This book provides the basis for a reconceptualization of key features in Southeast Asia's history. Scholars from Europe, America, and Asia examine evolutionary patterns of Europe's and Japan's Southeast Asian empires from the late nineteenth century through World War II, and offer important insights into the specific events of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In turn, their different perspectives on the political, economic, and cultural currents of the "post-colonial" era - including Southeast Asia's gradual adjustment to globalizing forces - enhance understanding of the dynamics of the decolonization process. Drawing on new and wide-ranging research in international relations, economics, anthropology, and cultural studies, the book looks at the impact of decolonization and the struggle of the new nation-states with issues such as economic development, cultural development, nation-building, ideology, race, and modernization. The contributors also consider decolonization as a phenomenon within the larger international structure of the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras.

Selected Contents: Introduction, Marc Frey, Ronald Pruessen, and Tan Tai Yong1. Dimensions of Decolonization, Paul H. Kratoska2. The Impact of the Second World War on Decolonization, Jost Dulffer3. The Economic Impact of Decolonization in Southeast Asia: Economic Nationalism and Foreign Direct Investment, 1945-1965, J. Thomas Lindblad4. Monarchy and Decolonization in Indochina, Bruce M. Lockhart5. France and the Associated States of Indochina (1945-1955), Hugues Tertrais6. The Indonesian Revolution and the Fall of the Dutch Empire: Actors, Factors, Strategies, Marc Frey7. Theories and Approaches to British Decolonization in Southeast Asia, Karl Hack8. British Attitudes and Policies on Nationalism and Regionalism, Nicholas Tarling9. The Grand Design: British Policy, Local Politics and the Making of Malaysia, 1955-1961, Tan Tai Yong10. Making Malaya Safe for Decolonization: The Rural Chinese Factor in the Counterinsurgency Campaign, Kumar Ramakrishna11. Nationalism in the Decolonization of Singapore, Albert Lau12. Franklin Roosevelt, Trusteeship and U.S. Exceptionalism: Reconsidering the American Vision of Postcolonial Vietnam, Mark Philip Bradley13. The United States and Southeast Asia in an Era of Decolonization, 1945-1965, Robert J. McMahon14. John Foster Dulles and Decolonization in Southeast Asia, Ronald W. Pruessen15. Between SEATO and ASEAN: The United States and the Regional Organization of Southeast Asia, Kai Dreisbach16. Parable of Seeds: The Green Revolution in the Modernizing Imagination, Nick Cullather17. Afterward: The Limits of Decolonization, Wang Gungwu

The twelve essays in this volume underscore the similarities between Chinese and American approaches to bilateral diplomacy and between their perceptions of each other's policy-making motivations. Much of the literature on U.S.-China relations posits that each side was motivated either by ideologically informed interests or by ideological assumptions about its counterpart. But as these contributors emphasize, newly accessible archives suggest rather that both Beijing and Washington developed a responsive and tactically adaptable foreign policy. Each then adjusted this policy in response to changing international circumstances and changing assessments of its counterpart's policies. Motivated less by ideology than by pragmatic national security concerns, each assumed that the other faced similar considerations.