Some Key Characters
Abdul Razak bin Hussein (b. 1922). Malay politician. Served in the war as a district officer; studied law in London, where he became a close associate and political ally of Tunku Abdul Rahman. Succeeded him to become second prime minister of Malaysia, 1970–76.
Amery, Rt Hon. Leopold, MP (b. 1873). Conservative politician. Secretary of state for India and Burma, 1940–45.
Attlee, Rt Hon. Clement Richard (b. 1883). Labour politician. Deputy prime minister, 1942–5; prime minister, July 1945–1952; defence minister to 1946.
Auchinleck, General Claude (b. 1884). Commander North African Front, 1940–42, Commander-in-Chief, India, 1943–7; co-ordinated India base for the Burma campaign.
Aung San, Thakin or ‘Bogyoke’ (General) (b. 1916). Leading Burmese revolutionary. Commander of Burma Independence Army, 1942; defence minister under Ba Maw, 1943–5. President of Anti-Fascist People’s Front Freedom League; member of Governor’s Executive Council 1946–7. Assassinated July 1947.
Ba Maw (b. 1893). Lawyer, politician and prime minister of Burma, 1937–9. Emerged as main collaborator with Japanese in 1942 and became ‘Adipadi’ (first man) of independent Burma in 1943. Fled to Tokyo; imprisoned by Allies 1945; returned to Burma in 1946; interned following 1947 assassinations.
Boestamam, Ahmad (b. 1920). Born Abdullah Sani bin Raja Kechil. Malay novelist, journalist and politician. Founder and leader of Angkatan Pemuda Insaf, 1946–8. Detained 1948–55. Founder Partai Rakyat and leader of Socialist Front in parliament after 1959. Detained again during ‘Confrontation’ with Indonesia.
Bose, Subhas Chandra (b. 1897). Bengali politician and radical leader within Forward Bloc of Congress. Arrested by British 1940, fled to Berlin 1941. Took over leadership of Indian National Army and Free India government 1943. Retreated from Imphal with Japanese in 1944. Presumed dead in plane crash, August 1945.
Burhanuddin al-Helmy, Dr (b. 1911). Leader of Malay Nationalist Party, 1945–7. Detained after Nadrah riots and on release became leader of Parti Islam Se-Malaya. Detained again during ‘Confrontation’ with Indonesia.
Chiang Kai Shek (b. 1887). Chinese nationalist leader and ‘generalissimo’ of Chinese armies fighting Japan since 1936; drawn into fighting in Burma during 1942 to keep the ‘Burma Road’ open. Pressed for Allied campaign against Burma, 1943–4. Fought and lost civil war with Mao Zedong, 1946–9.
Chin Peng (b. 1924). Party name of Ong Boon Hua. Communist liaison officer with Force 136 in Perak, Malaya. Secretary general of the Malayan Communist Party from 1947 and led rebellion against the colonial government 1948–60. Resident in China from 1960. Signed a peace accord with the Malaysian government in 1989.
Christison, Lt General Sir Philip (b. 1893). Commanded 15 Indian Corps in Burma. Took surrender of Singapore and commanded in Indonesia. Later became ADC to King George VI.
Creech Jones, Arthur (b. 1891). Labour Colonial Secretary, 1946–50, having earlier headed the Fabian Colonial Bureau.
Cripps, Sir Richard Stafford (b. 1889). Labour politician. As Leader of the House of Commons in 1942, visited India to treat with Indian National Congress (the Cripps mission), and again with Labour government’s Cabinet Mission in 1946. Chancellor of the Exchequer from November 1947.
Davis, John. A policeman in Perak before the war; senior Force 136 officer in Malaya, 1943–5. Afterwards a district officer in Malaya; escorted old comrade Chin Peng to the abortive Baling peace talks in 1955.
Donnison, Colonel Frank S. V. (b. 1898). Civil servant. Secretary to Burmese government, 1939–41 and its representative in Delhi, 1942–3. Commissioned, joined Civil Administration Secretariat (Burma) during re-conquest, 1944–5; later wrote official history of the war and military administration in the Far East.
Dorman-Smith, Sir Reginald (b. 1899). Governor of Burma, 1941–6, escaped from Myitkyina 1942. Exiled in Simla. Returned as civil Governor of Burma autumn 1945. Replaced by Attlee government May 1946.
