Midterm 1.2 Flashcards
Who colonized Vietnam?
France
Who colonized Indonesia?
The Netherlands/Dutch
Who colonized Cambodia?
France
Who colonized Burma?
Britain
Who colonized Singapore area?
Britain
Who colonized the Philippines?
Spain
(the U.S. later)
True or False: Marxism and liberalism spread to SE Asia because of colonialism
True
What were the only “constitutionally complete” countries?
Thailand and Philippines
Which imperial powers had liberal forms of colonizing?
Great Britain, U.S.
Which imperial powers had repressive colonizing?
Spanish, Dutch, French
Characteristics of liberal colonialism:
- Relatively good record on rule of law, civil liberties, political participation, education, economic opportunity
- Willing to consider independence
Characteristics of Repressive colonialism:
- Limited civil liberties, restricted education, censorship, tiered economies, corruption
- Europeans in superior legal positions
- Actively discouraged independence movements
British Colonies
- Burma
- Malaya
- East Malaysia
- Singapore
- Brunei
- Hong Kong
French Colonies
- North Vietnam
- Cambodia
- Laos
- South Vietnam
Dutch Colonies:
- Indonesia
- Dutch New Guinea
Portuguese Colonies
- East Timor
U.S. Colonies
- Philippines
Japanese Colonies:
- Korea
- Taiwan
- Manchuria
What were the waves of colonization and which countries were involved?
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Dutch
- British
- French
What was the longest, most expensive, bloodiest war in the history of “British India”?
Burma, they really fought back!
What was the British influence in Burma?
- Direct and deep
- Late compared to India
- Categorization and territorial divisions (no more mandalas)
- Divide and conquer (karen at top of bureaucracy along with other minorities)
- Indians also challenged for labor jobs in new capitalist economy
What reasons did France give for conquering IndoChina?
- Protect the catholic french missionaries
- Trade access to China
What is Indochina?
3 territories in Vietnam area
How did Laos and Cambodia avoid the conflict of colonialism?
They welcomed the French in with open arms. They didn’t resist. They WANTED France to be their protectorate.
What was the French influence?
- Exploitation
- Mostly economic
- Built extensive infrastructure
- Missionary efforts failed
- French language taught as the principal language of education, government, trade, and media
How did Thailand remain independent?
- Accident of geography (anglo-French desire to avoid a common frontier)
- Pre-existing major power (compared to other undeveloped SE asian governments)
- Able diplomacy
- Policy of modernization - they WANTED to learn from Europe, so they did
How did King Mongkut of Thailand appease Western powers to avoid colonization?
- No prostration for Westerners
- Treaties were balanced
- Modernization program (infrastructure, schools, printing, European advisors)
What reforms did Chulalongkorn of Thailand implement?
- Abolished prostration to king
- abolished slavery
- Opened armed services
- New technology like the telegraph and railroad
- More schools
- Administration reform
What was the culture system of the Dutch rule over Indonesia?
Forced manual labor, wanted them to work CONSTANTLY for the Dutch good.
Where was Batavia?
Dutch control in Indonesia
Who had the most centralized state power in SE Asia?
Dutch - Indonesia
Where was Johor?
Malaya, right above Singapore
How did the British rule Malaysia?
British advisors to each state individually, worked together.
Malay states agreed to supervision from a British resident
True or False: The advisors in the British Malayan colonies were there to supervise the work, not rule.
False. They basically became the rulers of the states they were in
How did the Johor sultanate remain independent?
They gave Singapore to the British and modernized on their own. They had a written constitution, but they still had to consult with the British on many things
Which SE Asian country was the only one to adopt the religion of its colonizer?
Philippines
What was the Spanish-American war?
The U.S. gained control of the Philippines colony after defeating the Spanish.
Why did the Philippines originally hope for a quick independence?
They were repressed by the Spanish and the U.S. promised liberation and independence… but it took 45 years and millions of lives
What was American rule on the Philippines like?
- Quick to move to elections
- Education system enhanced
- Killed up to 1.4 million Filipinos following the Spanish-American war
What were the economic consequences of colonialism?
