Suchergebnisse

Tarling reviews 'Environment and Development in the Straits of Malacca' by Mark Cleary and Goh Kim Chuan.

During the period between the opening of the war in Europe in September 1939 and the attack on Pearl Harbor and Malaya in December 1941, the British sought to limit Japanese penetration into Southeast Asia, while guarding, insofar as they could, against any Japanese advance. The policy applied to East Timor. But the Portuguese were touchy about interference and apprehensive about Macau.

During the period between the opening of the World War II in Europe in 1939 and the attack on Pearl Harbor and Malay in 1941, the British tried to contain the Japanese without alienating them. Generally, they sought, where possible, to elicit U.S. support, as in their dealings with Thailand. The author explores how the British sought to limit Japanese penetration into Southeast Asia, British policy towards East Timor and the reactions of the Portuguese government to this British policy. (DÜI-Sen)

To historians of Southeast Asia, the Bandung conference of 1955 presents itself as one of the most striking international initiatives undertaken by newly-independent Indonesia. For historians of Indonesia, it marks the emphasis on foreign as against domestic policy that was associated with Sukarno's growing dominance. To biographers of Sukarno it appears to be both a strategic device in domestic politics and a farsighted perception of a shift in international relations. Internationally it was both to demonstrate the influence of India and to show its limits. Even more it was to mark some kind of success for the People's Republic of China and for Chou En-lai in developing the foreign policy line associated already with Geneva and the five principles of co-existence.

As the author sees it, to historians of Southeast Asia, the Bandung conference of 1955 presents itself as one of the most striking international initiatives undertaken by newly-independent Indonesia. He examines how Britain after 1945 pursued a policy of decolonization designed to install co-operative governments and deny opportunities to communism and how it, with some success, used its diplomatic resources to influence the Bandung conference of 1955. (DÜI-Sen)

The French move into what they came to call Indo-China began, as the Hong Kong Register was to put it, with motives hostile to British power. Pre-revolutionary France had indeed seen such a move as a means of contesting Britain's supremacy in Asia: placing themselves between the growing empire in India and the growing trade with China, the French could embarrass their European rivals. But establishing themselves in Vietnam was easier said than done. The limited help they were able to afford Gia-long reaped them no great reward, and his successor, Minh-mang, even turned against the Catholic missionaries whom he saw as sources of subversion of his Confucian-style reunification. Continued anti-Catholic activity on the part of his successor was to give Napoleon III an excuse to intervene in the 1850s. But by then, as the Register noted, the old rivalry with the British had died out. The British had sought to open up trade with Vietnam, but, both before and after their victory over neighbouring China, the Vietnamese had refused to accept a commercial treaty. The British thus did not oppose the more forceful attempt the French made to open up Vietnam. Their only concern was lest the French should trench upon the territory of Laos and Cambodia, and thus undermine the independence of Siam, which the British saw as an outwork of their empire in Burma and Malaya. There was indeed a crisis over Laos, and thus over Siam, in 1893, but the French and the British came to terms in 1896. Their agreement in Southeast Asia was consolidated by their agreement in Europe, which the apprehension of Germany promoted.

The German attacks on the Netherlands and France in 1940 brought the future of their Southeast Asian possessions into question. Would the Japanese, deeply involved in China and concerned about Russia, continue to respect the status quo in Southeast Asia, or would they press southwards? The fall of France in June 1940 made the Indo-China issue more pressing. The French were determined to avoid, if they could, a break in the continuity of their colonial rule: how much could or should they compromise with the Japanese? Anxious to limit Japan's advance but unable to take on major new burdens, the British afforded the Vichy regime some support in Indo-China. But neither that, nor the limited actions of the U.S., prevented the Japanese incursion into Tonkin in September 1940. (DÜI-Sen)

In 1941–42 Japan destroyed the empire of the British in Southeast Asia. They were determined to return and, with the assistance of the US, they were able to do so in 1945. The plans they developed in preparation for their return were unrealistic. Rightly they took account of some of the weaknesses of their prewar régimes in Burma, in Malaya, in Borneo. But the policies they developed for dealing with them required an assumption of authority that, with their comparatively diminished power and their devastated economy, the British were unable to sustain in the immediate postwar years, and took too little account of the changes that had taken place since they left. They adjusted their policies with some success. Their essential aims were security and stability, the conditions for economic revival. The re-establishment of colonial régimes was one means to such ends: other means might have to serve. If Burma's leaving the Commonwealth promised stability more than attempts to keep it in, then that course could be accepted. If a Malayan Union seemed to promise division rather than consensus, greater weakness rather than greater strength, it must be replaced by Federation. The choices may still not have been right: Burma virtually collapsed; the Emergency began. But they were the only ways the British could perceive of achieving their aims in the circumstances in which they found themselves.