Thais, rather than the hill-dwelling Rhade of southern
Vietnam or the Yao of Nan province in northern Thailand, who have caught the
greater part of our attention. Among these better-known peoples of Southeast
Asia and in the better-known regions that they inhabit the degree of change has
been greatest. These peoples and regions have, after all, had the longest contact
with the change-inducing ideas and forces of both their own and the non-
Southeast Asian world. A city-dwelling office worker in a Kuala Lumpur travel
agency, for instance, is clearly more likely to have adopted a way of life that
involves a significant departure from traditional Malay patterns of behaviour
than will be the case for a village-dwelling rice cultivator in some distant, up-
river region of the northern Malaysian state of Kelantan.
But if this contrast between life in the cities and life in the more remote
regions of the countryside of Southeast Asia is obvious, it can also be
misleading. To return to our imaginary office worker, whether he or she is in
Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Manila or in one of the host of other cities that have
grown so rapidly, how much of this person’s life has really changed as the result
of adopting an apparently modern style of life? The answer, despite the taste for
modern dress, for modern music, may be a great deal less than it seems upon
first impressions. Behind the appearance of modernity and great change in the
bustling, crowded cities of Southeast Asia, where the impact of the West
nowadays seems so strong, there is another side to life that is seldom glimpsed
by the casual visitor. It is made apparent when one suddenly hears a Balinese
gamelan orchestra beating out a staccato rhythm in a back street of Jakarta, the
players having come to the capital from Bali in search of jobs. If one shuts one’s
eyes one is momentarily transported from a dusty, painfully crowded suburb in
Indonesia’s capital to a temple courtyard in Bali, where the members of a rajah’s
orchestra are decked in rich fabrics to play their gongs and xylophones as they
accompany one of the dramatic episodes from the Balinese rendering of the
Indian epic, the Ramayana.
In Bangkok a different experience can offer the same insight. Away from the
plush hotels that cater for wealthy foreigners and Thais alike are the more
modest places of entertainment for the less privileged. Go to one of these
restaurants and you find that apart from the modern electronics of the
microphones and loudspeakers, usually booming forth at ear-splitting level, the
entertainment provided still smacks of the traditional world of the country. The
Thais from the agriculturally poor northeastern regions of the kingdom who have
migrated to the capital in such numbers meet to drink their ice-cold beer and
savour fiery curries, to join in the singing or dance traditional circular dances as
if they were in a minor provincial centre or perhaps at a celebration in their
home village. Apart from the constant background sound of Bangkok’s traffic
the scene that a visitor witnesses has little to do with the superficially dominant
modern world.
The further a visitor travels away from the urban centres the more superficial
the impact of the modern world becomes. The presence of motorcycles, of
electricity, of telephones, both fixed-line and increasingly in the form of mobile
units, of omnipresent transistor radios and increasingly of television sets, all
these are signs of change. But remarkable continuity remains in the strength of
village festivals and entertainments. Even more importantly, throughout much of
contemporary Southeast Asia continuity is represented in the disposition of
power and influence at the sub-national level. Here is an instance of continuity
that belies so much of the change associated with such superficial matters as
dress styles and musical tastes. While there are great variations from region to
region, and while the circumstances in the two remaining Communist states of
the region, Laos and Vietnam, as well as in Cambodia, are clearly different, the
power and influence of traditional leaders at the district and village level remains
notably strong. But the picture is not nearly so clear when one considers
developments at the national level.
Leadership and administration

In assessing developments at the national level, it is possibly most useful to

consider the transformation that has occurred in the nature of government in
Southeast Asia from the period of increasing change that began in the eighteenth
century. In that century the major states of the region were ruled by kings and
the lesser states by men who took a variety of titles. These rulers and their courts
embodied tradition. Contrast this situation with that existing at the beginning of
the twenty-first century. Only in Cambodia, Thailand and Brunei does an
hereditary monarch remain the chief of state. A king is the chief of state of
Malaysia, but his is an elective office with no real power. Even more
importantly, the disappearance of the traditional rulers has been accompanied by
the end of a system of government that linked administration to the ruler’s court.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw instead the slow establishment of
administrative systems largely based on Western models that not only
represented a sharp break with the past but which, in addition, brought the
increasing involvement of the state in the day-to-day affairs of the people.
So, in this regard, it is probably the case that there is as much value to be
gained from discussing the forms of administration that have come into being in
Southeast Asia as there is in discussing whether Prince Sihanouk should have
been regarded as a ‘god-king’ or President Sukarno as an example of a
traditional Javanese leader. The point is not that there are no worthwhile insights
to be gained from a discussion of the elements of tradition that certainly were
associated with both Sihanouk and Sukarno and their styles of leadership.
Rather, what is worthy of attention is that no matter how modern or how
traditional the leader of an individual Southeast Asian state may be, that leader
functions as part of an administrative system infinitely different in form from the
government systems of traditional times.
Certainly a Sukarno or a Sihanouk can come close to crippling the capacity of
an administration to play its supposed role. Nevertheless, and however
inefficient some of the bureaucracies of Southeast Asia may be for a variety of
reasons, the governments of the region work through administrative systems that
are the product of dramatic innovation over the past one hundred or one hundred
and fifty years. And here it is not just the change but the nature of that change
which is important. The presence of these administrative systems goes some way
towards explaining why increasingly it appears that leadership is either in the
hands of politicians who fit into a general, Westernised intellectual mould, or
who are served by such men and women acting as close advisers. This is a
generalisation that, more than most, requires amplification and qualification.
One of the first qualifications that should be made is that leadership of the most
important Communist state in Southeast Asia should not be excluded from the
general comment. Vietnam’s leaders must be regarded as having had a rather
special exposure to Western influence, but Marxist thought still must be
reckoned, in part at the very least, a Western product. Vietnam’s socialist
planning, before its slow change of direction to permit a more open economic
system, owed much to Marxist, and so to a very particular set of Western ideas.
It scarcely needs emphasis that importance must also be given to Vietnamese
traditional influences and to models borrowed from China.
A more important qualification is that the leadership situation cited as a
generalisation has varied greatly from country to country and from period to
period. At any one time since the Second World War and the achievement of
independence by the countries of Southeast Asia the style and character of
leadership has varied greatly. But what one is discussing is a broad trend.
Although leaders whose style may hark back to the past will undoubtedly remain
important in Southeast Asia for many years, the ever-increasing complexities of
economic and political life in the last two decades of the twentieth century seem
likely to confirm the pattern that has developed through the century.
Perhaps there is place for yet one further qualification. The pattern that has
been identified as a general trend seems least likely to continue should a time of
severe crisis arise in one or other of the states of Southeast Asia. It is still
difficult to be sure about many of the internal developments in Cambodia after
1975, but it might be argued that the massive crisis that country experienced
during the terrible civil war that raged from 1970 until 1975 provides one of the
essential keys to understanding the rejection of the Western-influenced models
of administration that occurred while the Pol Pot regime was in power.
Elsewhere, however, whatever the variations and qualifications it is the West
(the former Soviet Union included in this case) that has provided the
administrative models. Even in the very special case of Burma, where for nearly
thirty years there was a determined effort to find a Burmese route to socialism,
the leadership and the bureaucracy did not totally turn their backs on basic
Western models of how an administration should be constructed.
In brief, the twentieth century has seen the rise to prominence and influence of
the technocrat in Southeast Asia as well as elsewhere in the non-Western world.
At times these ‘new men’ and ‘new women’ dominate the political system and
on other occasions they work in uneasy balance with traditional leaders. But
only in very special circumstances can they be ignored. And these ‘new’ men
and women are not merely new in terms of training. It is certainly the case that
throughout Southeast Asia those who have risen to power in the postwar period
have frequently been members of the traditional existing elite. But this has not
been the case exclusively and slowly but surely men and women from non-elite
backgrounds have come to play prominent parts in the government of even the
most traditionally oriented societies. To some extent what has taken place
involves the replacement of one form of elite (the traditional) by another (the
elite of merit). The fact that it is possible to make this observation should not
diminish the great importance of the change.
Changed political conditions and improved educational opportunities do not
guarantee the success of talent in modern Southeast Asia, but the barriers are
significantly lower than once was the case. Most particularly is this true in
Singapore, where the long-serving prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, made
intellectual ability the key qualification for advancement in the administration of
his state. Administrative changes and the increasing importance of ‘new’ men
and women playing a role in the governance of the states of Southeast Asia does
not mean, it should be emphasised, that Western-style democracy was adopted
throughout the region once independence was achieved. Far from it, as what
happened in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam most clearly illustrates. Or consider
the example of Indonesia and the manner in which it has been governed for most
of its independent existence. Following the accession of the Suharto regime to
power in the late 1960s, the Indonesian government vigorously embraced
economic policies devised by advisers with strong links to market-oriented
American university faculties and who were often not part of the traditional elite.
Indeed, they were individuals who had made a sharp break with the past, both in
terms of the policies that had been followed under President Sukarno and, even
more dramatically, the values associated with traditional Indonesian statecraft.
Yet the pursuit of modern economic policies did not in any sense mean that the
Suharto regime was ready to embrace Western concepts of democracy. Only
with the sudden fall of that regime in 1998 did Indonesia undergo a political sea-
change that saw the first president to come to power as the result of a democratic
election.
Boundaries firmly in place

The great administrative changes that have taken place in Southeast Asia over
the past century, with the resultant rise to positions of power of those who are
either themselves cast in a Western intellectual mould, or are advised by others
who have absorbed ideas from the West, should not divert our attention from
other changes of no less importance that can easily, because of the demanding
interest of the present, be overlooked. Although the point has been made at
various times through this book, it may be easy to forget that several of the
modern Southeast Asian states only achieved their present territorial existence in
very recent times. To recapitulate: Laos was a cluster of principalities and even
smaller petty states when the French imposed colonial control at the end of the
nineteenth century; the Federation of Malaysia is made up of sultanates that had
no shared unity a century ago, and of territories in Borneo that owed disputed
loyalty to at least two sultanates as well as areas that lay quite outside the control
of the maritime Islamic sultans’ world; the Indonesia of today was forged from
the colonial empire of the Dutch East Indies, which itself only achieved overall
control over the islands it claimed to govern at the beginning of the twentieth
century; and the Philippines, although regarded as a single entity by the
Spaniards when they were the colonial power, could not have been said to have
become an administrative unity under one central government before the period
of American rule, and perhaps not even then.
In short, one distinctive feature of modern Southeast Asia’s history has been
the extent to which over the past one hundred years the old loose boundaries and
administrative arrangements have become tighter, confirming the existence of
old states and defining the territorial existence of new states. Indonesia,
Malaysia and Laos are quite clearly modern creations, whatever long historical
traditions may be discerned to show that these modern states had important
precursors. Southeast Asia’s modern history, in both colonial times and
otherwise, has confirmed the boundaries of Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and
Vietnam, and given emphasis to the existence of the Philippines as a
governmental entity. Singapore, as a striking special example, is both a creation
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and a state that has emerged to occupy
its present unique position where no comparable state previously existed, unless
one sees in Singapore a lineal descendant of the ancient state of Srivijaya.

Class, economics and power: what will drive the future?