- Shift from subsistence-based agriculture to modern agriculture plantations and mining.
- Linked SE Asia with the global economy
- New urban centers
- New infrastructure
What were the political consequences of colonialism?
- Stimulated nationalism movements
- Introduced foreign political ideals (including communism)
- Created new states with set borders
How did Japan act in Indonesia?
They basically kicked out the Dutch and acted worse. They kept the forced labor and difficult conditions.
True or False: Thailand was an ally of Japan
True
Why did Japan seek to control Thailand’s economic affairs?
Driven by research, science, and government direction as a continuation of the Meiji revolution. They’re all about modernization
How was Japanese colonial control different from European control?
European powers put somebody in charge and largely left that person to come up with rules/standards based on what they were seeing with limited direction.
Japan took orders straight out of Tokyo to direct the affairs of every single colony. It was a more cohesive “organism”
What 4 sources led to the rise of nationalism in the 1920s and 30s?
- Indigenous religions
- Western education (trained leaders and new ideology)
- Social radicals (communists)
- Global ideas (end of WWI and principle of self-determination)
What states did NOT have large nationalism movements in the 20’s and 30’s?
Malaya, Philippines, Cambodia, Laos
What 3 factors led to the DECLINE of colonial power in SEA?
- Rise of nationalism
- Great depression
- WWII
How did the Great Depression contribute to the collapse of colonialism?
- The market for SEA products dwindled
- Distracted the West’s attention
- Colonies were less profitable
What were some reasons Western powers started losing interest in their colonies prior to WWII?
- Not as financially profitable
- Preoccupied with “home” problems
- Too much of an investment
- Increase in anti-imperialism sentiments at home
Why was Japan an attractive country to some SE Asians?
- They were a success store
- Japan debunked the myth of European superiority
- Japan represented an alternative mode of development
- Alternative place to get education, technology, capital
- A refuge for anti-imperialist and anti-colonial nationalists
How did Japan appeal to SEA?
- They called for racial solidarity
- Education programs
- Brother-kinship terms
- Promised independence
- Recognized local leaders, language, flag
- Promised economic benefits
- anti-colonial/anti-imperialist propaganda
What were the goals of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?
Economic gains for all Asian countries
Which side did Thailand take during WWII?
They allied with the side they thought would win (Japan) but had a significant resistance helping the Allies as well… so they basically played both sides to win no matter what lol
What were the MAJOR results of WWII in SEA?
- Decline in Western political interest and power
- Myth of Western superiority debunked
- Rise in Japanese political and economic interest and influence in SEA
- Status of overseas Chinese changes
- Increased U.S. interest in SEA
- Rise of SEAsian nationalist, independence movements
According to the realist model, what characterizes the international system?
Anarchy
What is the core assumption of Korea up to 2000?
They hate Japan
Which SE Asian country had the first communist party?
Indonesia in 1914
What were the 3 principles of Sun Yat Sen’s KMT party?
- Nationalism
- Democracy
- People’s welfare (socialism)
When did the communists take over China?
1949, that’s when the KMT fled to Taiwan
What are the 3 principles of Maoism?
- People’s war - nationalist, democratic, anti-imperialist revolution run by communists
- Cultural revolution - class struggle
- Agrarian Socialism - ownership of land to make money rather than product. Rural industrialization
What were ethnic/overseas Chinese people doing in SE Asia during WWII?
- leading resistance efforts in their countries against Japan
- Fought against British empire
- Causing problems with the British and getting deported back to China where they were executed
What was the Malayan emergency?
British and American forces joining to defeat communist uprisings in Malaya during the Cold War.
How did the Malayan Emergency begin?
Communists killed a few European planters.
Police were given powers to arrest and punish (including death penalty) without trial.
Guerrilla warfare
What were some of the extraordinary measures taken by the British during the Malayan Emergency?
- Forced hundreds of thousands of people into special compounds surrounded by high barbed wire fences and police
- Food was only permitted to eat at home, starvation tactics
- Scorched earth policy, widespread burning of villages suspected of communist sypathies
Who was Tunku Abdul Rahman?