Eng Ming Chin (b. 1924). Joined the Malayan Communist Party in Perak in 1940 and played a leading role as a women’s activist in the ‘open’ organization of the party after 1945. Took to the jungle in 1948, and assigned to the Malay 10th Regiment. In 1955 married Abdullah C. D. and took the name Suraini Abdullah.
Furnivall, J. S., ICS (b. 1878). Retired Burma civil servant and Fabian socialist, well connected with radical Burmese Thakins. Advised on reconstruction of Burma in Simla, 1943–4; returned to Burma after independence as an economic adviser.
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (b. 1869). Symbolic head of Indian National Congress. Apostle of non-violence. Headed the anti-British Quit India movement of 1942. Jailed by the British for much of the rest of the war, during which time he staged a hunger strike. Assassinated January 1948.
Gent, Sir Edward (b. 1895). Colonial civil servant. As head of Eastern Section, played a major role in devising Malayan Union Plan. Governor of Malayan Union, 1946–8. Killed in an air crash on recall to London after the outbreak of the Emergency in June 1948.
Gracey, General Douglas (b. 1894). Commanded 20th Indian Division, 14th Army at Imphal and Kohima 1944. Occupied Saigon, French Indo-China, August 1945 to February 1946. Effectively handed back southern Indo-China to French colonial government. Chief of Staff of Pakistan Army, February 1948 to January 1951.
Gurney, Sir Henry Lovell Goldsworthy (b. 1898). Career colonial servant; formerly Chief Secretary in Gold Coast and Palestine before replacing Sir Edward Gent as High Commissioner in Malaya, 1948. Oversaw the early stages of the Emergency until his assassination by the communists on the way to the hill station of Fraser’s Hill in October 1951.
Hirohito, Showa, Emperor of Japan (b. 1901). Implicated in aggressive Japanese policies in China and Southeast Asia. Remained on throne 1945, under American tutelage.
Hussein bin Onn (b. 1922). Malay politician. Son of Onn bin Jaafar. Served in Indian Army during war; then led UMNO Youth until 1951 when he left with his father to form the Independence for Malaya Party. Joined UMNO in 1968 to become third prime minister of Malaysia, 1976–81.
Ibrahim, Sultan of Johore (b. 1873). Independent-minded sultan of peninsular Malaya’s southernmost state; ruled from 1895 until 1959.
Ishak bin Haji Mohamed (b. 1910). One of the leading Malay novelists and journalists of his generation. Leader of the Malay Nationalist Party after Dr Burhanuddin and played leading role in PUTERA-AMCJA. Detained 1948–54.
Khatijah Sidek (b. 1918). Women’s activist and politician. Born in west Sumatra, where she led a women’s paramilitary organization during the Indonesian revolution. Took struggle to Malaya, but detained in 1948. Led UMNO’s women’s wing, but was expelled for radical views and later joined the Parti Islam Se-Malaya. Died in poverty in 1982.
Khin Myo Chit (b. 1915). Socialist radical, Buddhist and literary figure. Women’s official in Ba Maw’s government, 1943–5. Teacher in Rangoon University after the war.
Knight, Sir Henry (b. 1886). Joined Indian Civil Service in 1909. Acting Governor Bombay, 1945, Madras, 1946, and Burma, June–August 1946.
Lai Teck (b. 1900?). Best-known alias of the Vietnamese-born secretary general of the Malayan Communist Party. Exposed as a British and Japanese agent in 1947; fled to Bangkok, where he was assassinated later the same year.
Laithwaite, Sir Gilbert (b. 1894). Assistant undersecretary of state, India Office, 1943; undersecretary of state, War Cabinet, 1944–5; deputy undersecretary of state for Burma from 1945.
Lee, H. S. (Hau Shik) (b. 1901). Industrialist and leader of the Selangor Chinese. Active in the Kuomintang (he held the rank of colonel) and then the Malayan Chinese Association. Brokered the MCA’s first electoral alliance with UMNO in the Kuala Lumpur municipal elections of 1952. First finance minister of independent Malaya.
Lee Kong Chian (b. 1894). Rubber tycoon and philanthropist. Son-in-law to Tan Kah Kee and leading spokesman of the Chinese of Singapore.