The emergence of new states of Southeast Asia or the ‘solidification’ of old
states, particularly on the mainland, has set the scene, again following the
changes brought by the past one hundred or two hundred years, for the
contemporary political process that varies so greatly from country to country. If
we look at the West the generalisation can probably be made that the essence of
modern politics is the continuing debate over class and economics. Class may be
defined by different factors in different Western countries: by wealth,
inheritance, ascribed status due to merit or position, or a combination of some or
all of these. But by and large the central issues of Western domestic politics
relate to how national wealth shall be distributed and what policies shall be
followed to ensure the future creation of further wealth that will benefit both the
state and individuals.
One must not think, however, that this debate is always the central issue for
many of the politicians of Southeast Asia, nor that a common central thread links
the politics of all the countries in the region, other than that most fundamental of
considerations, the desire to gain or retain power. Although economic issues
cannot be ignored by any of the states of the region there are clearly many
instances in which economic considerations are, at very least, secondary to other
concerns. The case of Burma is a striking example of this situation. The search
for a ‘Burmese road to socialism’ was proclaimed as the chief concern of the
state, but the old concerns of ethnic rivalry have been as important, if not more
important a component in contemporary Burmese political life. A very real
concern for economic development is without doubt a feature of Malaysian
political life, but the constant need to be preoccupied with the facts of
Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society means that politics and political discussion in
that country have a very special, ethnically oriented character. The problems
associated with ethnic minorities that lack a sense of identity with the central
government have already been noted several times in relation to Thailand and
the Philippines. Ethnic or communal politics therefore inject a very special
element into the character of modern Southeast Asia. The great changes that
have been such a feature of Southeast Asia’s history over the past one hundred
or two hundred years have not, for parts of the region, been of an order to move
politics to the point where there is a common set of assumptions about the
interests of the state nor of the general right of all to participate in the discussion
and determination of those interests.
Is this situation likely to change? Some commentators would argue that
change, if it is to come, will depend as much on economic considerations as on
more narrowly political factors. One reason for taking this position is the fact
that Southeast Asia still remains so dependent on foreign capital so that, the
arguments runs, it will only be when Southeast Asian governments control their
own economic destinies that it will be possible to achieve both greater economic
equality and a more egalitarian political process. This is to put the argument in
excessively simple terms, but even its more sophisticated versions are far from
fully convincing. The role of external capital in Southeast Asia has been vital
over the period surveyed in this book and the vast transformations that have
taken place since the eighteenth century owe much to that foreign input. Here, in
the economic field, has been an affirmation of a feature that has been so much
part of the history of Southeast Asia, not just during the past two hundred years
but since the very earliest times. In a variety of ways Southeast Asia’s essential
character has made it a receiver of ideas, of external government, and of capital.
Indonesia’s vast riches might, in an ideal world, be exploited by Indonesians
without the need for foreign capital, but in a less than ideal world that prospect
has little possibility for success. The flow of Western capital into Southeast Asia
that has been so much a feature of the region’s history since the end of the
nineteenth century has certainly left a heavy reliance on external forces. For
those countries of the region that do not have Communist governments a
continuing reliance on external capital seems certain for the foreseeable future.
And even in Vietnam and Laos, while this reliance may be tempered by the
existence of their Communist leaderships, it has not by any means been
removed. If the West no longer exerts colonial control in Southeast Asia the
power of Western, and nowadays increasingly Japanese and Chinese capital, is
vital to the region’s modern history. In these circumstances, the rapid emergence
of China as a source of capital is one of the most striking developments to have
marked the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Economic development, or the lack of it; the difficulties associated with ethnic
or communal politics; the transformation of administrative systems and the
emergence of a new type of leader or administrator—all these are features of the
course that Southeast Asian history has followed over the past two centuries. But
there is another feature, or set of features, that must not be ignored. This is the
turbulent presence of revolt and rebellion, and on occasion of revolution, that has
demonstrated at a whole range of levels the resentments and dissatisfactions of
groups ranging from ethnic minorities to forces reflecting national interests, as
was the case with the anti-colonial revolutions that followed the Second World
War.
The fact that there has been such a long record of revolt, rebellion and
revolution in Southeast Asia focuses attention once again on the extent to which
governments in the region, before, during and after the colonial period, have had
difficulty in providing leadership that has been either acceptable or meaningful
for all of the population within their borders. For the outside observer there is
little difficulty in understanding at least part of the motivation that led to men
taking up arms to fight against colonial governments. And with only a little more
difficulty one may sense the frustrations involved in ethnic or regional
minorities’ feeling that, on occasion, their lack of identity with the central
authorities has left them no alternative to armed dissidence.
Most outsiders will, however, have greater difficulty in understanding the
forces that have operated to bring into being a long record of peasant protests
and rebellions, particularly since the odds have generally seemed so heavily
weighted against the success of such movements. In a concluding summary
chapter there is no room for an attempt to analyse the always complex factors
that have lain behind such manifestations of peasant politics. Rather, the point to
be absorbed is that discontent at the peasant level has frequently been of such a
deep and desperate nature that men and women have seen no alternative to
revolt. And this fact alerts us to the continuing great divide that separates the
‘haves’ of Southeast Asia from the ‘have-nots’. For the gloomy possibility,
indeed probability, is that in some parts of Southeast Asia one of the most
important features of the region’s history since the 1920s has been the
progressive impoverishment of rural communities. Few areas of Southeast Asia
match the problems of agricultural poverty associated with central and eastern
Java, but impoverishment of a less dramatic sort is a feature of many other
regions, and will grow as a problem so long as population increases continue to
outstrip resources in those disadvantaged regions.
Population growth in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, 1800–2010
Population growth in Southeast Asia has been dramatic during the twentieth century. Even with
government-supported efforts to limit population growth in Indonesia, that country’s population has already
reached an estimated 250 million in the year 2010.

A new element, still difficult to analyse in satisfactory detail at the beginning

of the twenty-first century, is the presence within Southeast Asia of shadowy
extremist terrorist organisations linked to al-Qaeda and pursuing their aims in
the name of a radical vision of Islam. The presence of these organisations has
been linked conclusively to the tragic bombings that took place in Bali in
October 2002 and 2005, and to other successful or attempted attacks elsewhere
in the region. For the moment, it is difficult to do little more than note the
existence of these organisations and the fact that they proclaim a version of
Islam that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Southeast Asia’s Muslim
population.
The history of modern Southeast Asia has been, for many of the inhabitants of
the region, a record of bitter disappointment rather than of promise. The events
that occurred in the region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
involved change and transformation of a momentous form, often of a very
different kind from the changes that accompanied the industrial revolution in the
Western world, but no less significant because of this fact. At the same time the
changes and transformations that have been sketched throughout this book have
left the countries of Southeast Asia still facing problems that are, in their
essential character, of a separate order from those facing the states of the
developed world. To return to the issue of rapid population once more, no
European country will have to contend, as will the Philippines where the
population will have increased by some 50 per cent by the middle of the twenty-
first century by comparison with its size in 2000.
Physical resources, or the lack of them, will also be an increasing problem in
wide areas of Southeast Asia as the region enters the second decade of the
twenty-first century. Deforestation, for instance, has had a dramatic effect in
both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, with reliable estimates that
Southeast Asia has lost at least 23 million hectares of forest in the 1990s alone.
The area of forests lost in this single decade approximates the size of the entire
land territory of the United Kingdom. Nowhere has deforestation been more
striking than in the Philippines. There, the 30 million hectares of hardwood
forests that existed in 1946 had been reduced to less than a million hectares in
1990. In Vietnam, the cost to the environment as a result of the Second
Indochina War was the destruction of 2.2 million hectares of forest and
farmland. Even more forest has been destroyed since 1975 when the war ended:
in the course of postwar reconstruction, Vietnam has been using up about 200
000 hectares of forest each year. In Cambodia, the country that suffered the
unmatched horrors of Pol Pot’s tyranny as part of is particular postcolonial
legacy, the results of illegal logging in the 1990s have been devastating—so
much so that in 1998 the Asian Development Bank warned that if an end was not
made to illegal logging, Cambodia’s resources of tropical hardwood would be
exhausted in as little as five years. Since that warning was made there has been
some reduction in the pace, but the practice has far from disappeared.
Because of the course that Southeast Asia’s history has followed over the past
two centuries the region will remain subject to many stresses with each state
concerned above all to maintain national unity. A sense of identification between
those who govern and those who are governed will remain an elusive goal for
some states of the region, so that the problem of separatist dissidence is unlikely
to vanish from the future Southeast Asian scene. Yet when all the region’s
problems are catalogued, there are good reasons to inject an important degree of
optimism into any discussion. The improvements of life expectancy noted earlier
in this chapter are a reflection of notable advances that have occurred in the
standard of living throughout much of the region. Government services extend
into regions where they were unknown only decades ago and many more
Southeast Asians are now gaining an education that goes beyond primary school
level. This, indeed, is one of the most hopeful aspects of contemporary Southeast
Asia. In no less than five countries—Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand and Vietnam—two-thirds of school age children attend secondary
schools. This is considerably more than is the case in India (50 per cent) and
almost as many as in China (68 per cent). In much of Southeast Asia poverty
remains a continuing problem, but this fact must be placed against the steady
growth of a middle class. It would be quite misleading not to recognise that there
are reasons for hope as well as for concern as Southeast Asians look at their own
future.
That future will be remarkably different from the Southeast Asia of one
hundred years ago, let alone from the ‘classical’ world when the great
monuments of Angkor, Pagan and the Borobodur were built. Just as importantly,
Southeast Asia in the future will continue to retain its own distinctive character,
or more correctly the character of the individual states that make up the region as
a whole. For if there is one feature of Southeast Asia’s history about which there
can be general agreement it is that change and transformation have not turned
the countries of Southeast Asia into some pale copy of any other part of the
world. The countries of Southeast Asia retain their individual identities, the
products of a rich and complex history. It is a history that has only recently
begun to be explored in depth so that scholars, students and specialists alike still
have the prospect before them of new insights and greater understanding.
Whatever the history of Southeast Asia may be in the future the study of its past
involves an intellectual journey through a world full of interest and fascination.
It is a world that deserves to be better known.
APPENDIX
DISCOVERING SOUTHEAST ASIA THROUGH ART AND
LITERATURE

In any effort to understand Southeast Asia’s past, an awareness of the region’s

rich artistic heritage helps add cultural flesh to history’s analytic bones.
Similarly, a sampling of fictional writing, by both Southeast Asian and Western
writers, can provide a sense of time and place that is sometimes lacking from
conventional history. With these considerations in mind, this appendix presents,
in a very cursory fashion, a review of some important aspects of Southeast Asian
art history. It also offers a selective survey of fictional writing on Southeast Asia
that may help readers to gain some sense of the human aspects of the region’s
history, though mostly in terms of the way in which non-indigenous outsiders
have looked at the region.

SOUTHEAST ASIA’S ART

Surprising though it may seem today, many of the first Europeans to come in
contact with Southeast Asia’s grandest ‘classical’ architectural monuments either
ignored them or denigrated them for failing to approximate European aesthetics.
During the eighteenth century, for example, Dutch merchants regularly
journeyed from Batavia (Jakarta) to the central Javanese courts at Yogyakarta
and Surakarta (Solo). In doing so they passed close to the mighty monuments of
the Borobodur and Prambanan. Yet no mention of these striking temples was
made in their records. Trade was the merchants’ preoccupation and the exotic
aesthetics of Javanese art did not bear on their commercial concerns. In the case
of these central Javanese monuments, it was left to Thomas Stamford Raffles to
commission the first modern survey of the Borododur during his years as
lieutenant-governor of Java between 1811 and 1816. As noted in an earlier
chapter, Father Bouillevaux, one of the first Europeans to visit Angkor in the
nineteenth century, was willing to admit the grandeur of the temples he saw,
particularly Angkor Wat. But this approval did not carry over to the statuary he
saw in the temples. With all of the sense of superiority of a mid-nineteenth-
century man and priest, he declared that attempts by Angkorian artists to render
the human form were ‘grotesque’.

