Establishing and maintaining

The establishment of European empires was not the sudden result of overwhelming strength, but the gap between the Western and the Southeast Asian states widened during the nineteenth century. On the one hand the Western states, partly as a result of technological and industrial advance, and partly as a result of their own interstate struggles, enhanced their capacity to mobilise power. On the other hand, the Southeast Asian states were weakened, partly by the earlier advance of the Europeans, who had secured command of the sea, and partly by their own internal divisions. Their strength was diminished, and their diplomacy damaged, by their lack of information. Nor were they able to ally with another, even as much as in the earlier phase of European intervention. Yet it is possible to exaggerate the ease with which the Europeans gained

‘control’ and the extent of the control they gained. They themselves often thought that gaining control would be easier than it was, and that may have been a factor in their endeavour. A Resident would do all that was needed in Perak; the people of Burma and Vietnam would welcome the Europeans; capturing the Aceh kraton would suffice. Had they known the problems that would follow they might have been more cautious. To exaggerate the smoothness of the process is to misunderstand it. It is also to lose a clue to the nature of the regimes that were in the event established and provided the context of the economic changes that followed. Colonial regimes were easier to start than to consolidate. Brief displays or

deployments of force might suffice to win rulers over or, if need be, to displace them. That, however, was seldom the end of the matter. In almost every case the establishment of imperial power had to be followed by what was called ‘pacification’, the suppression of guerrilla and other struggles against the new regime. The imperial power might be able to dominate at the centre, even to ‘decapitate’ the existing state, only to find that it then began to meet real resistance. If there were a welcome to the ‘imperialists’, it generally came only from minority groups, Christians in Vietnam, Karens in Burma. ‘Pacification’ tended as a result to determine the future nature of the

colonial regimes. All states rely on a measure of compliance, not on mere compulsion. The full repertoire of means to secure compliance was generally

not available to colonial regimes: they could seldom use tradition, mana, religious sanction. Mere force, however, could not be sufficient, even if it were readily available. They therefore sought collaborators, either among existing leaders if they were available or among nouveaux venus if they were not. Such measures, often taken under urgency, contributed to ‘pacification’. They continued into the next phase. The regimes were to use force as rarely as possible. If it were used, it had to be decisive, an incontrovertible demonstration of the regime’s power. For the most part, it was better to hold it in reserve, always ready to back up, rather than be a substitute for, a framework of collaboration. The collaborators, of course, had to possess or acquire a firm popular base

in order to counteract the endemic tendency to disrupt the state offered by gangsters, dacoits and ladrones, and to prevent the emergence of subversive or millennialist movements or even pro-monarchical ones. There were two drawbacks to the system so far as the imperialists were concerned. Identified with an alien regime, the collaborating elite might be unable to mobilise mass loyalty in its favour, or even prevent mass alienation. Even if they could, they might not be able to respond to the demands a modernising regime made upon them. Yet it would be difficult for the regime to discard them and take the risk of seeking the collaboration of a new elite. As a result colonial regimes sought to avoid interference at the village level, turning a blind eye, for example, on the use of bully boys. They also realised that there were limits to the modernisation that such regimes could bring about. Too active an administration, as the Ethici found, might alienate the people, rather than win them over. The regimes were not only difficult to establish. They remained weak, and in that sense were bound to be transitional. The undermining in the interwar period of the international system that supported them only redoubled their caution. The policies the imperial powers adopted in order to establish and main-

tain their acquisitions left options open to those they aspired to rule. The options varied from power to power, place to place and time to time. But they also varied according to the perception and action of those who might or might not collaborate. Lack of power and lack of information restricted their choice, but did not necessarily eliminate it. Coming to terms with the imperial power quickly might mean those terms were better. The range of possibilities included: compromise, resistance, surrender and a deal after some resistance, surrender without any resistance and a better deal. The last was the choice of Johore in 1914, when its ruler finally accepted a British agent. ‘It is best to surrender instantly to overwhelming odds’, as Allen concludes, ‘and hope stealthily to recuperate lost advantages during the ensuing euphoria.’1 Nor was collaboration necessarily a short-term or self-interested option. You might, as some Vietnamese argued, acquire the knowledge needed to rebuild a state. Whether the top elite were displaced or collaborated, the local elite was

crucial to a colonial regime. Even the most bureaucratic needed the support

of the village headman, whose position was likely to become more uncomfortable, if at times also more profitable. ‘The local elite . . . is a problematic element in any colonial system’, as Jeremy Beckett puts it. ‘To the extent that it controls the lower orders it may be either the ally of the regime or its enemy. And to the extent that it exploits them it may be either a partner or a competitor. Whichever course it follows there are dangers. If it is defiant it risks destruction, and at the very least jeopardizes the protection given by its masters. If it is compliant it may jeopardize its legitimacy among the common folk.’2