Abstract
‘In the six months since the termination of hostilities with Japan it has become clear that the world is going through a colonial crisis unparalleled in history. The great empires built up by the Western European powers during four centuries have been shaken to their foundations. They are crumbling before our eyes.’1 This situation presented the United States with a dilemma. Were Americans to prop up these sick men of Europe or were they to smooth the pillow of the dying and act as midwife to emergent nations? As it happened, while ideologically committed to anti-colonialism, the United States approached Western dependencies in Southeast Asia in different ways. Transferring power to the Philippines on 4 July 1946, more or less according to a timetable set in 1935, the US held this up as a model for the European colonial powers to follow. None of them did. Impatient with Dutch intransigence in their struggle with the nascent Republic of Indonesia, in 1949 the American administration forced Holland to end its empire by threatening to withdraw Marshall Aid funding. By contrast, interpreting France’s war with the Vietminh as part of the world-wide containment of communism, the United States decided to assist the French empire, prolonging its natural life until that cataclysmic collapse at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
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Notes
P. Bagby, State Department, ‘United States policy with respect to the decline of Western European Imperialism,’ 13 March 1946, National Archive, Washington DC, [NARA] Lot Files, RG 59: Lot54 D190, Box 5.
See Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: the United States, Britain and the War against Japan, 1941–1945 (Oxford, 1978) and
Wm Roger Louis, Imperialism atBay 1941–1945: the United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire (Oxford, 1977).
See Andrew James Whitfield, ‘British Imperial Consensus and the Return to Hong Kong, 1941–1945’, PhD, University of Birmingham, 1998; for postwar policy, see
Wm Roger Louis, ‘Hong Kong: the Critical Phase, 1945–1949’, American Historical Review, 104, no. 4 (Oct 1997), pp. 1052–84.
S. R. Ashton and S. E. Stockwell (eds), British Documents on End of Empire (BDEE]: Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice (London, 1996), I, doc. 32.
A. J. Stockwell (ed.), BDEE: Malaya (London, 1995), I, docs 4–9.
For the Atlantic Charter and subsequent discussions, see A. N. Porter and A. J. Stockwell (eds), British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, 1938–64, Vol. 1: 1938–51 (Basingstoke, 1987), docs. 8, 9, 15, 17, 18 and 20.
A. L. Moffat (State Department), ‘The dependent territories in Southeast Asia’, 17 Jan. 1945, RG 59: lot 54 D190, box 5.
For example, Queen Wilhelmina’s broadcast of Dec. 1942 promising the postwar reorganization of the Dutch empire as a commonwealth and de Gaulle’s Brazzaville Declaration of Jan. 1944 which, however, ruled out political development outside the imperial framework. See Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 218–19 and 466–7, and Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War 1940–45 (Manchester, 1998), pp. 249–54.
J. F. Cady (State Department), ‘The importance of the Philippines with respect to United States policy in Southeastern Asia’, 2 Jan. 1946, RG 59, lot 54 D190, box 5.
See F. S. V. Donnison, British Military Administration in the Far East (London, 1956),
Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945–46 (Manchester, 1987), and
John Springhall, ‘“Disaster in Surabaya”; the Death of Brigadier Mallaby during the British Occupation of Java, 1945–6’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (JICH), 24, 3 (Sept. 1996), pp. 422–43.
For British colonial policy for Malaya, Singapore, and Sarawak, see Albert Lau, The Malayan Union Controversy 1942–1948 (Singapore, 1991),
R. H. W. Reece, The Name of Brooke: the End of White Rajah Rule in Sarawak (Kuala Lumpur, 1982), and
A. J. Stockwell, British Policy and Malay Politics during the Malayan Union Experiment, 1942–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979).
Wm Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Decolonization’, JICH, 22, 3 (Sept. 1994), 462–511, quote at p. 467.
See Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: the United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–49 (Ithaca, 1981) and
George McT. Kahin, Intervention (New York, 1986).
See Andrew J. Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia (Ithaca, 1987).
See Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: a Study of Peasant Revolution in the Philippines (Berkeley, 1977; 1979 edn), pp. 203–48.
A. J. Stockwell, ‘“A widespread and long-concocted plot to overthrow government in Malaya”? The Origins of the Malayan Emergency’, JICH, 21, 3 (Sept. 1993), pp. 66–88; see also
Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (London, 1975) and
Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: the Malayan Emergency 1948–1960 (Singapore, 1989).
H. T. Bourdillon (Colonial office), ‘Reflections on Colonial office organisation’, 10 May 1948, in Ronald Hyam (ed.), BDEE: the Labour Government and the End of Empire 1945–1951 (London, 1992), I, doc 70, para 6.
A. Eden, ‘British overseas obligations’, C(52)202, 18 June 1952, in Porter and Stockwell (eds), II, 1951–64, doc.11.
Charles S. Reed, Division of SE Asian Affairs, to the director, Far Eastern Affairs, Butterworth, 13 Aug. 1948, ibid., 607–9.
See A. J. Stockwell, ‘Malaysia: the Making of a Neo-Colony?’, JICH, 26, 2 (May 1998), 136–56.
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Stockwell, A.J. (2000). The United States and Britain’s Decolonization of Malaya, 1942–57. In: Ryan, D., Pungong, V. (eds) The United States and Decolonization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333977958_10
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