Discovering an Angkorian period temple

After some initial reservations about the artistic importance of the temple ruins in Cambodia, French
officials and archaeologists played a major role in revealing these monuments to the world. In this
engraving, French officials supervise the clearing of jungle around the Preah Khan temple at Kompong
Svay, an Angkorian period site in Kompong Thom province, in 1873. From Voyage au Cambodge, by
Louis Delaporte, 1880

But although virtually unknown or unappreciated until the latter half of the
nineteenth century, Southeast Asian art in its many forms is now recognised both
for its aesthetic worth and as evidence that helps historians to chart the political,
cultural and technological characteristics of earlier societies. As interest and
appreciation have developed over the years, the range of art receiving attention
by scholars and collectors has grown greatly. While early research, particularly
by some outstanding scholar–administrators in Indochina and Indonesia,
concentrated on monuments and sculpture, today a much wider range of objects
receives attention. Most particularly, the past three decades have witnessed a
greatly increased interest in ceramics and textiles.
Monumental Art

By their very size, the great temple complexes of Angkor in Cambodia, Pagan in
Burma, and the Borobodur monument in central Java have been a focus for
scholarly and tourist interest throughout the twentieth century and into the
twenty-first. But impressive and culturally important as they are, these
monuments are only the best known of a wealth of individual temples and
complexes scattered throughout the major settled areas of Southeast Asia and
built before the impact of the European advance. In eastern Java, for instance,
there are important temple remains near Malang and Blitar. After decades of
being inaccessible to foreigners, it is again possible to visit a major temple site
dating from Angkorian times located in southern Laos. This is Wat Phu, set on a
feature overlooking the Mekong River, but hundreds of kilometres distant from
the Angkor complex near the Cambodian provincial town of Siem Reap. Along
the coast of central modern Vietnam, Cham temples recall a vanished kingdom
that was able in its heyday to challenge the power of the Khmer kings at Angkor.
In Thailand there are major temple remains from Angkorian times, but there are,
too, the important early Thai city and temple complexes at Ayuthia, Sukhothai
and Si Satchanalai, as well as lesser-known complexes such as the northern site
of Chiang Saen.
These monumental remains excite interest for many reasons. Even to those
with little knowledge of the history of Southeast Asia or of the symbolism
embodied in the monuments, the physical presence and the extent of the temple
complexes at Angkor (ninth to fifteenth centuries) and Pagan (ninth to thirteenth
centuries) command respect. In the case of Angkor, dozens of temples are
scattered over an area of about 500 square kilometres (200 square miles).
Among them is Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world.
Despite its great size, Angkor Wat, as already noted earlier in this book, was
constructed in the amazingly short time of about forty years. The number of
temples at Pagan almost staggers the imagination. Some two thousand temples
constructed from brick dot the vast central Burmese plain. The Borobodur near
the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta provides a different impression. This
massive stupa towers over modern visitors as they approach it just as it would
have towered over the Buddhist pilgrims who came to the monument following
its completion around 800 CE. Circumambulating the stupa and ‘reading’ the
Buddhist birth stories from the low reliefs carved on the terraces, the pilgrims
slowly ascended to the top of the monument where, surrounded by partially
hidden Buddha images, they could gaze at distant sacred mountains. To repeat
this experience in modern times gives a visitor some sense, at least, of the power
this monument would have exerted over its devotees a thousand years ago.
Whether large or small, the pre-modern monumental remains scattered
throughout Southeast Asia share certain common characteristics, as well as
being individually marked by the time and place of their construction. Often
sited in locations that had links with the local religions that predated the arrival
of Indian cultural influence, the monuments we can still see today were inspired
by Hinduism and Buddhism, sometimes singly, sometimes as a syncretic
combination. But inspired by Indian religions, and drawing on architectural and
artistic styles from India, the monuments that were erected in Southeast Asia
were never mere copies of the temples and shrines to be found on the
subcontinent. Whatever the similarities in the way in which temples were sited
or the basic form of the architectural layout with symbolic representations of the
Hindu and Buddhist universes, even an unskilled observer immediately
recognises that the temples of Angkor or Prambanan in central Java are different
from those found in, say, an Indian site such as Orissa. Just as clearly, the temple
styles of one country of Southeast Asia are different from those of another.

An Angkorian bas-relief from the Bayon

The bas-reliefs on the late thirteenth century Bayon temple at Angkor combine narrative depictions of
events and scenes from everyday life. This bas-relief of war canoes has long been thought of as showing an
actual battle between Cambodians and Chams in 1177, but is now thought to depict a mythical event.
Shown below are Cambodians watching a cock fight, playing a flute and blowing on a flute.

Here, of course, is where the interests of the cultural historian intersect with
those of the scholar more concerned with political issues. Thailand’s history, for
instance, is not only recorded in chronicles. Just as importantly, its
transformation from a region on the periphery of the Cambodian empire to an
independent state was reflected in its development of architectural styles that
held echoes of earlier Cambodian models but which were distinctively Thai in
character.

Wat Sri Sawai, Sukhothai

Lying within the walls of the Thai city complex of Sukhothai, Wat Sri Sawai dates from the fourteenth
century and shows clearly the evolution of the Thai prang or tower from the earlier Cambodian style found
at Angkor (see illustration of Angkor Wat on page 26). The development of a Thai architectural style
accompanied the achievement of independence from Cambodian political control.

One of the most striking features of the monuments of pre-modern Southeast

Asia is the richness of their decoration. Much of the decoration has suffered the
ravages of time, war and vandalism. This is particularly true of those
monuments, such as some temples at Sukhothai in Thailand, that were decorated
in stucco, and those at Pagan decorated externally with stucco and internally
with paintings. Elsewhere, and notably in the case of the temples at Angkor, low
and high relief carving still adorns the walls, pillars and lintels of temples with a
sharpness little affected by the passing of centuries. The range of subjects treated
in pictorial reliefs and the inventiveness of the decorators is breathtaking. At
Angkor the low relief carvings depict scenes from the Hindu epics,
representations of massed Cambodian armies marching in processions, possibly
to war, and ‘snapshots’ of everyday life. At Angkor Wat alone, the low reliefs
along the walls of the outer gallery of this vast monument—the largest religious
monument ever constructed— cover a linear distance of 520 metres (568 yards).
The energy and organisation that would have been necessary for work of this
kind at Angkor, or on the walls of the Borobodur in Java, underline the vital part
played by religion in the societies of pre-modern Southeast Asia. For these great
temples to have been built, decorated and then maintained required a major
concentration of resources, in a fashion similar to the effort required to construct
and maintain the great monastic foundations of medieval Europe. Although not
entirely satisfactory as an analogy, the image of Southeast Asia’s temples having
an importance within their societies similar to that of Europe’s great cathedrals
and monasteries emphasises their centrality to the times in which they were
built.

Arakanese Crowned Buddha

A fine example of a Crowned Buddha image from Arakan (western Burma), in bronze with traces of gold
leaf gilding. Dating from the late seventeenth century and in the ‘calling the earth to witness’ posture, this
image shows elements of Chinese influence in its ornamentation. (Height 28 cm)
Sculpture

Attention has just been given to the low and high relief carving as a feature of
the decoration that was so important a part of the monuments of pre-modern
Southeast Asia. Just as important an aspect of Southeast Asia’s artistic heritage
are the free-standing sculptures in stone, bronze and wood that are now
recognised as enshrining aesthetic qualities equal to those of any other culture.
The range of Southeast Asian sculpture is enormous, whether categorised in
terms of chronology, subject matter or the materials used. In pre-Angkorian
Cambodia sculpture in stone has been found dating back to the sixth century CE.
Although sculpture in stone continued to have a widespread presence throughout
large areas of Southeast Asia, casting in bronze, which has even earlier
antecedents, grew to be more important, particularly in the years following the
decline of the great early kingdoms, both on the mainland and in Sumatra and
Java. Wood was also used as a sculptural medium, with some of the most
notable examples coming from Burma.
As with the temple complexes of pre-modern Southeast Asia, sculpture drew
its inspiration and iconography from Indian religions—Hinduism and Buddhism
—and then transformed these Indian models into local and national Southeast
Asian artistic statements. Southeast Asian image makers did not only draw their
inspiration from India. Not just in Vietnam, where Chinese influence on art was
extremely strong, but also in Burma, there is artistic evidence that Chinese
models influenced sculptors. Although sculpture in bronze is found throughout
Southeast Asia, the richest tradition, in terms of numbers of images and, in the
opinion of many observers, in aesthetic terms also, is found in the Buddha
images of Burma, Thailand and Laos. To make this assertion is not to dismiss
the monumental bronzes of Angkorian Cambodia or the small but beautifully
sculptured statuettes of Java. But in Burma, Thailand and Laos unknown artists
working within a rigid canon of iconography were able over the centuries to
produce a range of images that are outstanding in their aesthetic quality. The
most impressive of them blend a sense of authority with the quality of serenity.
The images of the Sukhothai period (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries CE) are
particularly notable in this regard, but images from other centres also deserve
attention. Buddha images from Arakan in the west of Burma are, at their finest,
notably successful both as interpretations of Buddhist iconographic requirements
and as universally appealing works of art. Indeed, it is the universality of these
images’ aesthetic qualities that has led to their being such an object of interest in
recent years. Even without more than the slimmest understanding of Buddhism,
a non-Southeast Asian observer can react to the artistic achievement of the
anonymous craftsmen who cast these images centuries ago.
Buddhism and Hinduism are not the only religions to have held sway in
Southeast Asia. Uniquely, in the Philippines, Christianity became entrenched in
the northern and central islands of that archipelagic country. Since it was the
Spaniards who brought Christianity to the Philippines, Spanish forms of worship
and Spanish religious art dominated the expansion of the church through the
islands. A notable example of the sub-branch of Iberian art that took root in the
Philippines were the santos or saints’ figures carved in wood and ivory that
adorned the altars of churches and religious foundations and the private shrines
of worshippers. At their finest, these santos with their fluid carving match the
best examples of religious art in the Iberian peninsula.
Ceramics

No other category of Southeast Asian art has enjoyed such a growth in interest
over the past three decades as has the study of the region’s ceramics. For many
years the existence of a range of Southeast Asian ceramics was known to
specialists, but fine Chinese ceramics, particularly porcelain, dominated the
interests of both scholars and collectors. From the 1960s onwards, and more
particularly from the 1970s, there has been a change in attitude resulting from a
realisation that ceramics from a range of Southeast Asian sources are both
worthy of aesthetic approval and of vital importance in tracing the course of the
region’s history.

Cambodian ceramic bottle

This late twelfth–early thirteenth century Cambodian bottle is typical of stoneware produced during this
period. It is finished in a dark brown glaze. (Height 29 cm)

Many factors contributed to the growing interest. Of considerable importance

was the discovery in the mid-1960s of a major archaeological site at Ban Chiang,
in northeast Thailand, in which ceramics and bronzes dating back to 3600 BCE
revealed the presence of an indigenous Southeast Asian culture of an earlier date
than had previously been known to exist. While scholars began to assess the
implications of the articles found at Ban Chiang, others became aware of a mass
of ceramics from much later periods that had suddenly become available for
purchase in Southeast Asia and which were not Chinese in origin. Excavated
from sites in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, were ceramic items of
enormous variety that had been produced in Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma and
Thailand. Their appearance on the market acted as a spur to research that has not
only left us with a much richer understanding of the range of ceramics produced
in Southeast Asia, but also with a better knowledge of the course of historical
developments in particular regions. Analysis of kilns found in central Thailand,
for instance, has raised the possibility that Thai states may have emerged at an
earlier date than has previously been supposed. In sum, the finds and research of
the past three decades have underlined the fact that, in addition to the widespread
circulation of Chinese export ceramics through much of Southeast Asia in pre-
modern times, there were also important production centres of local ceramics in
mainland Southeast Asia over the same period. It is now clear that the products
of these centres also circulated widely through the region.
The types of Southeast Asian ceramic objects dating from pre-modern times
are extremely diverse. In terms of size, the objects can range from tiny jarlets
produced in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, to large stoneware jars standing
upwards of a metre tall that were produced in Burma and are known under the
generic title of Martaban jars. The forms in which ceramics were produced were
equally varied, with jars, bowls, vases and plates being the most common
varieties. But there were other distinctive items; among Cambodian ceramics
zoomorphic items (covered jars and water dispensers in the shape of animals and
birds) were relatively common. From the kilns of central Thailand around
Sawankalok came ceramic votive figures to ensure female fertility and ceramic
elephants that recall the part played by these animals in various episodes in the
life of the Buddha.
The processes used in the manufacture of Southeast Asian ceramics have an
interest that goes beyond efforts to understand the degree of technical expertise
that was required to produce particular results. Scholars are seeking to establish
where this expertise came from and to what extent particular technical skills
were developed locally or imported from other areas. Although it seems likely
that Chinese potters played a part in the initial establishment of some, if not all,
of the Southeast Asian production centres of the classical period, it is equally
clear that local potters were quickly able to adapt whatever techniques were
imported. The interplay between local and imported skills may have been quite
complex. In Thailand, for instance, some scholars believe it may have been
Vietnamese potters who first carried their skills to the sites that became
important for the production of distinctive celadons. These Vietnamese in their
turn almost certainly would have learnt some of their skills from China.

