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Southeast Asia needs to be dealt with as a whole, because, although the one national delegation from the region (Siam) took a minor part, nationalist movements in several Southeast Asian countries reached an early climax - significant though inconclusive - in the years 1919-1920. The planned Peace Conference, Wilson's Fourteen Points, and the victory of Communism in Russia, all contributed to this activity, and in spite of national differences it needs to be seen as a whole. The focus of the book will be on developments around 1919; thus it will bring out for the first time the unexpected significance for South-east Asia of the 1919 milestone. It will also have a biographical bias - taking a special interest in the personalities of major figures in this important period, in order to show the influences and the patterns of thought that underlie their activities at the time of the Peace Conference. Following a brief introduction making the link between world events in 1919 and South-east Asia, the book sets the scene in the region. Succeeding chapters deal with the five countries - Siam, Vietnam, Burma, Indonesia, Philippines - in which the years 1919-21 were of special significance, as well as the impact of the peace conferences in relationships with their neighbours, the growth of international Communism and global politics in later years.

Arc of Containment recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from World War II through the end of American intervention in Vietnam. Setting aside the classic story of anxiety about falling dominoes, Wen-Qing Ngoei articulates a new regional history premised on strong security and sure containment guaranteed by Anglo-American cooperation. Ngoei argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with preexisting local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from European-dominated colonialism to US hegemony. Central to this revisionary strategic assessment is the place of British power and the effects of direct neocolonial military might and less overt cultural influences based on decades of colonial rule, as well as the considerable influence of Southeast Asian actors upon Anglo-American imperial strategy throughout the post-war period. Arc of Containment demonstrates that American failure in Vietnam had less long-term consequences than widely believed because British pro-West nationalism had been firmly entrenched twenty-plus years earlier. In effect, Ngoei argues, the Cold War in Southeast Asia was but one violent chapter in the continuous history of western imperialism in the region in the twentieth century.

This incisive volume brings together postcolonial studies, visual culture and cultural memory studies to explain how the Netherlands continues to rediscover its history of violence in colonial Indonesia. Dutch commentators have frequently claimed that the colonial past and especially the violence associated with it has been 'forgotten' in the Netherlands. Uncovering 'lost' photographs and other documents of violence has thereby become a recurring feature aimed at unmasking a hidden truth. The author argues that, rather than absent, such images have been consistently present in the Dutch public sphere and have been widely available in print, on television and now on the internet. Emerging Memory: Photographs of Colonial Atrocity in Dutch Cultural Remembrance shows that between memory and forgetting there is a haunted zone from which pasts that do not fit the stories nations live by keep on emerging and submerging while retaining their disturbing presence.

In June 1959, the British established the office of Yang di-Pertuan Negara (He Who is Made Lord) to replace the colonial governorship and represent Queen Elizabeth II in Singapore. Muhammad Suhail explores the divergent attempts to invest meaning in the Yang di-Pertuan Negara. In doing so, he weaves a rich story about the contesting ideas of sovereignty during the global age of decolonization. He Who is Made Lord is a captivating take on Singapore's emergence as a postcolonial nation, providing a gateway into the island's past as part of the Malay World, the British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations._x000B__x000B_The Yang di-Pertuan Negara is a subject that has received only passing mentions in the Singapore Story. This book is the first detailed study to reveal not only the politics of its creation but also the cultural significance of the office. By delving into its multifaceted meanings, this insightful account offers readers a fascinating treatise on the office's connection with the momentous final years of British rule in the colony and Singapore's brief interlude in Malaysia. —Associate Professor Albert Lau, Department of History, National University of Singapore_x000B__x000B_The end of the British Empire wrought considerable change across the globe, but it also left many legacies and questions such as what or who would replace the omnipotent Crown. He Who is Made Lord examines the neglected but fascinating story of how Singapore grappled with this issue, which was more delicate, nuanced and far reaching than most supposed. Muhammad Suhail has made an original, well-researched, and valuable study of the position of Head of State in Singapore during the last stages of colonialism and shows vividly that far from being of ceremonial or administrative interest, it touched on wider and deeper issues in Singaporean and Southeast Asian history and society, reflecting tensions of identity and hopes for the future. —Dr Harshan Kumarasingham, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh_x000B__x000B_In this ground-breaking book, Muhammad Suhail has meticulously scoured, scrutinized, and synthesized archival official records, newspaper articles, government publications, pictures, and websites to peel and expose the many layers of the hitherto overlooked office of the Yang di-Pertuan Negara of Singapore to reveal the contradictions, contestations, and constructions of the created office in the context of the tumultuous period of decolonization. Suhail also has laid bare the complex personality of the man who held this office, Yusof Ishak, exposing the myriad of faces, appearances, and roles he represented and was made to represent, appreciating his triumphs and weaknesses, but most importantly, humanizing him. —Associate Professor Sher Banu A.L. Khan, Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore

On August 17, 1945, Indonesia proclaimed its independence from Dutch colonial rule. Five years later, the Republic of Indonesia was recognized as a unified, sovereign state. The period in between was a time of aspiration, mobilization, and violence, in which nationalists fought to expel the Dutch while also trying to come to grips with the meaning of \"independence.\" Rifle Reports is an ethnographic history of this extraordinary time as it was experienced on the outskirts of the nation among Karo Batak villagers in the rural highlands of North Sumatra. Based on extensive interviews and conversations with Karo veterans, Rifle Reports interweaves personal and family memories, songs and stories, memoirs and local histories, photographs and monuments, to trace the variously tangled and perhaps incompletely understood ways that Karo women and men contributed to the founding of the Indonesian nation. The routes they followed are divergent, difficult, sometimes wavering, and rarely obvious, but they are clearly marked with the signs of gender. This innovative historical study of nationalism and decolonization is an anthropological exploration of the gendering of wartime experience, as well as an inquiry into the work of storytelling as memory practice and ethnographic genre.

The origins and the key defining moments of the Cold War in Southeast Asia have been widely debated. This book focuses on an area that has received less attention, the impact and legacy of the Cold War on the various countries in the region, as well as on the region itself. The book contributes to the historiography of the Cold War in Southeast Asia by examining not only how the conflict shaped the milieu in which national and regional change unfolded but also how the context influenced the course and tenor of the Cold War in the region. It goes on to look at the usefulness or limitations of using the Cold War as an interpretative framework for understanding change in Southeast Asia. Chapters discuss how the Cold War had a varied but notable impact on the countries in Southeast Asia, not only on the mainland countries belonging to what the British Foreign Office called the \"upper arc\", but also on those situated on its maritime \"lower arc\". The book is an important contribution to the fields of Asian Studies and International Relations.