ABSTRACT
In Indonesia the nationalist revolution had had more time to mature; Japanese policy had, at first, created possibilities for underground action and then actively promoted the violent seizure of power at the time of the capitulation. In order to understand the revolutionary development of the first months after the capitulation it is necessary to go to the days just before August 17, 1945, when the Republic of Indonesia was proclaimed. The Republic of Viet Nam started in the north of French Indo-China and for a time was free to move at will under the protection of the Chinese army of occupation and with the direct assistance of quite a number of Japanese. In Malaya nationalism had no clear-cut chance because of the extremely composite character of the population, in which neither the Chinese nor the Malays have a working over-all majority and there is as yet no such thing as a common citizenship.