Vietnamese ceramic dish

Dating from the late fifteenth–early sixteenth centuries, this dish is decorated in blue/black underglaze with
a central peony design. (Diameter 26 cm)

Even where there is no doubt about the origin of particular forms of design
and ceramic technique, the ability of Southeast Asian craftsmen to produce
distinctively national objects stands out quite clearly. Vietnam’s long association
with China ensured that there was strong Chinese influence on the development
of Vietnamese ceramics. In particular, the period of Chinese reoccupation during
the Ming dynasty, between 1407 and 1421 CE, led to the production of blue and
white wares that in their early forms had direct echoes of contemporary Chinese
objects. Later, although Chinese influences could still be identified in the
products of Vietnamese potters’ kilns, the local craftsmen injected their own
local personality into the forms and the decoration of their ceramic works. Most
strikingly, the Vietnamese decorators adopted styles that were freer and less
stereotyped than those dominant in China.
Textiles and Other Craft Objects

The increased scholarly attention given to ceramics reflects a general broadening

of interest in the culture of Southeast Asia that has extended the definition of
‘art’ to include items previously relegated to a presumed lesser category of
‘crafts’. Few would now discuss ceramics in terms of ‘crafts’. Similarly,
growing interest in Southeast Asian textiles has, at the very least, moved these
items into a category in which they are treated as part of the region’s general
artistic heritage, if not as part of Southeast Asia’s ‘high art’, characterised by
sculpture and monumental remains.
Without question the best known of Southeast Asia’s textiles are the batiks of
Indonesia, cloth decorated by a process of repeated dyeing controlled by the
application of wax to the fabric. Now widely known outside Indonesia, batik
cloths bought by tourists are often of a mass-produced kind, where the
painstaking work of applying the design by hand has been abandoned in favour
of printing by blocks or even machines. While there are still batik makers who
work in the traditional fashion, the slow and precise work required to produce
batik in this manner means that their product risks becoming increasingly rare.
Seen together, there is no comparison between batik produced in the
traditional manner and that printed by modern means. The traditional methods
allow an infinitely greater variety of designs to be applied to the cloth, many of
them full of symbolism for the Indonesian inhabitants of Java, where the bulk of
batik cloth has always been produced. Certain designs and favoured
combinations of colours are associated with geographical localities. Both
Yogyakarta and Surakarta (Solo) in central Java are known for batiks that are
dark in colour and restrained in design, characteristics that echo the norms of
public behaviour associated with their traditional courts. Batiks from Ceribon
and Pekalongan on the north coast of Java, by contrast, are much more colourful,
almost certainly as a reflection of the strong Chinese influence that has long
been present in that region.
Javanese silk batik
Detail from a silk slendang (shoulder shawl) showing a phoenix in dark blue dye, highlighted in gold leaf.
Batiks of this kind were manufactured in north Java and were very popular in Bali. The cloth illustrated is
approximately 60 years old.

Fine woven textiles are also produced in Indonesia and they are the
predominant cloth craft in the rest of Southeast Asia. The variety of these woven
cloths was and is great, ranging from the silks of Burma, Thailand and
Cambodia, to the fibre cloths of the Dyaks of Borneo and the hill peoples of
northern Luzon in the Philippines. In their wide-ranging variety, textiles alert us
to a general feature of Southeast Asian material culture. Despite the broad
underlying similarities that scholars of various disciplines perceive throughout
the region, regional and national characteristics have been and still remain a
feature of Southeast Asia’s artistic heritage. This observation is true whether one
is discussing woodcarving or the metal work associated with weaponry. In this
latter category the kris of Indonesia and Malaysia with their intricately worked
serpentine blades are distinctively different from the straight-bladed swords of
the mainland kingdoms.
Javanese cotton batik
Detail from a Javanese batik decorated in the traditional ‘broken sword’ pattern. The batik is coloured dark
blue against a grey background rather than the traditional brown of central Java, suggesting a possible north
Java origin. The cloth illustrated dates from the early post-Second World War period.

Change is just as much a feature of contemporary Southeast Asia as of any

other region of the world, so that the rich artistic and craft traditions that may
have been so much a part of the region’s history are in many cases slowly being
eroded. The period of monumental building came to an end centuries ago,
though it has left an echo in the temples of Bali, where an immensely rich artistic
and cultural tradition has survived with a vigour unmatched anywhere else in the
region. Traditional textiles have continued as a major feature of contemporary
life despite the inroads of mass-produced substitutes. And ceramic production
has received a new lease of life, particularly in Thailand. The work of
silversmiths has never been lost from northern Thailand and has been revived in
the east coast states of modern Malaysia. But whatever the changes that have
taken place and those still to come, Southeast Asia’s artistic heritage is rich and
varied, a testimony to past greatness and continuing cultural energy.

SOUTHEAST ASIA IN FICTION: A PERSONAL SELECTION

The body of fictional writing on Southeast Asia, particularly during the period of
modern history treated in this book, is enormous in size. In the late 1920s, for
instance, a French writer estimated that over the preceding eighty years his
compatriots had published nearly one thousand novels on Indochinese subjects.
Taking into account only those novels and shorter fictional writings that deal
with Southeast Asia since the mid-nineteenth century, a student would face an
impossible task in seeking to review those items available in the English
language alone. And much of the effort would be misplaced, for a very large
number of the novels written with Southeast Asian settings have deservedly been
forgotten as offering neither literary nor historical interest.
Yet if the daunting undertaking of reviewing the whole body of fictional
writing can be justifiably put aside, there is reward to be gained from a selective
examination of some of the most readily available, most influential, and most
evocative novels and short stories that take Southeast Asia as their setting.
Suggesting some of the books and stories that students of Southeast Asia might
read is what is attempted in this, the book’s final section. The selection is
personal and heterogeneous, a gallimaufry. Moreover, the bulk of the novels
examined were written by Europeans and about Europeans in Southeast Asia.
The number of novels by Southeast Asian authors that are readily available in
English is sadly limited.
The Novel as Political Statement

The use of the novel to make a political statement about Southeast Asia has not
been restricted to more recent times, when many of the fictional works taking the
Vietnam War as their subject have been written with a clear position in favour of
or against the conflict. What is without doubt the most famous Dutch novel with
Indonesia as its setting, Max Havelaar, was written with the deliberate aim of
changing the way in which the Netherlands Indies were administered.
First published in 1859, the novel’s author was Eduard Douwes Dekker
(pseudonym Multatuli), a Dutchman who had served in Indonesia for eighteen
years. During that time he had grown disillusioned with the character of colonial
rule, which he saw as corrupting of the Dutch and disregarding of the interests of
the Indonesians. Largely autobiographical, the book remains a powerful
indictment of the colonial system. Although there is debate about the extent of
the novel’s influence in the decades that followed its publication, most
commentators credit Dekker with having touched the conscience of many of the
officials who came to Indonesia in the latter part of the nineteenth century and
who believed that more ‘liberal’ policies should be followed by the colonial
power. For some this attitude reflected a genuine shift towards the idea that
colonial administrations had a responsibility to improve the lives of those whom
they administered. For others the need for change was seen as a necessary
practical response to the risks that would follow from a failure to change the
abuses described in Max Havelaar. Whatever their motivations, these officials
were reacting to the spectre of colonial revolt that Dekker raised when he asked,
‘Must not the bent spring eventually recoil? Must not the long-suppressed
discontent— suppressed so that the government can deny its existence—finally
turn to rage, desperation, madness?’
A much more complex novel about colonial Indonesia is Louis Couperus’ The
Hidden Force, first published in 1900. As in Max Havelaar, the hero of
Couperus’ novel is a colonial official. But unlike Dekker’s principal character,
Couperus’ protagonist, Van Oudijek, is less a questioner of the colonial system
than a victim of its innate inequities and of the gulf that separated the Dutch
rulers from their Indonesian subjects. Although not conceived as a polemic, The
Hidden Force carries a strong political message and may be profitably read
alongside Max Havelaar.
Two other novels deserve mention in this brief review of writing which was
both conceived with political intent and succeeded in that aim. The outstanding
figure of the Philippine nationalist movement against the Spaniards was José
Rizal. A man of extraordinarily wide-ranging talents, Rizal was the author of
two polemical novels that helped shape the course of the aborted Philippine
revolution against Spanish rule at the end of the nineteenth century. Noli me
tangere (first published in 1886 and published in English as The Social Cancer,
1912) and El filibusterismo (first published in 1891 and published in English as
The Reign of Greed in 1912) were devastating critiques of the colonial system in
the Philippines and in particular of the part played by the Catholic friars as the
instruments of Spanish policy. While lacking the readable quality of Max
Havelaar and The Hidden Force, Rizal’s works should be noted for the passion
embodied in them and the impact they had in their own day.

Exoticism and the Romance of Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia has stirred the imagination of many Western writers through its
exoticism, its physical and cultural character that was so different from the West.
This exoticism or ‘romance’ is a recurring feature of fictional writing taking
Southeast Asia as its setting and is reflected in the four novels, one collection of
short stories and a collection of ‘sketches’ briefly noted here.
Few novelists have attempted to write of Southeast Asia in the early historical
period, and fewer still have succeeded in that endeavour. One of those few was
Maurice Collis, who in his novel She Was a Queen writes of Burma in the
thirteenth century. Based loosely on a court chronicle, the novel tells the story of
Queen Saw, a woman of powerful character who lived through one of the most
turbulent periods in Burmese history. Collis was certainly not one of the greats
of English fictional writing, though his better-known popular histories repay
attention, but in She Was a Queen he provides a convincing sense of the folly
and decadence of an inbred oriental court facing challenges to which it was not
equal. As a portrayal of intrigue, treachery and the clash of two cultures,
Burmese and Chinese, this novel offers a rare insight into a Southeast Asian
world centuries before it was touched by the European interlopers.
Another writer who sought to portray the world of pre-colonial Southeast Asia
was Sir Hugh Clifford, one of the notable examples among those scholar–
administrators who worked in Malaya in the early years of the British expansion
into that country. Clifford was a prolific writer, a fact that is the more
remarkable when it is remembered that writing was for him a part-time activity.
His output was uneven, but in his collection of short stories, The Further Side of
Silence, he provides a telling insight—however much marked by the prejudices
of his own time—into the character of traditional Malay society in the late
nineteenth century. Clifford’s stories in this collection were, he claimed, based
on personal experience, and there is no reason to doubt this. His accounts of pre-
colonial Malaya have the ring of truth to them, even though that truth was
recorded with a clear and non-literary goal in mind. For Clifford makes no secret
of the fact that his aim in writing is to celebrate the way in which, under British
colonialism, the Malays emerged ‘from the dark shadow in which their days
were passed, into the daylight of a personal freedom such as white men prize
above most mundane things’.
It is interesting to compare Clifford’s stories with the writings of one of his
contemporaries, Sir Frank Swettenham. Like Clifford, Swettenham was an
extremely able scholar–administrator, though everything suggests that he was a
much less attractive individual. His Malay Sketches is, as he puts it in the preface
to the book, ‘a series of sketches of Malay scenery and Malay character drawn
by one who has spent the best part of his life in the scenes and amongst the
people described’. Yet despite this disclaimer Swettenham’s writings, which
today might be described as ‘faction’, are rich in a sense of exotic atmosphere
Clifford corresponded with the great Anglo-Polish writer Joseph Conrad to
discuss his writing and it is to one of Conrad’s most notable works that we now
turn. If Collis’ novel is interesting and Clifford’s short stories contain a mix of
historical and cultural interest, Conrad’s Lord Jim is one of the towering novels
of the twentieth century. In a work concerned with the flawed character of a
merchant marine officer who becomes a power in the imaginary Malay or
Indonesian sultanate of Patusan, Conrad modelled his protagonist on James
Brooke of Sarawak. The resemblance is superficial, and Jim of the title dies
tragically, even futilely, rather than founding a dynasty. But in his masterly
fashion Conrad captures the sense of what one man could do in a world that was
still open to adventurers. At the same time, and drawing on his own experience
of Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth century, Conrad in Lord Jim, and in his
other novels set in the eastern seas, offers wonderful literary portraits of the men
who were to be found in the trading ports and settlements of the region. Given
Conrad’s literary skill it is not surprising that he has attracted much detailed
commentary, including Norman Sherry’s Conrad’s Eastern World (London,
1966) and, much more recently, Robert Hampson’s Cross-cultural Encounters in
Joseph Conrad’s Malay Fiction (Basingstoke, 2000). This latter book both takes
Conrad’s literary achievements seriously while drawing interesting conclusions
from his writings in relation to the nature of Indonesian–Malay society and how
it was perceived by Westerners in the late nineteenth century.
The exotic is even more powerfully a feature of André Malraux’s novel The
Royal Way (originally published in French in 1930 as La Voie royale). Partly
based on Malraux’s own attempt to steal statuary from the Angkorian temple of
Banteay Srei in the 1920s, The Royal Way combines criticism of the oppressive
political system of French Indochina with a powerful adventure story. Searching
for antiquities in the still-unknown interior of Indochina, the protagonist Claude,
and his older companion Perken, move steadily deeper into a fictionalised area
somewhere to the north of the real ruins of Angkor. In this distant region, where
aspects of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia combine, the adventurers become
entangled in a revolt of hill people against lowlanders. The book closes with
Perken dying and Claude’s fate unclear. Dense, evocative, and revealing of its
author as well as the time about which he wrote, The Royal Way is a minor
classic.
It is rare to find contemporary writing that wholeheartedly embraces the
romance of the exotic in the colonial period of Southeast Asia’s history, but a
recent example of the genre is Daniel Mason’s The Piano Tuner (2002). The
presumption of the plot is exotic in itself: an English piano tuner, Edgar Drake,
is commissioned by the War Office to go to Burma in 1886 to tune the Erhard
piano of an eccentric British army surgeon, Anthony Carroll. With historical
elements that blend fact and fancy, the novel offers the author the opportunity to
dwell on the truly exotic of the upcountry Burmese world he has entered even if,
as is the case with The Royal Way, the reader is left wondering whether the
world could ever have been as the author describes it.
Finally, in this brief listing of books marked by their authors’ interest in the
‘romance’ of Southeast Asia, mention should be made of Vicki Baum’s A Tale
From Bali. Published in 1937, Baum wrote her story after a visit to Bali when
she, like so many others, became enchanted with the island and its people’s rich
cultural life. The tale she tells is of life in the courts and villages of Bali just
before the Dutch took control of the island and of the tragedy of the unequal
contest between the Balinese and the Dutch invaders in 1906. Anthropologists
may quibble over the accuracy of Baum’s portrayal of Balinese life, but she has
given non-specialist readers a lively story that is soundly based on historical fact.

