Destruction and come-back

Imperial Southeast Asia was overturned by the Japanese in 1941-2. The future of the colonial states thus becomes ‘counter-factual’. No states endure for ever, and those, no longer traditional, but unable fully to become modern, could only be transitional. What would have happened, and when, is, however, impossible to determine. But all the colonial powers returned, or attempted to return, and the history of their ‘second coming’ may be compared, if not with a might-have-been, then with the interventions and acquisitions of the imperialist period. It may after all also be worth considering their ‘second going’ in the light of the counter-factual. How does it relate to the ‘transitional’ nature of the states they had been building? Imperialism was in an alliance with capitalism, but an incomplete one.

Capitalism sought to order the world so that its resources, human and physical, could be turned to account: associated with it were concepts of property, of public and private, of investment and return, bound to be in tension or even at odds with a sense of the communal as distinct from the individual, of custom rather than statute, of mutual obligation rather than contract. Such ideas did not enter imperial policy, however, because it was made by capitalists. Instead, they were shared by those who made policy, both at the metropolitan and at the local level. They appeared, in Maingy’s terms, as ‘Political Maxims’. Those who advocated or rejected an imperial policy tended to use them as assumptions, avoiding any detailed application of the concepts in terms of returns or cost-benefit analysis. Once administrations were set up others sought to put the principles into practice, often finding that it was necessary to ‘intervene’, to prime the pump, to use traditional methods in new ways, so that capitalism might be persuaded to get to work. Entirely characteristic was the tendency to develop single crops and single regions, and to focus on infrastructure. The regimes, too, had much in common, though they originated in rivalry. A nascent capitalist world-order sought order among states, and law and

order within them, though a particular kind of law. Its cause was not identified with a world of states, still less a world of nation-states. Such, however, was an acceptable framework provided there was ‘free trade’ among them and ‘free trade’ within them. Ideally it played down their interference with

the working of the market, though in practice it was ready to look to the state for lift-off or for protection in time of crisis. In the case of colonial possessions the tension was greater still. Governments often helped the capitalists they were anxious to encourage, though they also wanted to impose their statebuilding priorities over speculators. In the longer run, however, the colonial structure was bound to inhibit the efficiency of ‘market forces’, and to limit the contribution the resources and peoples of the territories could make to the world economy. If the nation-state could be an obstacle to the flow of capital and goods – though at times a useful prop – the same was even more true of that projection of the nation-state, the colonial states that advisers and administrators had set themselves to build. Those were indeed in a sense ‘transitional’, the result of steps taken in part

because independent states could not transform themselves, though some were not given much of a chance. But effecting the end of the ‘transition’ was no easier than starting it, and no less complicated. In independent states, social and political change is effected by reform and revolution, but, except in Siam, those options were not open in colonial Southeast Asia. Taking over and establishing their administrations, the colonial powers had found collaborators, often among the most conservative elements in society, sometimes among the less reputable. They were certainly apprehensive about changing their collaborators. Sometimes, indeed, they sought to limit the changes that their policies were bringing about or opening the way for. At the same time, moreover, new ties had been established with the metro-

polises. That was partly done by the wooing of capital, followed, adventitiously, by the impact of the worldwide booms such as that for rubber. That created an interest in the fate of the colonies which could play upon those occasions when capital seemed to need government support, and which could argue that it needed protection or that it was a national asset. Something of the same is also true in respect of the colonies as markets, particularly once they became protected or privileged. In times of crisis or depression, industries could argue that the colonies were necessary for survival until the world market again functioned properly. The question of ‘transition’ was complicated, too, by being involved in

metropolitan politics in another way. State-building at home helped to produce wider participation in politics and, as a result, a need to redefine imperial purpose. Though it never became a truly popular cause, empire was popularised, and associated with the greatness, even the survival, of the nation. As with the original empire-building, there was little attempt at cost-benefit analysis. The arrival of the depression seemed to make the point self-evidently: it became part of the rhetoric of survival in a still more difficult world. Popularising the empire did not merely associate it with prestige. It also

brought out the ‘ethical’ aims that it had earlier included and gave them more emphasis. Those, of course, rationalised staying, though not for ever. The democratisation of the European states implied indeed that the depen-

dence of the colonies could not be permanent. But it could be a long time before their peoples were ready for self-rule. In the meantime there might be a greater measure of participation and association. Ethical aims also rationalised greater investment and a more active kind of

government. Both those were bound to add to the problems of change which the colonial systems already found it difficult to accommodate. Governments had not done very much. Doing more emphasised their alien nature, weakened their traditional supports, and required the raising of more revenue. ‘In the Dutch time’, a Selayer resident told Anton Lucas in 1986, ‘everything was taxed . . . We used to say jokingly, ‘‘If you scratch your bottom, they’ll make you pay an arse tax (pajak pantat).’1 At the same time active government boosted the creation of educated elites who perceived the colonial territories in terms of new nation-states, who saw ‘progressive self-government’ as inadequate, and who could rally alienated popular feeling against their overlords in an attempt to speed up the timetable under which they would achieve that status. New levels of investment and government activity stopped short, moreover,

of effecting fundamental economic change. Some observers recognised that, if the territories were ready in the interwar period for a measure of political change, they were also ready for economic change. In general, however, the colonial connexion discouraged industrialisation. The interests of metropolitan manufacturers stood in the way, particularly in the depression, even in cases where it might have been viable. Attempts to limit the competition of cheap Japanese goods did, however, lead to some industrialisation in Java in the 1930s. In their wartime planning the British declared that the future imperial task

was nation-building. Yet, whatever the idealism that informed their purpose, they had neither the power nor the money to carry it out, and they faced elites that, though not prepared by the Japanese for self-rule, were clear that they were no longer ready to accept the rule of others. The British proved ready to adjust their programmes, even to abandon them. Capitalists had only a limited role in those decisions. Some of those who had operated in Burma had been doubtful about returning in any case. Even in Malaya the state acted autonomously. For the French and the Dutch the task of adjustment proved more difficult,

though, again, for political rather than economic reasons. Their attempts to re-establish themselves were not accompanied with a political programme even as attractive as that of the British. They fell into an armed struggle that in some ways recalled the struggles of ‘pacification’, except that, in the context of the nationalism promoted by the war, effective collaborators were no longer forthcoming. The inability to adopt different strategies is explained by political factors. They had never been so committed to the emergence of a post-colonial world of states as the British. Empire, moreover, had come to stand for survival or for ‘greatness’, and had in that sense come to play too large a role in metropolitan state-building. In the postwar period it was a

question of state-rebuilding. It thus became more difficult to present the case for colonial independence, particularly in the multi-party politics of France and the Netherlands where coalitions depended on formulae. In France it was recognised that – while the struggle was itself wasteful – the capital in the empire could in any case be better employed, but such a view was slow to prevail. The Dutch went on to lose what they had saved in the Indies for the sake of West New Guinea, but found that their old colony was not after all a sheet anchor.