After the War, 1945–50

Abstract

South-East Asia before the Second World War was a little-known region to the majority of people in the West. It was completely overshadowed by India and China. The use of such terms as Further India or Indo-China to describe its mainland, and even of Indonesia or the Indian Archipelago for its island world, obscured its identity and minimized its importance. Now for a short time all that was changed. The limelight was focused upon the unfamiliar scene and broadcast announcers tried to master the strange, musical names. Burma, where the largest single land campaign was fought against the Japanese, became front-page news and figured in countless letters home. Thousands of Australian, British and Dutch families lost relatives in the labour gangs which slaved on the Burma-Thailand ‘death railway’; still more over a far wider area of the world, including America and Africa, suffered bereavement through battle casualties. The post-war world, therefore, had become aware of South-East Asia as never before. And if this generalization is scarcely fair to Holland, a large proportion of whose national savings was invested in Indonesia, or to France, who regarded her Indo-Chinese empire as essential to the maintenance of her position in the world, the fact remains that their attention was concentrated solely on the countries they held.