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‘Some Rather Nebulous Capacity’: Lord Killearn's Appointment in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Nicholas Tarling
Nicholas Tarling
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Extract

In 1941–42 Japan destroyed the empire of the British in Southeast Asia. They were determined to return and, with the assistance of the US, they were able to do so in 1945. The plans they developed in preparation for their return were unrealistic. Rightly they took account of some of the weaknesses of their prewar régimes in Burma, in Malaya, in Borneo. But the policies they developed for dealing with them required an assumption of authority that, with their comparatively diminished power and their devastated economy, the British were unable to sustain in the immediate postwar years, and took too little account of the changes that had taken place since they left. They adjusted their policies with some success. Their essential aims were security and stability, the conditions for economic revival. The re-establishment of colonial régimes was one means to such ends: other means might have to serve. If Burma's leaving the Commonwealth promised stability more than attempts to keep it in, then that course could be accepted. If a Malayan Union seemed to promise division rather than consensus, greater weakness rather than greater strength, it must be replaced by Federation. The choices may still not have been right: Burma virtually collapsed; the Emergency began. But they were the only ways the British could perceive of achieving their aims in the circumstances in which they found themselves.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 559 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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