ABSTRACT
Colonial Southeast Asia had been created under the aegis of the British, the primate power of the nineteenth century. It was in substantial part the result of their attitudes and policies that, despite their primacy, the region, always divided, was divided anew. The territories they secured, or over which they acquired protectorates, were limited to Burma, the Straits Settlements, the peninsular Malay states, and the three states of northern Borneo. They favored the continuance of the Dutch empire in the archipelago, and they accepted the establishment of the French in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the eastern parts of Laos. They supported the continuance of an independent Thai kingdom. They also supported the continuance of the Spanish regime in the Philippines. When it was overthrown in the 1890s, they did not intervene, but accepted the intervention of the United States, as opposed to a German alternative. The United States indeed became one of the colonial powers, though, envisaging self-rule and independence for its acquisition, it was a colonial power with a difference. The involvement of the potential superpower was in fact a guarantee of colonial Southeast Asia. It stood in the way of the Japanese, who were established in Taiwan beginning 1895.
