ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the Malayan campaign from each national viewpoint in order to establish the points of divergence between them and then to offer an interpretation based on an international perspective. The international economic and politico-military realities of the early 1940s meant that European possessions in Southeast Asia were particularly vulnerable. Viewed in international and multinational perspectives, the Malayan campaign takes on a range of meanings. It was produced by the high protectionist economic world order of the Great Depression years in the 1930s. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, when fighting for markets became extreme, and high tariff walls were erected everywhere, Japan sought to carve out for itself by direct military action a trade zone, or empire, in northern China. The Second World War, from a Japanese point of view, was principally a war for northern China, where the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was centred.
