ABSTRACT
Like the British withdrawal from India the previous year, the onset of the Malayan Emergency in June 1948 was a watershed in the postwar history of Asia. It marked the extension of the Cold War from Europe and the Middle East to the Far East. From the British point of view, communism, not nationalism, now constituted the overriding problem of the day. The Malayan Emergency followed the outbreak of communist guerrilla warfare in Burma in March 1948, which seriously
1destabilised the country throughout the year. In Indonesia too, communist forces were to make a bid for power, though their attempts to gain control of the Indonesian Republic in September 1 948 were quashed by troops loyal to the moderate nationalist government of Mohammed Hatta. 2 Towards the end of 1948, a number of decisive victories by the Chinese commu nists against the nationalist Kuomintang government in China further added to London's worries. The Chinese communist leader, Mao Tse-tung, had publicly aligned himself with Moscow, and the British feared that China, once it had fallen under communist control, would encourage other communist movements in South and South-East Asia to intensify their struggle against the colonial powers and the pro-Western governments in the region.
