The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya

The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya
Author: T. N. Harper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 1999-09-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521590402

This is the first general social and political history of Malaya. Focusing on the years 1945 to 1957, the last years of British rule and the achievement of independence, it embraces a wealth of social, economic and cultural, as well as political themes. It contains new research on the impact of the Second World War in Malaya, the origins and course of the Communist Emergency, and the response of Malaya's various ethnic communities to nationalism and social change. A concluding chapter takes these themes forward into the 1990s to shed new light on the emergence of this important Southeast Asian nation.

Forgotten Armies

Forgotten Armies
Author: Christopher Alan Bayly
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674017481

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.

Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects

Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects
Author: Lynn Hollen Lees
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2017-12-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107038405

This is an innovative study of how British Colonial rule and society in Malayan towns and plantations transformed immigrants into British subjects.

Imperial Endgame

Imperial Endgame
Author: B. Grob-Fitzgibbon
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2016-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230300383

In this fresh and controversial account of Britain's end of empire, Grob-Fitzgibbon reveals that the British government developed a successful strategy of decolonization following the Second World War based on devolving power to indigenous peoples within the Commonwealth.

End of empire and the English novel since 1945

End of empire and the English novel since 1945
Author: Rachael Gilmour
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2015-07-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1784991791

Available in paperback for the first time, this first book-length study explores the history of postwar England during the end of empire through a reading of novels which appeared at the time, moving from George Orwell and William Golding to Penelope Lively, Alan Hollinghurst and Ian McEwan. Particular genres are also discussed, including the family saga, travel writing, detective fiction and popular romances. All included reflect on the predicament of an England which no longer lies at the centre of imperial power, arriving at a fascinating diversity of conclusions about the meaning and consequences of the end of empire and the privileged location of the novel for discussing what decolonization meant for the domestic English population of the metropole. The book is written in an easy style, unburdened by large sections of abstract reflection. It endeavours to bring alive in a new way the traditions of the English novel.

Embers of War

Embers of War
Author: Fredrik Logevall
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Total Pages: 866
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0375504427

A history of the four decades leading up to the Vietnam War offers insights into how the U.S. became involved, identifying commonalities between the campaigns of French and American forces while discussing relevant political factors.

Underground Asia

Underground Asia
Author: Tim Harper
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 873
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674724615

A major historian tells the dramatic and untold story of the shadowy networks of revolutionaries across Asia who laid the foundations in the early twentieth century for the end of European imperialism on their continent. This is the epic tale of how modern Asia emerged out of conflict between imperial powers and a global network of revolutionaries in the turbulent early decades of the twentieth century. In 1900, European empires had not yet reached their territorial zenith. But a new generation of Asian radicals had already planted the seeds of their destruction. They gained new energy and recruits after the First World War and especially the Bolshevik Revolution, which sparked utopian visions of a free and communist world order led by the peoples of Asia. Aided by the new technologies of cheap printing presses and international travel, they built clandestine webs of resistance from imperial capitals to the front lines of insurgency that stretched from Calcutta and Bombay to Batavia, Hanoi, and Shanghai. Tim Harper takes us into the heart of this shadowy world by following the interconnected lives of the most remarkable of these Marxists, anarchists, and nationalists, including the Bengali radical M. N. Roy, the iconic Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and the enigmatic Indonesian communist Tan Malaka. He recreates the extraordinary milieu of stowaways, false identities, secret codes, cheap firearms, and conspiracies in which they worked. He shows how they fought with subterfuge, violence, and persuasion, all the while struggling to stay one step ahead of imperial authorities. Undergound Asia shows for the first time how Asia’s national liberation movements crucially depended on global action. And it reveals how the consequences of the revolutionaries’ struggle, for better or worse, shape Asia’s destiny to this day.

The End of Empires and a World Remade

The End of Empires and a World Remade
Author: Martin Thomas
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2024-03-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691190925

A capacious history of decolonization, from the decline of empires to the era of globalization Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations. Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history.

The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire

The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire
Author: Martin Thomas
Publisher:
Total Pages: 801
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198713193

The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire offers the most comprehensive treatment of the causes, course, and consequences of the collapse of empires in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors convey the global reach of decolonization, analysing the ways in which European, Asian, and African empires disintegrated over the past century.