ABSTRACT
For most of the colonial period, the issue of neutrality or neutralisation was not directly relevant to Southeast Asia. Most of the countries were not independent and were in no position to assert neutrality. The crises between them would be resolved by agreements made by governments outside Southeast Asia, though even before the decolonisation that followed the Pacific War, the position of some dependencies began to change. The Philippines acquired a quasiindependent status as a ‘Commonwealth’. And in the years before the war of 1939 turned into the war of 1941 French Indo-China became more independent of the Vichy regime and Netherlands India more independent of the exiled Dutch government in London.
