Southeast Asia 1900-45: The Rise of Nationalism

1. Southeast Asia 1900-45:The Rise of Nationalism • March 12, 2013

2. Review: • How is Communism different from Fascism? • Why did the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party Split? • How did the growing war with the Japanese influence the images of the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party?

3. The Battle for Okinawa • In spring, 1945, the US invaded the Japanese homeland, picking Okinawa as the place to establish a beachhead. (p. 423) • What was the impact of the Battle of Okinawa on the Okinawans? Did it make them feel more Japanese? • What was the impact of the Battle of Okinawa on the Japanese? Did it convince them to surrender? • What was the impact of the Battle of Okinawa on the Americans? Did it lead to the A-bomb?

4. The Atomic Bomb • Why did the US drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? • Were the atomic bombs worse than the fire-bombings that preceded them? (p. 423) • Were such attacks on civilians justified? • What convinced the Japanese to surrender on August 15? (p. 423) • What role did the Soviet attack play in that decision?

5. Rise of Nationalism • Lockard defines nationalism as follows: • nationalism involved a sense of common feeling transcending class and ethnicity among people who desires to express that wider community by establishing an independent country.” (p. 135) • But isn’t ethnicity, newly defined, an important feature of nationalism? And doesn’t that make it possible for nationalism to shade over into racism?

6. the Philippines • Under US control, the Philippines became the first colony to promote mass education. 65% of Filipinos were literate in one language or another by 1935. Tagalog (Filipino) was declared the national language in 1939, along with English. • In 1936, the US government promised to grant the Philippines complete independence by 1946. • The Japanese did not find as much support in the Philippines as they did in much of the rest of Southeast Asia. • During the Japanese occupation, resistance to the Japanese took two forms: a pro-American underground movement, and a Communist underground movement. The latter wanted to seize land from rich landlords, some of whom collaborated with the Japanese, and give it to landless peasants.

7. Indonesia • The Dutch finally conquered Aceh in the early part of the 20th century, with the help of Javanese troops. • In the last decades of colonial rule, a Muslim League and an Indonesian Communist Party appeared, but the lead in the nationalist movement was taken by Sukarno’s Indonesian Nationalist Party. • Sukarno was a charismatic speaker who worked hard to create an inclusive Indonesian identity: “One Nation, Indonesia; One People, Indonesian; One Language, Indonesian” (He ignored religious differences) None of these were an accurate depiction of the Dutch East Indies before 1900.

8. Malaya • Most of the people on the Malay peninsula today are the descendants of people who immigrated from Indonesia, China, or India starting in the late 19th century. The population of the Federated Malay states was 218,000 in 1891 but 1.7 million by 1931, 41% of whom were Chinese. • Weak nationalism because Chinese identified with China, Malays with other Malays, Indians with India, etc. Imagining a new nation of Malaysia did not bring those three groups together. • The Malays began emphasizing their religion (Islam) and their purported local roots to distinguish themselves from the Chinese and the South Asians, and to claim that Malaysia is their country. A Malay Communist Party emerged, but the vast majority of its members were Chinese.

9. Burma (Myanmar) • There was a long history of kingdoms in what is now Myanmar, but it was under the British that the Burmese were placed together with tribal peoples under one government. (Until 1937, the British also treated Burma as a province of India rather than as a separate colony) • For the Burmese, just as we will see with the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Buddhism became a vehicle for asserting a distinctive national identity. This caused tension with the Christian tribal peoples in the north, as well as with Chinese and Indians living in Burma. • Some young Burmese formed a Burma Independence Army, which sought Japanese help in expelling the British.

10. Siam (Thailand) • Changed name from Siam to Thailand in 1939 • The modernizing Thai government (especially the king Rama VI) used Buddhism to unify the country, creating a national Buddhist hierarchy. It also build modern schools to teach Thai identity. • The military seized control of the country in 1932 and created a constitutional monarchy. Under military rule, we see Thailand moving closer to Fascism. There was also some official anti-Chinese sentiment until the government realized it needed Chinese help in running the economy.

11. Indochina • Five separate administrative regions under overall French colonial rule: Cochinchina (south), Annam (central), Tonkin (north), Cambodia, and Laos. • Vietnamese nationalists formed a Vietnamese Nationalist Party modelled after the Guomindang (KMT) in China. It was crushed when it rose up in revolt in 1930. • Then a new nationalist party arose: the Indochinese Communist Party, led by Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh was able to link nationalism and Communist and, by doing so, create a powerful anti-Japanese force. (To do that, he formed a united front called the Viet Minh.) • Japanese did not assume direct control of Indochina until 1945.

12. The Appeal of Communismto Some Nationalists • Communism criticized imperialism. • It promised a chance to jump ahead of capitalist countries and take the lead in human history • It offered techniques for creating highly disciplined revolutionary (Leninist) parties. • However, it wasn’t successful in countries in which one religion (Islam, Catholicism, Theravada Buddhism) was dominant.

13. Impact of Japanese rule inSoutheast Asia • Showed that the West was vulnerable --The British, the Dutch, the Americans, and the French had all been defeated by an Asian people. • The Japanese claimed to be liberating Southeast Asians from Western domination, and they actually brought some local people into their puppet governments. This gave local leaders a taste of self-government, which stimulated an even greater desire for self-rule.