Colonial Society in the InterWar Period

European colonial life forms the basis of the largest body of Western fictional
writing on Southeast Asia. Much is unflattering to the individuals portrayed and
the world within which they moved. Foremost among those who wrote with their
pens dipped in acid was Somerset Maugham. Although Maugham spent only a
limited time in the region in the 1920s, he wrote both on the basis of his own
experiences and with an eye alert for past and present scandal. Probably the most
famous of Maugham’s short stories with Southeast Asian settings are ‘The
Letter’ and ‘The Yellow Streak’. The first was devised from an actual and
infamous marital scandal and murder in Malaya. The second drew on
Maugham’s own experience in a boating accident in Sarawak. In these, and in
other stories, Maugham captures the flavour of the times, so well that he was
regarded as an unwelcome visitor in Singapore and Malaya years after he
published his stories.
George Orwell (Eric Blair) was no less a critical observer of Southeast Asian
colonial life. With a much longer experience of living in the region, he wrote an
outstanding short novel based on his work as a British colonial official in Burma.
This novel, Burmese Days, and two of his essays drawing directly on his own
duties in Burma, ‘Shooting an Elephant’ and ‘The Hanging’, probably have no
match in terms of twentieth-century writing in English for capturing the
boredom of colonial life and the inseparable divide between ruler and ruled.
A much later novel, The Singapore Grip, is notable for a similar ironic
examination of colonial life just before and during the fall of Singapore. Written
by a highly accomplished novelist, J.G. Farrell, this is an entertaining and
complex book which, in addition, is characterised by the author’s meticulous
attention to historical accuracy.
An encouraging development is the fact that a number of novels written
during the years of colonial control and previously only available in Southeast
Asian languages are becoming available in English translations. A very recent
Vietnamese example is Dumb Luck, by Vu Trong Phung. Originally published in
1936, it is a sharp satire on colonial life in the 1930s that presents a critical view
of both the colonised and the colonisers in a period when independence for
Vietnam seemed very distant. Well known by Vietnamese despite his tragically
short life—he died aged twenty-seven— Vu Trong Phung offers insights into
colonial Vietnam that are difficult to find elsewhere.
Highly acclaimed by literary critics, and of interest to historians as reflection
of the final years of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia, is the quartet of novels by
the Javanese writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, published under the general title
‘The Buru Quartet’, a name reflecting the fact that the stories were composed in
the author’s mind while he was a political prisoner on the island of Buru. The
works were long banned from publication in his home country because of their
author’s association with the Indonesian Communist Party’s cultural arm. The
novels are now available in English translation. Many, including the present
writer, recognise the importance of these novels without finding them easy to
read.
Plantation Life

Novels taking life on the rubber plantations of Southeast Asia as their subject
form an interesting sub-group within the broader category of books dealing with
the colonial period. Two pre-Second World War novels and one that spans the
period before and after that war offer a clear, if rather depressing, insight into the
closed and monotonous world of the great rubber plantations that were
developed in Sumatra and Malaya. Madelon Székely-Lulofs and her husband
Laszlo Székely both wrote powerful novels that focused on the iniquities of the
plantation system, in which the white managers could ill-treat their Indonesian
workers with impunity. Both wrote from personal experience in Sumatra, and
Tropic Fever, by Laszlo Székely, and Rubber, by Székely-Lulofs, played a part
in arousing Dutch public opinion against the abuses they described. The interest
attaching to these two books does not just lie in their account of the arrogant and
sometimes cruel behaviour of the European colonisers towards their indigenous
workers. In both Rubber and Tropic Fever the boredom and the hardships of
plantation life are vividly evoked.
Writing about a later period, Pierre Boulle, best known for his novel of the
Second World War in Southeast Asia, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, also
dwells on the boredom of plantation life in his Sacrilege in Malaya. Boulle, too,
wrote on the basis of personal experience, having worked on a French-owned
plantation in Malaya for ten years. With a sharp satiric eye he mocks the way in
which the senior managers enslave themselves to a rigid set of rules that govern
every element of their lives and those of the workers they employ. A keen
observer of colonial life, Boulle is particularly successful in depicting the
divided world of pre-war Malaya in which an individual’s race so often
determined occupation; there were European managers, Tamil rubber tappers,
Chinese merchants and storekeepers, and Malay aristocrats or small holders.
That not all was grim or open to mockery for those associated with the rubber
industry is made clear in another, justly famous autobiographical novel about
plantation life. Henri Fauconnier’s The Soul of Malaya is based on the author’s
experiences in the 1920s. Fauconnier is not uncritical of the colonial life he
observed, but the more optimistic picture he provides needs to be put against the
almost unrelieved gloom of Rubber and Tropic Fever.
The Second World War

Perhaps a little surprisingly, the Second World War in Southeast Asia did not
generate a notable body of fictional writing. Possibly the reason lies in the fact
that the war did result in the publication of many outstanding non-fictional
accounts of events. Spenser Chapman’s The Jungle is Neutral, for instance,
which recounts the exploits of the British-led guerrilla group, Force 136, is as
exciting as any fictional portrayal of the war could hope to be.
As with the overwhelming bulk of the novels cited so far, the fictional
literature of the Second World War tells the story of the Europeans in the region,
rather than providing an account of the war as it was seen by the indigenous
people of Southeast Asia. Among the most powerful of the novels to emerge
from the wartime years was James Clavell’s King Rat. Based on Clavell’s own
experience of life as a prisoner in Changi jail in Singapore, King Rat provides a
chilling picture of men struggling to come to terms with sometimes brutal
imprisonment. While Clavell is better known for his later historical epics, his
first novel still repays reading for its success in portraying men under stress,
their weakness and their courage.
Two novels inspired by the Burma campaign deserve mention. Often
described as the ‘forgotten war’, the Burma campaign was marked by a bitter
British withdrawal and then, under General Slim, a dogged return that finally
brought the defeat of the Japanese. Some of the perils of the Burma campaign
are effectively captured in the novels noted here, one by a famous author, the
other by a man whose name is scarcely remembered today. The famous writer
H.E. Bates tells the story of three Englishmen struggling to survive in the
Burmese dry zone following the crash of the aircraft in which they had been
flying. Like almost all of Bates’ writing, The Purple Plain is a professionally
crafted book, convincing in its detail. A similar sense of the accuracy of detail
emerges in Sidney Butterworth’s Three Rivers to Glory. This novel is a fictional
account of the fighting that took place in western Burma, where troops of the
West Africa Frontier Force were pitched against not only the Japanese but also
elements of the Indian National Army, Indian troops who fought on the side of
the Japanese in the hope of gaining independence from Britain.
Yet, in a manner that reinforces the comment made earlier, these two novels
about the war in Burma are probably correctly seen as less impressive than two
non-fictional accounts of the same period. Both were written by men who were
to have very successful careers as novelists. The first, The Road Past Mandalay
by John Masters, is one of the finest pieces of writing to have come out of the
war in Southeast Asia. Less well known is an account of his wartime experiences
in Burma by George MacDonald Fraser, the creator of the ‘Flashman’ series of
novels. Where Masters served as a senior British officer, Fraser was a ranker in
the Border Regiment. His Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War
in Burma is a moving account of war in Burma’s jungles from the point of view
of an individual foot soldier.
One further novel should be mentioned in a review of writing inspired by the
Second World War, for its high literary quality. Widely acclaimed for his fiction
set in India, Paul Scott also numbers among his novels a book set in Malaya at
the end of the war. The Chinese Love Pavilion is one of his lesser-known books,
but it possesses the same high literary quality that marks his other novels.
The PostWar World

If there is a relative drought of quality novels dealing with the Second World
War in Southeast Asia, the postwar years by comparison brought forth a flood of
titles, many both readable and effective in their capacity to provide a sense of
time and place. To list and discuss even a small proportion of the novels set in
the postwar period would be a major exercise. What follows is a very selective
account of some of the more interesting books that deal with the years after
1945.
As noted in earlier chapters of this book, the years after the Second World
War were marked by turmoil. This is reflected in some of the best novels of the
period, of which Graham Greene’s The Quiet American must rank among the
finest. Set in Vietnam around 1952, The Quiet American is in part a political
statement— the French were always fated to lose their Indochina War, and so
was any other Western power that sought to shape the course of Asian history. It
captures wonderfully the tone of life in the expatriate community in Vietnam. A
reader is able to sense the tension of daily life in Saigon, where a visit to a bar or
a cafe meant being exposed to the risk of a grenade attack. The book has two
marvellous set-piece descriptions in Greene’s account of the Roman Catholic
bishopric of Phat Diem under siege and the visit by the novel’s narrator, Fowler,
to the Cao Dai temple at Tay Ninh. Spare, cynical and realistic, The Quiet
American repays many readings.
Of a quite different literary quality, but nonetheless effective in capturing the
atmosphere of the First Indochina War from the point of view of the French
soldier, is Jean Lartéguy’s The Centurions. This novel records the bitter
disillusionment of the French officer corps as they fought the ‘dirty war’ only, in
their judgment, to be betrayed by their political leaders in France. As a fictional
account of the factors that played such a part in bringing about the French
army’s revolt in Algeria (the subject of Lartéguy’s later novel, The Praetorians),
The Centurions deserves mention in any review of fiction dealing with the First
Indochina War.
Another novel that takes postwar conflict as its central theme is Han Suyin’s .
. . and the Rain my Drink. Set in the Malayan Emergency, this novel makes no
pretence of being a balanced account of the issues involved in that struggle. Yet
although the author writes as a partisan for the ethnic Chinese point of view,
including those Malayan Chinese who went into the jungle as guerrillas to fight
against the colonial government, her portrayal of other races in Malaya does not
lack sympathy. Han Suyin’s passion for the plight of the ethnic Chinese
underdog gives her readers an insight into why it was that the Emergency took
place, lasted so long and had such a profound effect in shaping opinions in
independent Malaysia. Anthony Burgess’ three novels set in post-Second World
War Malaya and later published as a single volume as The Malayan Trilogy are a
bitterly satirical commentary on the late colonial scene. Few will deny Burgess’
capacity for mordant wit, but many may find his clever writing borders on
stereotyped racism at the same time as it excoriates the British in Malaya.
Turmoil of a different kind provides the background for the novels of the
Indonesian writer Mochtar Lubis and the Australian Christopher Koch. In one of
the more important novels by a Southeast Asian writer to be translated into
English, Mochtar Lubis offers a pessimistic view of Indonesian society in his
Twilight in Djakarta. Set in the 1950s, Lubis offers a highly critical view of the
Sukarno era. Corruption is portrayed as endemic; hopelessness and poverty are
the lot of the masses. Most of those who appear in the novel are flawed in
character—few attract the reader’s sympathy. Yet despite the didactic tone of
much of Lubis’ writing, Twilight in Djakarta is a forceful account in an elegant
translation of a city in political and social decay. How the Sukarno era came to
an end forms the central theme of Christopher Koch’s novel The Year of Living
Dangerously. Written from the viewpoint of an outsider, Koch’s novel provides
a fictional counterpoint to the world so vividly evoked by Lubis. Another novel
to take the closing stages of Sukarno’s rule over Indonesia as its setting is
Blanche d’Alpuget’s Monkeys in the Dark. Like Koch, d’Alpuget is concerned
to present the personal dilemmas of an expatriate confronting a climactic period
in Indonesian politics. (This theme of non-Southeast Asians beset by personal
problems in an exotic locale recurs in d’Alpuget’s later, and perhaps more
accomplished, Turtle Beach, which is set principally in Malaysia. Criticism of
this latter novel for presumed racist overtones appears to miss the fact that few
of those portrayed emerge as lacking in prejudice of one kind or another.)
Another Southeast Asian writer whose theme is the inequities of the society in
which he lives is the Filipino novelist Francis (‘Frankie’) José. In his novel Mass
he presents a convincing portrait of a young man’s flirtation with the Communist
movement. As he struggles to come to terms with the need for political choice,
the novel’s protagonist reflects on the nature of Philippines society, the
corruption it breeds and the apparent impossibility of achieving change without
resorting to violence. An outsider’s look at the same society is found in Robert
Drewe’s A Cry in the Jungle Bar. Written with an irony that at times borders on
satire, Drewe’s account of an Australian aid expert’s experiences in the
Philippines has a serious purpose, in particular the difficulty even the best-
intentioned foreigners have in penetrating another society.
While Singapore has been taken as a locale by many expatriate writers, the
1980s and 1990s have seen the development of a lively school of local writers
producing fictional works dealing with both historical and contemporary themes.
Probably the best known of these writers is Catherine Lim, whose novels and
short stories have focused on the role of women in Singaporean Chinese society,
particularly the role of the less privileged within that society. Her early work,
exemplified in Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore, received much local
attention, but more recently The Bondmaid has brought her international
attention. Among younger writers, the lawyer and novelist Philip Jeyaretnam is
prominent, with his work concerned both with local cultural values and politics.
Probably his best-known work is Abraham’s Promise, which is regarded by most
commentators as a sceptical commentary on Singapore’s politics both before and
after independence.

