ABSTRACT

Many were shocked that British troops were being used, in some cases in cooperation with the defeated Japanese, to restore the Dutch and French colonial empires in Java (Indonesia) and Indo-China (Vietnam) respectively. Had Churchill been in government, Britain could well have been embroiled in a massive colonial war, as were the French in Indo-China and the Dutch in Indonesia. Decision-making on colonial economic policy suffered, as always, from constraints imposed by the Treasury, which had to honour commitments to the USA and to Britain's Commonwealth partners. With the outbreak of the Korean War, the Cold War looked as if it were turning into the real thing. Briefly, Japan had controlled the destiny of Korea between 1895 and 1945. Soviet and US troops occupied it in 1945. Both powers set up regimes to their own liking in North and South Korea respectively.