Cold War and Decolonisation

Cold War and Decolonisation PDF Author: Andrea Benvenuti
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9814722197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Australia’s policy towards Britain’s end of empire in Southeast Asia influenced the course of this decolonization in the region. In this book, Andrea Benvenuti discusses the development of Australia’s foreign and defence policies towards Malaya and Singapore in light of the redefinition of Britain’s imperial role in Southeast Asia and the formation of new post-colonial states. Placed within the emerging literature on the global impact of the Cold War, the book sheds new light on the choices made – by Australia, by Britain and the new emerging states – in these crucial years.

Britain's Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905-1980

Britain's Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905-1980 PDF Author: Antony Best
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138543317
Category : Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
The decline of British power in Asia, from a high point in 1905, when Britain's ally Japan vanquished the Russian Empire, apparently reducing the perceived threat that Russia posed to its influence in India and China, to the end of the twentieth century, when British power had dwindled to virtually nothing, is one of the most important themes in understanding the modern history of East and Southeast Asia. This book considers a range of issues that illustrate the significance and influence of the British Empire in Asia and the nature of Britain's imperial decline. Subjects covered include the challenges posed by Germany and Japan during the First World War, British efforts at international co-operation in the interwar period, the British relationship with Korea and Japan in the wake of the Second World War, and the complicated path of decolonisation in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia

Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia PDF Author: A. Wright
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137317604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
This study investigates the connections between opium policy and imperialism in Burma. It examines what influenced the imperial regime's opium policy decisions, such as racial ideologies, the necessity of articulating a convincing rationale for British governance, and Burma's position in multiple imperial and transnational networks.

Asian Empire and British Knowledge

Asian Empire and British Knowledge PDF Author: U. Hillemann
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230246753
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
British knowledge about China changed fundamentally in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rather than treating these changes in British understanding as if Anglo-Sino relations were purely bilateral, this study looks at how British imperial networks in India and Southeast Asia were critical mediators in the British encounter of China.

Forgotten Armies

Forgotten Armies PDF Author: Christopher Alan Bayly
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674017481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

Book Description
In the early stages of the Second World War, the vast crescent of British-ruled territories stretching from India to Singapore appeared as a massive Allied asset. It provided scores of soldiers and great quantities of raw materials and helped present a seemingly impregnable global defense against the Axis. Yet, within a few weeks in 1941-42, a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, sweeping suddenly and decisively through south and southeast Asia to the Indian frontier, and provoking the extraordinary revolutionary struggles which would mark the beginning of the end of British dominion in the East and the rise of today's Asian world. More than a military history, this gripping account of groundbreaking battles and guerrilla campaigns creates a panoramic view of British Asia as it was ravaged by warfare, nationalist insurgency, disease, and famine. It breathes life into the armies of soldiers, civilians, laborers, businessmen, comfort women, doctors, and nurses who confronted the daily brutalities of a combat zone which extended from metropolitan cities to remote jungles, from tropical plantations to the Himalayas. Drawing upon a vast range of Indian, Burmese, Chinese, and Malay as well as British, American, and Japanese voices, the authors make vivid one of the central dramas of the twentieth century: the birth of modern south and southeast Asia and the death of British rule.

The Fall of Imperial Britain in South-East Asia

The Fall of Imperial Britain in South-East Asia PDF Author: Nicholas Tarling
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
This book brings two lines of investigation together. One investigation is into what might be called the decline and fall of the British empire. The book seeks to analyse the nature of Britain's influence in the world at the height of its power in the nineteenth century and the reasons for its decline. It is particularly concerned with the attitudes that Britain developed, which affected its approach to the interests of other powers and to the emergence of nationalism. The other investigation the book undertakes is into the policies the British adopted in South-East Asia from the late eighteenth century onwards. Most historians of the British empire have concentrated on India, Africa, or the settler dominions. The author aims to bring South-East Asia into that discourse, and he believes that doing so will also make for a fuller understanding of the emergence of new South-East Asian states in the twentieth century. The book will be of interest to historians of the British empire and South-East Asia. More generally it may also interest students of imperialism and world politics.

Britain, Southeast Asia and the Impact of the Korean War

Britain, Southeast Asia and the Impact of the Korean War PDF Author: Nicholas Tarling
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9789971693152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

Book Description
A sequel to the author's Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Pacific War (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 1998), this book discusses Britain's policy towards Southeast Asia in the period 1950-55, when it was crucially affected by the struggle in Korea. The phases in that struggle - briefly described and placed in a world context - provide a context for discussing Britain's relations with Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, and Indochina. Covering the dispute over West New Guinea and the Chinese Nationalist incursion into Burma, the book gives a full account of the Geneva conference 50 years ago, which reached a settlement in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and of the creation of the SEATO alliance. The focus of the work is on British policy, and it is largely based on a study of British official records.

Imperialism in Southeast Asia

Imperialism in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Nicholas Tarling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134570821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
One of the few studies of imperialism to concentrate on Southeast Asia, Tarling's work focuses on the establishment of political control from 1870 to 1914 and analyses attempts to re-establish control after the Second World War.

Southeast Asia in Ruins

Southeast Asia in Ruins PDF Author: Sarah Tiffin
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9971698498
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 42

Book Description
British artists and commentators in the late 18th and early 19th century encoded the twin aspirations of progress and power in images and descriptions of Southeast Asia’s ruined Hindu and Buddhist candi, pagodas, wats and monuments. To the British eye, images of the remains of past civilisations allowed, indeed stimulated, philosophical meditations on the rise and decline of entire empires. Ruins were witnesses to the fall, humbling and disturbingly prophetic prompts to speculation on imperial failure, and the remains of the Buddhist and Hindu monuments scattered across Southeast Asia proved no exception. This important study of a highly appealing but relatively neglected body of work adds multiple dimensions to the history of art and image production in Britain of the period, showing how the anxieties of empire were encoded in the genre of landscape paintings and prints.

Churchill and the Lion City

Churchill and the Lion City PDF Author: Brian Farrell
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9971695650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
British imperialism helped shaped the modern world order. This same imperialism created modern Singapore, controlling its colonial development and influencing its post-colonial orientation. Winston Churchill was British imperialism's most significant twentieth century statesman. He never visited Singapore, but his story and that of the city-state are deeply intertwined. Singapore became a symbol of British imperial power in Asia to Churchill, while Singaporeans came to see him as symbolizing that power. The fall of Singapore to Japanese conquest in 1942 was a low point in Churchill's war leadership, one he forever labeled by calling it 'the worst disaster in British military history.' It was also a tragedy for Singapore, ushering in three years of harsh military occupation. But the interplay between these three historical forces, Churchill, Empire, and Singapore, extended well beyond this dramatic conjuncture. The Last Lion and the Lion City provides a critical examination of that longer interplay through an analysis of Churchill's understanding of empire, his perceptions of Singapore and its imperial role, his direction of affairs regarding Singapore and the Empire, his influence on the subsequent relationship between Britain and Singapore.