In introducing this review of fictional writing on Southeast Asia, the present

writer stressed the personal nature of the selection being made. For each item
cited another commentator might well choose to offer an alternative, or make a
different judgment about the items that have been selected. And as one draws
nearer to the present day the greater will be the disagreements over which books
should be included and which should not. The task of selection is made the more
difficult by the still growing number of fictional accounts of the Second
Indochina War (the American War in Vietnam) that are being published.
At the risk of being criticised for making too limited a selection from the
growing canon of fiction based in Indochina during the ‘American’ period, the
final citations in this section are of five fine and very different novels, Bao
Ninh’s The Sorrow of War, Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, John M. Del
Vecchio’s The 13th Valley, James Webb’s, Fields of Fire and Christopher
Koch’s Highways to a War. Bao Ninh’s bitter novel gives a view of the war
from the ‘winning’ side, a view full of pain and anguish that has led some to
compare it with Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Del
Vecchio’s novel is brutally realistic, the war being seen from the foot soldier’s
perspective, and based on the bitter fighting that took place in the valleys
running up to the central highlands of southern Vietnam in 1970. O’Brien’s book
by contrast mixes reality with fantasy. It is a complex novel that commands the
reader’s attention from its simple opening sentence, ‘It was a bad time’. Soldier,
author and politician, James Webb’s Fields of Fire has been hailed as one of the
most savagely realistic of the novels to emerge from the Vietnam War,
encapsulating the perspective of the American foot soldier. Koch’s novel, set
largely in Cambodia, portrays the life of a combat photographer realistically and
in a manner that evokes the sights and smells of a country in a time of war.
Fiction can only ever be one route into an understanding of Southeast Asia,
and for the most part a route limited by the bulk of the authors’ perspectives
being those of non-Southeast Asian outsiders. Yet, with an area of study both as
diverse and in many regions and disciplines still awaiting thorough exploration
as Southeast Asia is, to ignore any route to knowledge and understanding would
be a mistake. Whatever their limitations, the books and stories reviewed here can
form one more piece in each person’s mosaic of the immensely diverse study
that is the history of Southeast Asia.
Notes

The brief review of fictional writing on Southeast Asia contained in the

preceding chapter touches upon only some of the best known of the books and
stories that take the region as their geographical setting. A more detailed
examination of the body of fiction on a country by country and region by region
basis is now available in a symposium edited by Robin W. Winks and James
Rush, Asia in Western Fiction, published Manchester and Honolulu, 1990. An
anthology of writing about Southeast Asia, including work by Southeast Asians,
has been published in the ‘Traveller’s Literary Companion’ series: Alastair
Dingwall, ed., SouthEast Asia, London 1994, Chicago 1995. A particularly
valuable recent survey of novels in the Malay language is Virginia Matheson
Hooker’s Writing a New Society: Social Change Through the Malay Novel,
published in Sydney in 2000. A recently published series of essays on fictional
writing in the region is Teri Shaffer Yamada, ed., Modern Short Fiction of
Southeast Asia, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The following is a compilation of the works cited in this chapter. Where
possible the publication date provided is that of the first edition.
Fiction

Bates, H.E., The Purple Plain, 1948.

Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War, 1994.
Baum, V., A Tale From Bali, 1937.
Boulle, P., The Bridge Over the River Kwai, 1954.
——, Sacrilege in Malaya, 1959.
Burgess, The Malaya Trilogy, 1972.
Butterworth, S., Three Rivers to Glory, 1957.
Clavell, J., King Rat, 1963.
Clifford, H., The Further Side of Silence, 1916.
Collis, M., She Was a Queen, 1937.
Conrad, J., Lord Jim, 1900.
Couperus, L., The Hidden Force, first published in Dutch in 1900.
d’Alpuget, B., Monkeys in the Dark, 1980.
——, Turtle Beach, 1981.
Del Vecchio, J.M., The 13th Valley, 1982.
Drewe, R., A Cry in the Jungle Bar, 1979.
Farrell, J.G., The Singapore Grip, 1978.
Fauconnier, H., The Soul of Malaya, 1931.
Greene, G., The Quiet American, 1955.
Han Suyin, . . . and the Rain my Drink, 1956.
José, F., Mass, 1979.
Jeyaretnam, P., Abraham’s Promise, Singapore, 1995.
Koch, C.J., The Year of Living Dangerously, 1978.
——, Highways to a War, 1995.
Lartéguy, J., The Centurions, 1961.
——, The Praetorians, 1963.
Lim, C., Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore, Singapore, 1978.
——, The Bondmaid, London, 1995.
Lubis, M., Twilight in Djakarta, 1964.
Malraux, A., The Royal Way, 1935.
Mason, D., The Piano Tuner, 2002.
Multatuli (pseud. E.D. Dekker), Max Havelaar, first published in Dutch 1859.
Maugham, S., Collected Short Stories, 1977–84.
O’Brien, T., Going After Cacciato, 1978.
Orwell, G. (pseud. E. Blair), Burmese Days, 1934.
——, Shooting an Elephant and other essays, 1950.
Promoedya Ananta Toer, ‘The Buru Quartet’, This Earth of Mankind, Child of
all Nations, Footsteps, House of Glass, New York, 1990–1992.
Rizal, J., Noli me tangere, 1886.
——, El filibusterismo, 1891.
Scott, P., The Chinese Love Pavilion, 1960.
Székely, L., Tropic Fever, 1937.
Székely-Lulofs, M., Rubber, 1931.
Vu Trong Phung, Dumb Luck, Ann Arbor, Mich., 2003.
Webb, J., Fields of Fire, New York, 1978.

Non-Fiction

Fraser, George MacDonald, Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War
in Burma, London, 1992
Masters, J., The Road Past Mandalay, 1961.
Spenser Chapman, F., The Jungle is Neutral, 1949.
Swettenham, F.A., Malay Sketches, 1895.
SUGGESTED READINGS

Despite the substantial number of items in this list of suggested readings, the
books cited should, like the rest of this book, be regarded only as an introduction
to the ever-increasing literature that deals with Southeast Asian history. Much of
the important writing related to Southeast Asian history that has appeared since
the Second World War has been published in the form of articles, and anyone
wanting to go deeper into the subject will need to consult a wide range of
journals as well as the many books that are available. The following listing does
not include material published in European languages other than English, though
readers should be aware of the very large body of material that exists in Dutch
(for Indonesia in particular) and French (for the countries that formerly made up
French Indochina). Moreover, there is a growing amount of writing dealing with
the history of Southeast Asia in the languages of the region.
For readers wishing to pursue their interest in Southeast Asia at a deeper level
there is now a wide range of bibliographic aids available. For the period covered
by the present book, one of the best overall bibliographic guidance for material
published up to 1985 remains that provided in the extended ‘Bibliography’ of
D.J. Steinberg, ed., In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History, revised
edition, Honolulu, 1987. A similarly extensive and helpful ‘Bibliography’,
which takes account of more recent publications, is provided in M.C. Ricklefs,
ed., A New History of Southeast Asia, Basingstoke, 2010. Detailed and up-to-
date bibliographies for the individual countries of Southeast Asia have been
published in the ‘World Bibliographic Series’, Oxford, Santa Barbara, Cal.,
Denver, Colo.
A note on citation procedure: once a title has been cited in the ‘Suggested
Readings’, full publication details (date and place of publication) are not
provided in subsequent citations.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND GUIDES

Herbert, P. and A.C. Milner, eds, SouthEast Asian Languages and Literature: A
Select Guide, Whiting Bay, Arran, 1989.
Leifer, M., Dictionary of the Modern Politics of SouthEast Asia, new edn,
London and New York, 1996.
Stearn, D., Chronology of SouthEast Asian History, 1400–1996, Sydney, 1997.

GENERAL WORKS

History and Historiography

Anderson, B.R.O’G., Imagined Communities, London, 1983,

——, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World,
London, 1998.
Bellwood, P., Man’s Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia
and Oceania, New York, 1979.
Brown, D., The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia, London and New
York, 1994.
Christie, C.J., A Modern History of Southeast Asia: Decolonisation: Nationalism
and Separatism, London and New York, 1996.
——, Ideology and Revolution in Southeast Asia, 1990–1980: Political Ideas in
the Anti-Colonial Era, Richmond, Surrey, 2001.
Embree, A.T. et al, Encyclopedia of Asian History, 4 vols, New York, 1988.
Lieberman, V., Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–
1830, 2 vols, Cambridge, 2009.
Lockhard, C.A., Southeast Asia in World History, Oxford, 2009.
Mohamed Halib and T. Huxley, eds, An Introduction to Southeast Asian Studies,
London and New York, 1996.
Ooi Keat Gin, ed., Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia from Angkor to
East Timor, 3 Vols, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford, 2004.
Osborne, M., Exploring Southeast Asia: A Traveller’s History of the Region,
Sydney, 2002.
Owen, N.G., The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History,
Honolulu, 2005.
Reid, A. and D. Marr, eds, Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, Hong
 Kong, 1979. A review of Southeast Asian historical writing with particular
attention to Indonesia.
Ricklefs, M.C., ed., A New History of Southeast Asia, Basingstoke, 2010. This
recent publication has been written as a conscious replacement for the now
outdated D.G.E. Hall, A History of SouthEast Asia. A collaborative from
scholars at the National University of Singapore, it provides in depth coverage
of the Southeast Asian region from earliest times.
Scott, J.C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in
Southeast Asia, New Haven, Conn., 1976.
Soedjatmoko, et al, eds, An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography, Ithaca,
NY, 1965.
Steinberg, D.J., ed., In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History, revised
edition, 1987.
Stuart-Fox, M., A Short History of China and Southeast Asia: Trade, Tribute and
Influence, Sydney, 2003.
Tarling, N., ed., The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, 2 vols, Cambridge,
1992.
——, Southeast Asia: A Modern History, South Melbourne, 2001.
Wolters, O.W., History, Culture and Religion in Southeast Asian Perspectives,
Singapore, 1982, revised edn, 1999.
Geography

Dobby, E.G.H. Southeast Asia, 11th edn, London, 1973.

