Britain and Regional Cooperation in South-East Asia, 1945-49 (Electronic book text)

Britain and Regional Cooperation in South-East Asia, 1945-49 traces the attempt by the British Foreign Office to establish an international regional organisation in South-East Asia which would allow Britain to dominate the region politicaly, economically and militarily. Tilman Remme explores the changing emphasis of Britain's regional policies, from Foreign Office plans for the eventual incorporation of India and other fledgling Asian states into a regional organisation, to the response to competing initiatives by India, Australia and the United Nations which threatened Britain's dominance. Dr Remme examines the effects of nationalism, and of the colonial wars in Vietnam and Indonesia, and he looks at the revival of British plans to contain Communism in the region following the Malayan Emergency of 1948, stressing the key strategy of regional cooperation.; By tracing Britain's foreign policy initiatives, Tilman Remme puts the issues affecting South-East Asia in the post-war period into a wider context, discussing events in the light of Japanese defeat in the Second World War, the Communist struggle for supremacy in China, the development of Anglo-American relations in Asia and the beginnings of the Cold War.