Lee Kuan Yew (b. 1923). Singaporean politician. A student at the elite Raffles Institution in Singapore in 1942. Worked as a translator for the Japanese during the war, then studied in Cambridge and at the London Bar. Founded the People’s Action Party in 1954; prime minister of Singapore, 1959–90; after stepping down, continued to exercise a leading political role.
Leyden, John L. (b. 1904). Joined the Burma Frontier Service in 1927. Well connected with Kachins and Chins; involved in covert operations 1942–3. Returned to Frontier Areas Administration 1946.
Liew Yao (b. 1918). Leading military commander of the MPAJA. An early casualty in the Emergency when intercepted at Kajang, Selangor, June 1948.
Lim Chin Siong (b. 1933). Charismatic Singaporean left-wing trade unionist and politician. Detained 1955–7 and again 1963–9. After release went into exile in England; later returned to Singapore but never re-entered politics.
Listowel, 5th earl of (William Francis Hare) (b. 1906) Labour politician. Parliamentary undersecretary for India and Burma, 1944–5; secretary of state for India and Burma from April 1947 and for Burma only from August 1947. Visited Burma 1947.
MacDonald, Malcolm John (b. 1901). Governor general, 1946–8, and commissioner general, 1948–55, in Southeast Asia. Son of Ramsay MacDonald. Served as a reforming colonial secretary, 1935, 1938–40, and dominion secretary, 1935–8, 1938–9. Later high commissioner in India, governor of Kenya and special representative in East and Central Africa.
Mahathir Mohamad (b. 1923). Malay politician. A medical student in Singapore after the war, and author of occasional newspaper columns on Malay affairs. Later joined UMNO and became fourth prime minister of Malaysia, 1981–2003.
Mahomed Ali Jinnah (b. 1876). President of the All-India Muslim League, 1916, 1920 and from 1934. First Governor General of Pakistan from August 1947. Died 1948.
Marshall, David (b. 1908). First chief minister of Singapore, 1955–6, on a Labour Party platform. Of Baghdadi Jewish background, he was a noted trial lawyer and human rights campaigner.
Maung Maung, Bo (b. 1920). Young recruit to Aung San’s BIA who took part in the anti-Japanese revolt in 1945 and went on to a career in the Burmese military after 1948.
Mountbatten, Admiral Lord Louis (b. 1900). Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, 1943–6. Rebuilt army morale 1943. Overall director of Imphal–Kohima campaign, 1944. Cultivated relations with Aung San’s Burma Defence Army in 1945 and aided its rebellion against the Japanese that March. Viceroy of India 1947, then governor general of independent India.
Mustapha Hussain (b. 1910). Malay nationalist. Vice-president of the Kesatuan Melayu Muda. Accompanied the Japanese advance to Singapore, but soon became disillusioned with them. Detained briefly after the war, and narrowly defeated by Tunku Abdul Rahman in UMNO’s presidential election of 1951.
Ne Win (b. 1911). One of ‘Thirty Comrades’ of the Burma Independence Army. Military commander of Burmese Defence Forces, 1943–5. Commander of Burmese armed forces in 1948. Later dictator of Burma.
Nehru, Jawaharlal (b. 1889). Indian Congress Socialist leader. Favoured the Allies over the Axis, but went to jail following the Quit India movement in 1942. First prime minister of independent India, 1947. Architect of Bandung Conference and Non-Aligned Movement.
Nu, Thakin (later U Nu) (b. 1907). Burmese student activist and devout Buddhist. Minister in Ba Maw’s government 1943–5; AFPFL, 1945–6. Became head of government for independent Burma following the assassination of Aung San in 1947, and its first prime minister in 1948. Architect of Bandung Conference, 1955.
Onn bin Jaafar, Dato (b. 1895). Leading Malay of Johore. In 1946, headed the United Malays National Organization. Left UMNO to form multi-racial Independence for Malaya Party, 1951–4, known from 1954 as Party Negara. Failed to win seat in 1955 election, but elected MP in 1959.
Paw Tun, Sir (b. 1883). Conservative Arakanese politician. Prime minister of Burma 1942. Exiled to Simla in India with Dorman-Smith. Member of Governor’s Executive Council 1945–6.
Pearce, Major General Sir Charles Frederick (b. 1892). Governor’s secretary, Burma, 1939. Commissioned into the army, he became a key figure in Civil Administration Secretariat (Burma) during reconquest, 1943–5. Counsellor to Governor, 1946.
Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron (Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence) (b. 1871). Secretary of state for India and Burma, 1945 to April 1947. Member of Cabinet Mission to India, 1946.
Purcell, Victor (b. 1896). Civil servant in Malaya and a key figure in its post-war planning. Returned there as adviser on Chinese affairs in 1945. Later critic of Templer regime; historian of the Chinese in Southeast Asia and Cambridge University lecturer.
Rance, Major General Sir Hubert (b. 1898). Served on Western Front, 1939–43. Director of civil affairs in Burma, 1945–6. Governor of Burma, August 1946 to January 1948.
Saw, U (b. 1900). Minister of forests for Burma 1939; prime minister, 1940–42. Flew to London in 1941 on goodwill mission. Imprisoned in Uganda during war for contacting Japanese. Returned to Burma 1946. Convicted of assassination of Aung San 1947. Hanged 1948.
Shamsiah Fakeh (b. 1924). Malay radical and leader of AWAS women’s movement. Took to jungle in 1948 and active in the 10th Regiment of the MNLA. Married briefly to Ahmad Boestamam.
Sjahrir, Sutan (b. 1909). Indonesian socialist born in West Sumatra and educated in the Netherlands. Experienced imprisonment and internal exile by Dutch, 1934–41. First prime minister of Indonesia, 1945–7, he led negotiations with British and Dutch.
Slim, General (later Field Marshal), Sir William (b. 1891). Commander 1st Burma Corps, 1942, during retreat with Gen. Harold Alexander. Main figure in rebuilding 14th Army and success of its Burma campaigns 1944–5. Commander Allied Land Forces South East Asia, 1945. Later governor general of Australia.
Smith Dun, Colonel (b. 1906). Karen military officer who fought with 14th Army in Burma campaign, became commander-in-chief of Burma’s armed forces 1948, but was speedily dismissed.
Soe, Thakin (b. 1905). Communist leader. Set up ‘base area’ in Burma delta, 1942–5. Broke with Anti-Fascist People’s Front government and led Red Flag communists in rebellion against British and independent government of Burma, 1946–55.
Stevenson, Henry Noel Cochrane (b. 1903). Joined Burma Frontier Service in 1926. Organized Chin levies, 1942–3. Served in Civil Affairs Secretariat Burma, 1944–5. Director Frontier Areas Administration, 1946 to February 1947, when he was replaced for being too close to minorities leaders.
Suhrawardy, H. S. (b. 1892). Bengali Muslim politician. Minister of labour, Bengal, 1937. Minister of supplies in Bengal government during 1943 famine. Chief minister, Bengal, after 1946 elections. Implicated in Great Calcutta Killing, 1946. Founded East Pakistan Awami League.
Sukarno (b. 1901). First president of Indonesia, 1945–66. Presided at Bandung Conference, 1955. Declared martial law and ‘guided democracy’ in 1957. Removed by Suharto after failed military coup in 1965.
Tan Cheng Lock (b. 1883). Straits Chinese leader, businessman and legislator. Fled to India on Japanese invasion of Malaya. Figurehead leader of left-wing United Front in 1947; founding president of the Malayan Chinese Association in 1949. Knighted 1952. His son, Tan Siew Sin (b. 1916) succeeded him and was a minister in independent Malaya.
Tan Kah Kee (b. 1874). Leader of the Overseas Chinese; headed the China Relief Fund, 1937–41. Spent the war hiding in Java, returning to Singapore to head China Democratic League. Returned to China in 1949.
Tan Malaka (b. 1897). Sumatra-born leader of Partai Kommunis Indonesia and Comintern. In hiding in Singapore on outbreak of war, and later escaped incognito to Indonesia. Revealed himself in 1946 to lead calls for social revolution. Died at hands of republican soldiers in 1948.
Templer, Sir Gerald Walter Robert (b. 1898). High Commissioner of Malaya, 1952–4. Earlier served in military government of occupied Germany and as director of military intelligence. After Malaya became Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 1955–8, and retired a field marshal.