Hill, R.D., Rice in Malaya: A Study in Historical Geography, Kuala Lumpur,
1977.
—— ed., A Systematic Geography of SouthEast Asia, Kuala Lumpur, 1978.
——, Southeast Asia: People, Land and Economy, Sydney, 2002.
Logan, W.S., Hanoi: Biography of a City, Sydney, 2000.
McGee, T.G., The Southeast Asian City: A Social Geography of the Primate
Cities of Southeast Asia, London, 1967.
Osborne, M., Phnom Penh: A Cultural and Literary History, Oxford and New
York, 2008.
Pluvier, J., A Historical Atlas of Southeast Asia, Leiden, 1995.
Stuart-Fox, M., and Northup, Naga Cities of the Mekong, Singapore, 2006.
Ulack, R. and G. Pauer, Atlas of Southeast Asia, New York, 1988.
Ethnology

Barnes, R.H., Gray, A. and B. Kingsbury, Indigenous Peoples of Asia, Tucson,

Arizona, 1995.
Kunstadter, P., ed., Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations, 2 vols,
Princeton, NJ, 1967.
Lebar, F., G. Hickey and J. Musgrave, Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast
Asia, New Haven, Conn., 1964.
Lebar, F., Ethnic Groups of Insular Southeast Asia, 2 vols, New Haven, Conn.,
1972 and 1975.
Society and Economy

Andaya, B., The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern

Southeast Asia, Honolulu, 2006.
Booth, A., The Indonesian Economy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries:
A History of Missed Opportunities, London, 1993.
Booth, A., W.J. O’Malley and A. Weidemann, eds, Essays in Indonesian
Economic Economic History, New Haven, Conn., 1990.
Brown, I., Economic Change in SouthEast Asia, c. 1830–1980, Oxford, 1997.
Cushman, J. and Wang Gungwu, eds, Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian
Chinese since World War II, Hong Kong, 1988.
Duncan, C.R., ed., Civilising the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies
for the Development of Minorities, Ithaca, NY. 2004.
Elson, R.E., The End of the Peasantry in Southeast Asia: A Social and Economic
History of Peasant Livelihood, 1800–1990s, New York, 1997.
Evans, G., ed., Asia’s Cultural Mosaic: An Anthropological Introduction,
Singapore, 1993.
Hickey, G.C., Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central
Highlands to 1954, New Haven, Conn., 1982.
——, Free in the Forest: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands
1954–1976, New Haven, Conn., 1982.
Higham, C., Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia, Chicago, 2002.
Hooker, M.B., ed., Islam and Society in Southeast Asia, Leiden, 1983.
Keyes, C.F., The Golden Peninsula: Culture and Adaptation in Mainland
Southeast Asia, New York, 1977.
Lee Kam Hing and Tan Chee-Beng, eds, The Chinese in Malaysia, Shah Alam,
Selangor, 2000.
Milner, A.C., Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule,
Tucson, Arizona, 1982.
——, The Malays, Chichester, 2008.
Owen, N.G., ed., Death and Disease in Southeast Asia: Explorations in Social,
Medical and Demographic History, Singapore, 1987.
Pan, L., Sons of the Yellow Emperor, New York, 1990.
——, ed., Encyclopedia of the Overseas Chinese, London, 1999.
Reid, A.J.S., ed., Slavery, Bondage and Dependency, St Lucia, Brisbane, 1983.
——, ed., Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese,
 Sydney, 1996.
Sandhu, K.S., Indians in Malaya: Immigration and Settlement, 1786–1857,
Cambridge, 1969.
Scott, J., The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland
Southeast Asia, New Haven Conn. and London, 2008.
Snooks, G.D., A.J.S. Reid and J.J. Pincus, Exploring Southeast Asia’s Economic
Past, Singapore, 1991.
Swearer, D.K., The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia, Albany, NY, 1995.
Wang Gungwu, Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the
Chinese, Sydney, 1981.
Arts

Achjadi, Jo, Seni Kriya: The Crafts of Indonesia, Singapore, 1988.

Brown, R., The Ceramics of SouthEast Asia: Their Dating and Identification,
Kuala Lumpur, 1977, 2nd edn, Singapore, 1988.
Dagens, B., Angkor: Heart of an Asian Empire, London and New York, 1995.
Fahr-Becker, G., ed., The Art of East Asia, 2 vols, Cologne, 1999.
Groslier, B.P., The Art of Indochina: Including Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia, New York, 1962.
Green, G., Traditional Textiles of Cambodia: Cultural Threads and Material
Heritage, Bangkok and London, 2003.
——, Pictorial Cambodian Textiles, Bangkok, 2008.
Gutman, P., Burma’s Lost Kingdoms: Splendours of Arakan, Bangkok and
Sydney, 2001.
Guy, J.S., Oriental Trade Ceramics in SouthEast Asia, Ninth to Sixteenth
Centuries, Singapore, 1986.
Jacques, C., Angkor, Cologne, 1999.
—— and P. Lafond, The Khmer Empire: Cities and Sanctuaries from the 5th to
the 13th Century, Bangkok, 2007.
Mannikka, E., Angkor Wat: Time, Space and Kingship, Sydney, 1997.
Maxwell, R., Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition, Trade and Transformation,
Melbourne and New York, 1990.
Miksic, J., Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddha, Singapore, 1995.
Pisit Charoenwongsa and M.C. Subhadradis Diskul, Thailand, Geneva, 1978.
Ramseyer, U., The Art and Culture of Bali, Oxford, 1977.
Rawson, P., The Art of Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos,
Burma, Java, Bali, London, 1967.
Richards, D., SouthEast Asian Ceramics: Thai, Vietnamese and Khmer from the
Collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Kuala Lumpur, 1995.
Shaw, J.C., Introducing Thai Ceramics, also Burmese and Khmer, Chiangmai,
1987.
Sheppard, M., Living Crafts of Malaysia, Singapore, 1978.
Wagner, F.A., The Art of Indonesia, New York, 1959.
Zéphir, T., Angkor: A Tour of the Monuments, Singapore, 2004.
JOURNALS

Journal of Asian Studies, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
Modern Asian Studies, Cambridge.
Pacific Affairs, Vancouver.
EARLY SOUTHEAST ASIAN HISTORY

Coedès, G., The Making of Southeast Asia, Berkeley, Cal., 1966.

——, Angkor, An Introduction, London, 1967.
——, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu, 1968. These three are
translations of the works of one of the most distinguished of all French
historians of early Southeast Asia.
Glover, I. and P. Bellwood, eds, Southeast Asia from Prehistory to History,
London, 2004.
Hall, K.R., Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia,
Honolulu, 1984.
Harris, P., trans., Zhou Daguan: A Record of Cambodia, The Land and its
People, Chiang Mai, 2007.
Higham, C., The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia, Cambridge, 1989.
——, The Civilisation of Angkor, London, 2001.
Mabbet, I. and D.P. Chandler, The Khmers, Oxford, 1995.
Manguin, P-Y., Mani A. and G. Wade, eds, Early Interaction Beween South and
Southeast Asia: Reflection on Cross-Cultural Exchange, Singapore, 2011.
Marr, D.G. and A.C. Milner, eds, Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries,
Singapore and Canberra, 1986.
Micksic, J., ed., Indonesian Heritage: Ancient History, Singapore 1996.
Munoz, P.M., Early Kingdoms of the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malay
Peninsula, Singapore, 2006.
Smith, R.B. and W. Watson, eds, Early South East Asia: Essays in Archaeology
and Historical Geography, London, 1979.
Taylor, K.W., The Birth of Vietnam, Berkeley, Cal., 1983.
Vickery, M., Society, Economics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia, Tokyo,
1998.
Wheatley, P., The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography of
the Malay Peninsula Before A.D. 1500, Kuala Lumpur, 1966.
Wolters, O.W., Early Indonesian Commerce: A Study of the Origins of Srivijaya,
Ithaca, NY, 1967.
——, The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History, London, 1970.
Zhou Daguan, The Customs of Cambodia, trans., M. Smithies, Bangkok, 2001.
THE TRADITIONAL WORLD

Andaya, B.W., Perak: The Abode of Grace: A Study of an Eighteenth Century

Malay State, Kuala Lumpur, 1979.
Andaya, L.Y., The Kingdom of Johor, 1641–1728, Kuala Lumpur, 1975.
——, The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Era,
Honolulu, 1993.
Aung-Thwin, M., The Origins of the Classical Burmese State: An Institutional
History of the Kingdom of Pagan, Honolulu, 1985.
Groslier, B-P., Angkor and Cambodia in the Sixteenth Century: According to
Portuguese and Spanish Sources, trans., M. Smithies, Bangkok, 2006.
Gullick, J.M., Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya, London, 1958.
Lieberman, V.B., Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest,
1580–1760, Princeton, New Jersey, 1984.
Milner, A.C., Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule,
Tucson, Arizona, 1982.
——, The Malays, Oxford, 2008.
Reid, A., Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680: The Lands Below
the Winds, New Haven, Conn., 1988.
——, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce—Vol. 2: Expansion and Crisis,
New Haven, Conn., 1993.
——ed., Indonesian Heritage: Early Modern History, Singapore, 1996.
Ricklefs, M.C., The Seen and Unseen World in Java, 1726–1749: History,
Literature and Islam in the Court of Pakubuwana II, Sydney, 1998.
Shrieke, B.J.O., Indonesian Sociological Studies, Part Two, The Hague, 1957.
Taylor, R.H., The State in Myanmar, Singapore, 2009.
Woodside, A.B., Vietnam and the Chinese Model, Cambridge, Mass., 1971.
Wyat, D.K., Siam in Mind, Chiang Mai, 2002.
——, Thailand: A Short History, 2nd edition, New Haven, Conn, 2003.
THE COLONIAL ADVANCE

Boxer, C.R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800, New York, 1965.
——, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, London, 1969.
Bruce, G., The Burma Wars, 1824–1886, London, 1973.
Brocheux, P. and D. Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, Berkeley,
2009.
Cady, J.F., The Roots of French Imperialism in Eastern Asia, Ithaca, NY, 1954.
Chandran, J., The Contest for Siam, 1889–1902: A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry,
Kuala Lumpur, 1977.
Cowan, C.D., Nineteenth-Century Malaya: The Origins of British Political
Control, London, 1965.
King, V.T., Explorers of SouthEast Asia: Six Lives, Kuala Lumpur, 1995.
Osborne, M.E., The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and
Response (1859–1905), Ithaca, NY, 1969.
——, River Road to China: The Search for the Source of the Mekong, 1866–
1873, Singapore and Sydney, 1996, New York, 1997.
——, The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, updated edition, Sydney,
2006.
Parry, J.H., The Spanish Seaborne Empire, London, 1966.
Phelan, J.L., The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims and Filipino
Responses, 1565–1700, Madison, Wisconsin, 2011.
Reid, A.J.S., The Contest for North Sumatra: Atjeh, the Netherlands and Britain,
1858–1898, Kuala Lumpur, 1969.
Ricklefs, M.C., Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749– 1792: A History of
the Division of Java, London, 1974.
Roberts, S.H., The History of French Colonial Policy, 1870–1925, reprinted edn,
London, 1966.
Stewart, A.T.Q., The Pagoda Wars: Lord Dufferin and Fall of the Kingdom of
Ava, 1885–86, London, 1972.
Walker, J.H., Power and Prowess: The Origins of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak,
Sydney and Honolulu, 2002.

MODERN SOUTHEAST ASIAN HISTORY TO THE SECOND WORLD

WAR
Brunei

Graham, E.S., A History of Brunei, London, 2002.

Saunders, G., A History of Brunei, Kuala Lumpur, 1994.
Burma

Adas, M., The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an
Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941, Madison, 1974.
Cady, J.F., A History of Modern Burma, Ithaca, NY, 1958.
Hall, D.G.E., Burma, London, 1960.
Maung Htin Aung, History of Burma, New York, 1968.
Sarkisyanz, E., Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution, The Hague,
1965.
Taylor, R.H., The State in Myanmar.
Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps, London, 2006.
Cambodia

Chandler, D.P., A History of Cambodia, Boulder, Colorado, 1983, 4th edn, 2008.
Edwards, P., Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945, Honolulu,
2007.
Muller, G., Colonial Cambodia’s ‘Bad Frenchmen’: The Rise of French Rule
and the Life of Thomas Caraman, 1840–87, New York, 2006.
Osborne, M.E., The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and
Response (1859–1905).
——, Phnom Penh: A Cultural and Literary history.
Tully, J., France on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia,
1863–1953, Lanham, Maryland, New York and London, 2002.
Tully, J., A Short History of Cambodia: From Empire to Survival, Sydney, 2005.

East Timor (Timor-Leste)

Hiorth, F., Timor Past and Present, Townsville, Queensland, 1985.

Indonesia

Abeyasekere, S., Jakarta: A History, Melbourne, 1987.

