ABSTRACT
In 1930 French Indochina, the Netherlands East Indies and British Malaya formed three separate European colonies each with its own institutional mixture of European rule, traditional rulers, and elements of popular representation. In all three colonies, young elites with a blend of traditional and European education had embraced the nationalist principle and were propagating the ideas of ‘Vietnam’, ‘Indonesia’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘Malaya’. Communist parties had been founded in all three colonies, but the communist-led rebellions against the Dutch in 1926–27 and the French in 1930–31 had both been crushed.
