ABSTRACT
Who are historians to write about neutrality? At least since the early nineteenth century, inspired by Leopold Ranke, they have spoken of objectivity, and even now many of us believe that, while that is not realisable, it is a worthwhile aim, better than a readiness to relapse into a comfortable relativism. Yet Ranke was writing at a time when nations were emerging, and nation-builders have found historiography a useful instrument. Writing of international relations also had fraught origins. The discipline arose in the aftermath of the First World War and tended to be framed in terms of avoidance and prevention, to give too much play to mechanisms and too little to human beings. Yet such questionings should not perhaps prevent attempts to tackle some of the concepts that arise in the study of states and their inter-relationships, before, during and after the rise of nations. Such concepts are, of course, bound to shift their meanings over time, and to be deployed in differing ways as circumstances change. That gives the historian an opportunity as well as a challenge. Whether it also allows for advocacy or prophecy is more questionable, but they may, too, be worth an attempt. The term ‘neutrality’ appears quite early in discussions of the relationships among states so far as Europe is concerned; much later in reference to the states in Southeast Asia on which the book is more particularly focused. But it has seemed worthwhile to place the meanings it assumed and its practical deployment in Southeast Asia in the context of its meanings and deployment in Europe and indeed in other parts of a ‘globalising’ world both in earlier and contemporary periods. The book also considers some cognate words and terms and the meanings that have been attributed to them during their deployment. Among them are terms that are in some sense similar, but have different overtones and may be used with different purposes. They include ‘non-alignment’, for example, credited to the Indian statesmen Krishna Menon in 1953/4.1 The word ‘uncommitted’ was initially used by the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961. Others – with a seeming paradox – had spoken of being ‘actively neutral’, of ‘positive neutrality’. In the inter-war years, George Cohn wrote of ‘neo-neutrality’.2 It is indeed the intention of this book to discuss ‘neutralism’, even though Peter Lyon drew a line between that and ‘neutrality’.3 Less controversially,
perhaps, it will also consider an older term, ‘neutralisation’, along with attempts to implement it in new forms in Southeast Asia in much more recent times. The book will also consider the emergence of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the extent to which the ‘ASEAN way’ it purports to adopt may be regarded as a kind of ‘neutralising’ action (or inaction), irrespective of the fate of its attempt to create a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN). Finally the book will suggest that ‘neutrality’ (and its cognates?) may have a role in contemporary Asia and indeed beyond. Is the concept no longer of relevance in the post-Cold War period? Has it been mistakenly by-passed? Could it be even now or become a concept of greater utility? Such questions seem worth at least asking.