The first Chief minister of Malaya after their first general elections in 1955
Why didn’t elections in Indonesia fully fix the communist problem?
Because national unity was under attack. There were also civil wars going on in Sumatra and Islamic revolts in Western Java.
What were the 3 main political factions in Indonesia?
- Communists
- Nationalists
- Islamists
Why did Sukarno lose control of Indonesia?
The British secret intelligence agency there worked to promote anti-communist propaganda that also painted HIM in a bad light. He lost power
Who took over from Sukarno after the anti-communist propaganda movements?
Suharto, for 3 decades
Pure nationalist
What did Suharto do to the communists?
Gestapu affairs
Mass killings, star wars style. Anywhere from 500,000 to several million people killed in a week. NON-military. Anybody related to communism (basically minorities, women, atheists, etc.)
Who was the U.S. president behind Domino theory?
Eisenhower
What contributed to Eisenhower’s belief in the Domino Theory?
He was VERY anti-communist
Is the Domino theory actually a theory?
Not really. It’s more of an ideology. An attempt to discriminate against communism. Few empirical studies.
Which country did they believe would be first to fall to communism and then corrupt its neighbors?
Laos
Which country’s communist party did China manipulate more than any other?
Burma
How did each country react/fall to communism?
1
- Indonesia - communists snuffed out by British and Suharto
- Malaysia/Singapore - Malayan emergency
- Laos - Laos was close to Vietnam, so when Vietnam fell, so did Laos
- Cambodia - Basically embraced communism, felt they were doomed to it
- Burma - U.S. was worried about Chinese influence there
- Philippines - communism had decreased, but there was a lot of propaganda in the U.S.
- Thailand - No conflict, instead they negotiated with the communists and offered freedom and amnesty instead of detention. They came up with their own solution instead of relying on the U.S. strategy. Thai solution to a Thai problem.
Who was involved in the Korean war?
South Korea and the U.S. (and later the UK and UN); North Korea and Russia (and later China)
When did the Korean war start?
1950
HOW did the Korean war start?
The North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel. The UN condmned it.
Basic timeline of Korean war:
June 1950 - NK attacks
September 1950 - NK has conquered almost all the peninsula
September 1950 - MacArthur gets involved and pushes all the way back to Seoul
October 1950 - The North pushed back across the 18th parallel
October 1950 - MacArthur breaches China, China reacts
December - UN retreats to the South
April 1951 - MacArthur fired for being bad
July 1951 - Stalemate, Armistice agreement but the North didn’t sign.
Basically a single year
What’s another name for the Vietnam war?
The Second Indochina war
What is France’s fault?
The FIRST Indochina war
France fighting the state of Vietnam post WWII, led to communist and nationalist groups in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. They were rural insurgencies against the brutality of the French
What was the Franco-Thai war?
Thailand took advantage of a weakened France (after falling to Hitler) and attacks them in Indochina in 1940. It wanted to regain vassal state territories ceded to France.
Japan settled the conflict. Thailand “won” but didn’t really win anything.
True or False: During the Second Indochina war, the Americans were basically on the margins, this was really a Vietnamese civil war telling a Vietnamese story
True
Which was a greater driver of violence in the Vietnam war: Racism or nationalism?
Racism
Why were there strange social classes being targeted for military service in Vietnam?
Because it represented the only way to achieve upward mobility (so the wealthy were joining the army)
Who were the Ha Noi?
Women warriors sent to fight and die with Ho Chi Minh Trail.
What role did Catholicism play in the Vietnam war?
Split social group. Fighting even within clergy. Catholics not likely to be drafted.
Why is it difficult to split the Vietnamese war into 2 sides?
Because there were MANY players within the country, including all kinds of social groups that didn’t retain loyalty to one side or another throughout the war. This was not just America vs. communism, this was Vietnam vs. Vietnam.
Who were the greatest casualties in the Vietnam war?
The civilians. Millions of them. It was a self-defeating war. They were only killing themselves.
