Southeast Asia is the forgotten zone of the continent. Americans and British living in Malaya sometimes receive letters addressed “Singapore, China.” China and Japan are familiar and likewise India, but all that lies between is a vague and indeterminate limbo. So at the very beginning of this book it seems wise to take warning from the Roman emperor Claudius, who after speaking for three hours suddenly said, “And now, O Claudius Caesar, it is time you told the senators what on earth you have been talking about.” Southeast Asia, then, is the portion of the continent that lies between India...

The international airport in Manila is the finest in the Far East. It is at the aerial crossroads between Guam, 1,600 miles to the east, and Singapore, 1,500 miles to the west, and it is the terminus for the long hop from Tokyo, 1,900 miles to the north. The harbor at Manila Bay, although horribly battered by bombs and shells and scarred by the half-submerged wrecks of a hundred ships, is one of the busiest in East Asia. Merchantmen flying the flags of the United States, Panama, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—and an occasional Russian—bring...

The Netherlands Indies was the official name of the Dutch dependency in the tropical East. It was, however, more generally known as the Dutch East Indies. Since World War II it has become better known as Indonesia, though its official title, if the Linggadjati Agreement between the Republic of Indonesia and the Netherlands is finally implemented, will be the United States of Indonesia. It lies directly under the equator, between southeastern Asia and Australia. With the Malayan Peninsula it forms what is often called the Malay Barrier between the Indian and Pacific oceans, dominating the gateways between the two. As...

The ancestors of the various Mongoloid peoples who make up Burma’s indigenous population apparently brought with them little by way of formal civilization from their original homes in eastern Tibet and western China. The principal Burman group, which migrated to the Irrawaddy valley as late as the eighth or ninth century A.D., had apparently experienced up to that time little or no contact with centers of Chinese civilization. They had developed no form of writing, no centralized political institutions, no formal legal system, and only primitive religious concepts. Intercourse with China continued to be impeded by the formidable mountain ridges...

The English East India Company was looking for a careening station in the Bay of Bengal where warships could refit when disabled in sea battles with the French, and so avoid the long voyage to Bombay. It also wanted a trading post from which to extend its commerce with the East Indies, which the Dutche were still trying to monopolize. In 1786 the company’s agent, Captain Francis Light, bought from the Malay Sultan of Kedah the uninhabited island of Penang. A few years later the sultan also sold a tract of land on the mainland opposite the island, now known...

The strategic importance of French Indochina was suddenly revealed to the American public when the peninsula was used by the Japanese as a springboard for their lightning offensive in the Southwest Pacific. Besides its strategic location, it furnished the Japanese war machine with a large supply of vital raw materials such as rice, coal, and rubber. Today the prospect of a Communist victory in China brings again to the forefront the importance of Indochina, where French troops are now fighting the Nationalist government of Viet Nam led by the Moscow-educated Ho Chi Minh.

French Indochina comprised the colony of Cochin...

Before World War II Siam was going through a period of political transition from administration by the absolute monarchs of the Chakri dynasty to administration by the People’s party, which came into power by a bloodless revolution in 1932. The Chakri kings had ruled without interruption from 1782. For the first reigns the dynasty was handed down from father to son. The second of the three kings should have been followed by his son Mongkut. However, a younger half brother secured the throne and Mongkut went into the Buddhist priesthood until after his brother’s death in 1851.

During the quarter...

The Chinese in Southeast Asia (as is true of their race elsewhere in the world) are almost exclusively drawn from the southeastern Chinese provinces of Kwangtung, Fukien, and Kwangsi. The reasons for this are many, but foremost among them is the proximity of these provinces to the area, and the fact that the similarity of their climates made it easier for the immigrants to survive the conditions when they arrived.

This emigration, however, was frowned on both by the administration and by public opinion. The laws of the Ch’ing (Manchu) dynasty laid down that “all who clandestinely proceed to sea...

Nationalism did not appear in Southeast Asia untile the twentieth century. It is the product of a complex of influences, religious, political, intellectual, and economic. A very important underlying cause was the solvent effect of Western upon Asiatic civilization. Contact with the West brought about an economic, intellectual, spiritual, and social revolution in native society. Influences from the more advanced Asiatic countries like India, such as Gandhi’s technique of non-cooperation, also played their part. This last factor is nothing new in the history of Southeast Asia. India has profoundly influenced its cultural and political life for nearly 2,000 years. The...

What part Southeast Asia will play in world economics during the second half of the twentieth century will depend upon the interplay of strong forces, many of which are highly volatile and almost wholly unpredictable. Just to mention a few of the imponderables will be sufficient, perhaps, to suggest the complexities of forecast.

Never before has the concept ofpoliticaleconomy been more important than now in the Far East. In a world dominated in considerable part by Communist Russia, Socialist England, the combination of New Deal welfare economics, pressure groups, and large corporations in the United Stated, and a...

Southeast Asia has become more significant as mighty clash in that strategic area. The demand for social justice struggles against privilege. Economic development challenges centuries of backwardness. Tolerance rises against bigotry. Peoples not yet free vie with the great powers from over the seas to establish new relationships which will bring more of the freedom and the prosperity that the Western world has long guarded for itself.

Dependent peoples differ in no essential human characteristics from those who enjoy independence. Peasants and fishermen, sailors and merchants, taxi-drivers and dancing girls laugh at the pleasures and cry from the pains of...