Brown, C., A Short History of Indonesia: The Unlikely Nation, Sydney, 2003.
Elson, R.E., Village Java under the Cultivation System, 1830– 1870, Sydney,
1994.
Friend, T., Indonesian Destinies, Cambridge, Mass., 2003.
Geertz, C., Agricultural Involution, Berkeley, Cal., 1963.
Ingleson, J., The Road to Exile: The Indonesian Nationalist Movement 1927–
1934, Singapore, 1979.
Legge, J.D., Indonesia, 2nd edn, Sydney, 1977.
Pringle, R., A Short History of Bali: Indonesia’s Hindu Realm, Sydney, 2004.
Ricklefs, M.C., A History of Modern Indonesia, London, 1981, 2nd edn, 1993.
——, The Seen and Unseen Worlds in Java, 1726–1749: History, Literature and
Islam in the Court of Pakubuwana II, Sydney and Honolulu, 1998.
Rush, J., Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprises in Colonial
Indonesia, Ithaca, NY, 1990.
Tagliacozzo, E., Secret Trades Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a
Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915, New Haven, Conn., 2005.
Taylor, J.G., The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch
Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, 1984.
Laos

Evans, G., A Short History of Laos: The Land in Between, Sydney, 2002.
Mayoury Ngaosrivathana and Kennon Breazeale, Breaking New Ground in Lao
History, Chiang Mai, 2002.
Stuart-Fox, M., Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos,
Bangkok, 1996.
——, A History of Laos, Cambridge, 1997.
Stuart-Fox, M. and M. Kooyman, Historical Dictionary of Laos, Metuchen, NJ,
1992.
Malaysia

Allen, C., ed., Tales from the South China Seas, London, 1983.
Andaya, B.W. and L.Y. Andaya, History of Malaysia, London, 1982.
Butcher, J.G., The British in Malaya, 1880–1914: The Social History of a
European Community in Colonial SouthEast Asia, Kuala Lumpur, 1979.
Drabble, J.H., An Economic History of Malaysia, c. 1800–1990: The Transition
to Modern Economic Growth, Houndmills, Hampshire, 2000.
Gullick, J.M., Malaysia, New York, 1969.
——, Malay Society in the Late Nineteenth Century, Singapore, 1989.
——, Rulers and Residents: Influence and Power in the Malay States, 1870–
1920, Singapore, 1992.
Hooker, V.M., A Short History of Malaysia: Linking East and West, Sydney,
2003.
Milner, A.C., The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya: Contesting
Nationalism and the Expansion of the Public Sphere, Cambridge, 1994.
Pringle, R.M., Rajahs and Rebels: The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule,
1841–1941, Ithaca, NY, 1970.
Roff, W.R., The Origins of Malay Nationalism, New Haven, Conn., 1967.
Stenson, M., Class, Race and Colonialism in West Malaysia: The Indian Case,
Vancouver, 1980.
Turnbull, C.M., The Straits Settlements 1826–67: Indian Presidency to Crown
Colony, London, 1972.
——, A Short History of Malaya, Singapore and Brunei.
The Philippines

Corpuz, O.D., The Philippines, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965.

Cushner, N.P., Spain in the Philippines: From Conquest to Revolution, Quezon
City, 1970.
Friend, T., Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946,
New Haven, Conn., 1965.
Ileto, R.C., Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines,
1840–1910, Quezon City, 1979.
Karnow, S., In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines, New York,
1989.
McCoy, A. and E. de Jesus, eds, Philippine Social History: Global Trade and
Local Transformations, Sydney, 1981.
Majul, C.A., Muslims in the Philippines, Quezon City, 1973.
Zaide, G.F., Philippine Political and Cultural History, 2 vols, revised edn,
Manila, 1957.
Singapore

Lee, E., The British as Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore 1867–1914,

Singapore, 1991.
Lee, E. and C.T. Chew, A History of Singapore, Singapore, 1991.
Lee Poh Ping, Chinese Society in Nineteenth Century Singapore, Kuala Lumpur,
1978.
Turnbull, C.M., A History of Singapore, 1819–1975, Kuala Lumpur, 1977.
Yong, G.F., Chinese Leadership and Power in Colonial Singapore, Singapore,
1991.
Thailand

Bunnag, T., The Provincial Administration of Siam, 1892–1915, Kuala Lumpur,

1977.
Prince Chula Chakrabongse, Lords of Life: The Paternal Monarchy of Bangkok,
1782–1932, New York, 1960.
Stowe, J.A., Siam Becomes Thailand, London, 1991.
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-body of a Nation.
Vella, W., The Impact of the West on Government in Thailand, Berkeley, Cal.,
1955.
Wyatt, D.K, Thailand: A Short History.
Vietnam

Brocheux, P. and D. Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization.

Buttinger, J., A Dragon Embattled: A History of Colonial and PostColonial
Vietnam, 2 vols, New York, 1967.
Duiker, W.J., The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941, Ithaca, NY, 1976.
——, Ho Chi Minh, New York and Sydney, 2000.
Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945, Ithaca, NY, 1976.
Karnow, S., Vietnam: A History, New York, 1983.
Marr, D., Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885–1925, Berkeley, Cal., 1971.
——, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1929–1945, Berkeley, Cal., 1981.
Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants under the
French, Cambridge, Mass., 1973.
Nguyen Khac Vien, Vietnam: A Long History, Hanoi, 1987.
Osborne, M.E., The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and
Response (1859–1905).
Quinn-Judge, S., Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years, London, 2003.
Truong Buu Lam, Patterns of Vietnamese Response to Foreign Intervention
1858–1900, New Haven, Conn., 1967.
Woodside, A.B., Vietnam and the Chinese Model.
——, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam, Boston, 1976.
Zinoman, P., The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam,
1862–1940, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
General

Bayly, C. and T. Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945,
London, 2004.
Collier, B., The War in the Far East 1941–1945: A Military History, New York,
1969.
Daws, G., Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific—the
Powerful Untold Story, London, 1994.
Friend, T., The Blue-Eyed Enemy: Japan Against the West in Java and Luzon,
1942–1945, Princeton, 1988.
Hicks, G., The Comfort Women: Sex Slaves of the Japanese Imperial Forces,
Sydney, 1995.
Iriye, A., The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, London,
1987.
Lebra, J.C., Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II:
Selected Readings and Documents, New York, 1974.
——, Japanese-trained Armies in Southeast Asia, New York, 1977.
McCoy, A.W., ed., Southeast Asia Under Japanese Occupation, New Haven,
Conn., 1980.
Tarling, N., A Sudden Rampage: The Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia,
1941–1945, London, 2001.
Burma

Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, New Haven, Conn.,

1968.
Naw, A., Aung San and the Struggle for Burmese Independence, Chiang Mai,
2001.
Trager, F.N., Burma: From Kingdom to Republic, New York, 1966.
Cambodia

Chandler, D.P., A History of Cambodia.

Osborne, M., Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness, Sydney and
Honolulu, 1994.
Tully, J., France on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia,
1863–1953.
——, A Short History of Cambodia: From Empire to Survival.
Indonesia

Anderson, B.R.O’G., Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance,

1944–1946, Ithaca, NY, 1972.
Benda, H.J., The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesia Islam under the
Japanese Occupation, The Hague, 1955.
Kahin, G.McT., Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, Ithaca, NY, 1952 and
subsequent eds.
Sato Shigeru, Nationalism and Peasants: Java Under the Japanese Ocupation,
1942–1945, Sydney, 1994.
Laos

Evans, A Short History of Laos: The Land in Between.

Kemp, Alms for Oblivion, London, 1961.
Malaysia and Singapore

Caffrey, K., Out in the Midday Sun: Singapore 1941–1945, London, 1974.
Chea Boon Kheng, Red Star Over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict
During and After the Japanese Occupation, Singapore, 1983.
Chin Kee Onn, Malaya Upside Down, Singapore, 1946.
Kratoska, P.H., The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: A Social and Economic
History, Sydney, 1998.
Spenser Chapman, F., The Jungle is Neutral, London, 1949.
The Philippines

Agoncillo, T.A., The Fateful Years: Japan’s Adventure in the Philippines, 1941–
1945, 2 vols., Manila, 1965.
Friend, T., Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946.
Steinberg, D.J., Philippines Collaboration in World War II, Ann Arbor, Mich.,
1967.
Thailand

Reynolds, E.B., Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, New York, 1994.
——, Thailand’s Secret War, OSS, SOE and the Free Thai Underground During
World War II, Cambridge, 2005.
Wyat, D.K., Thailand: A Short History.
Vietnam

Hammer, E.J., The Struggle for Indochina, Stanford, Cal., 1955.

McAlister, J.T., Vietnam: The Origins of Revolution, New York, 1968.
Marr, D.G., Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power, Berkeley, Cal., 1995.
Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution: Vietnamese Peasants Under the French.
Nguyen Khac Vien, Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam, Berkeley, Cal., 1974.
THE POSTWAR WORLD

The period following the Second World War with its record of successful bids
for independence, of revolts and revolutions, of successes and failures, has
prompted a truly massive amount of writing and publication. Any attempt to
provide a comprehensive list of suggested readings for this turbulent and
exciting period would go far beyond the purpose of this present book. The
following suggested readings aim at providing a basic introduction to the region
in general and to the postwar history of the individual countries of Southeast
Asia. The selections reflect the author’s own view that a stimulating and
controversial book is as valuable as one judged to be safe and solid.
General

Acharya, A., A New Regional Order in SouthEast Asia: ASEAN in the Post-Cold
War Era, London, 1993.
Anderson, B.R.O’G., Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial
Imagination, London, 2005.
Case, W., Politics in Southeast Asia: Democracy or Less, Richmond, Surrey,
2002.
Dommen, A., The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans:
Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Bloomington,
Indiana, 2001.
Edwards, L. and M. Roces, Women in Asia: Tradition, Modernity and
Globalisation, Sydney, 2000.
Evans, G. et al, eds, Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social and Cultural
Changes in the Border Regions, Bangkok and Singapore, 2000.
Frey, M., Pruessen, R.W. and Tan Tai Yong, The Transformation of Southeast
Asia: International Perspectives on Decolonization, Singapore, 2004.
Funston, J. ed., Government and Politics in Southeast Asia, Singapore, 2001.
Garran, R., Tigers Tamed: The End of the Asian Miracle, Sydney, 1998.
Kershaw, R., Monarchy in SouthEast Asia: The Faces of Tradition in Transition,
London, 2001.
Lancaster, D., The Emancipation of French Indochina, London, 1961.
Leifer, M., ASEAN and the Security of SouthEast Asia, London, 1989.
——, Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Southeast Asia.
Reid, A., Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast
Asia, Cambridge, 2010.
Robison, R. and D.S.G. Goodman, The New Rich in Asia: Mobile Phones,
McDonald’s and Middle Class Revolution, London, 1996.
Shaplen, R., Time Out of Hand: Revolution and Reaction in Southeast Asia,
1969.
——, A Turning Wheel, New York, 1979.
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 Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
INTRODUCTION
1. WHAT IS SOUTHEAST ASIA?
2. THE ‘CLASSICAL’ BACKGROUND TO MODERN SOUTHEAST ASIAN
HISTORY
3. COURTS, KINGS AND PEASANTS: SOUTHEAST ASIA BEFORE THE
EUROPEAN IMPACT
4. MINORITIES AND SLAVES: THE OUTSIDERS IN TRADITIONAL
SOUTHEAST ASIA
5. THE EUROPEAN ADVANCE AND CHALLENGE
6. ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
7. THE ASIAN IMMIGRANTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
8. THE YEARS OF ILLUSION: SOUTHEAST ASIA BETWEEN THE WARS,
1918–1941
9. THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
10. REVOLUTION AND REVOLT: INDONESIA, VIETNAM, MALAYA
AND THE PHILIPPINES
11. OTHER PATHS TO INDEPENDENCE
12. AN END TO POSTCOLONIAL SETTLEMENTS, AND BEYOND I:
INDONESIA, VIETNAM, CAMBODIA AND LAOS
13. AN END TO POSTCOLONIAL SETTLEMENTS, AND BEYOND II:
BURMA, MALAYA, SINGAPORE, THE PHILIPPINES AND THE THAI
EXCEPTION
14. THE CHALLENGES OF INDEPENDENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
15. SOUTHEAST ASIA’S MODERN HISTORY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE
PRESENT AND THE RECENT PAST
APPENDIX: DISCOVERING SOUTHEAST ASIA THROUGH ART AND
LITERATURE
SUGGESTED READINGS
TIMELINE