ABSTRACT
The Japanese conquest transformed their approach. Determined to reassert authority, the British planned for reoccupation on a regional scale. However, their vision of South-East Asia was not entirely clear since regional borders ebbed and flowed between Ceylon and the Philippines and elided with ‘the Far East’. Colonial planning gathered momentum from the summer of 1943 when the War Office requested information on long-term policy to guide the reoccupation of lost territories. The principles which would underpin both military administration and subsequent civil rule in British Malaya and Borneo were refined in inter-departmental discussions and approved by the War Cabinet in May 1944. The Anglo–Egyptian treaty of 1936 may have reiterated Egypt’s independence but it also confirmed Britain’s military base in the canal zone.