Than Tun (b. 1911). Student leader. Minister of agriculture under Ba Maw, 1943. Joined anti-Japanese resistance. Led Burma Communist Party in 1945. Broke with AFPFL in 1946
Thein Pe Myint (b. 1914). Burmese communist who escaped to India in 1942. Author of What happened in Burma, an attack on the Japanese occupation. Sent to Chungking, China, but maintained links with Burmese resistance to Japanese. Secretary of the Burma Communist Party, 1945–55. Broke with AFPFL in 1946.
Tin Tut (b. 1895). Barrister and Burmese member of Indian Civil Service. Accompanied U Saw to London in 1941. Joined Dorman-Smith in Simla, 1942. Left ICS and became financial adviser to AFPFL government. Accompanied Aung San to London, January 1947. Assassinated 1948.
Tunku Abdul Rahman (b. 1903). Malay prince of Kedah. Served as a district officer during war. As head of the United Malays National Organization led Malaya to independence in 1957; prime minister until 1970.
Wavell, Field Marshal Sir Archibald (b. 1883). Commander-in-chief, India, 1941–3. Viceroy and Governor General of India, 1943–7.
Yeung Kuo (b. 1917). Malayan Communist Party leader. In Penang in 1946, aided Chin Peng in exposure of Lai Teck and was viewed as Chin’s deputy. Killed in the jungle shortly before the 1955 Baling peace talks.
In August 1945 the US dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, so bringing to an end the Second World War. Yet in Asia the Second World War was only one intense and awful phase of a much longer conflict: ‘the defeat of Japan would not end war in Asia’, as one Indian newspaper mused when news of the Japanese surrender leaked out. This long and savage war had begun in 1937 with a full-scale attack on China by the Japanese imperialists. It continued after 1945 in a range of intense and bloody wars, both civil and against a revived European colonialism. These conflicts, variously called the Indonesian revolution, the First Indo-China War, the Partition of India, the Burmese civil war, the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War, surged on into the 1970s and beyond. It was not really until the 1980s, with the economic renaissance of Japan, the rise of Singapore and Malaysia and the beginning of the transformation of Asian communist regimes towards free-market capitalism, that Asia began to claim its place in the sun as the dominant continent of the twenty-first century.
This book is the story of the first and most intense period of the birth pangs of this new Asian world. It concentrates particularly on the great crescent of territory between eastern India and Singapore which had once been the commercial heart of Britain’s Asian empire and which a revived and self-consciously ‘constructive’ British Empire now wished to reclaim as its own. The book focuses on the years between 1945 and 1949 and is a sequel to our earlier work, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire and the War with Japan (Allen Lane, 2004). British troops, including a large contingent of Indian and African soldiers, poured into Burma from northeastern India, reversing the humiliating defeat which they had suffered at Japanese hands three years earlier. The British went on to occupy Thailand, much of the former French Indo-China and Dutch Indonesia, ostensibly in order to disarm the Japanese. But this revivified British Empire attempted to recreate itself in conditions vastly different from those that had prevailed a few years earlier. The British now faced a variety of powerful, armed and embittered nationalist leaderships determined to claim immediate independence.
Forgotten Wars tells the story of how Burmese resistance and the collapse of the British Raj in India brought Burma to independence in 1948, but how that independence was corroded by inter-ethnic conflict and the irresistible rise of the Burmese army which remains dominant in the country today. It shows how Britain was able to maintain its grip in Malaya and Singapore only because it garnered and received the support of conservative Malay and Chinese leaderships which feared the powerful Malayan Communist Party whose cadres Britain itself had helped to arm during the conflict with Japan. It charts the beginning of the long Indo-China war which culminated in the American defeat in southern Vietnam in 1975 and the bloody and little-understood lurch towards Indonesian independence after the fall of Japan. In the process, the book analyses the emergence of the Cold War in Asia. To the north of the region, China became a communist monolith. To the east, North Vietnam seized independence from the French. But to the south, Britain’s rigorous campaign of counter-insurgency against the Malayan communists determined that the future states of Singapore and Malaysia would remain pro-Western and capitalist. These events sowed some of the seeds of East Asia’s great economic miracle which was to blossom in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Burma took a unique road to isolation and stagnation as its leaders battled both communist insurgency and the demands of minority peoples for autonomy.
This book describes the struggles of proconsuls, colonial military commanders and nationalist leaders. But, like Forgotten Armies, it also tells the story of many ordinary people, both Asian and British, who were swept up in the violence of insurgency and counter-insurgency, communal rioting and renewed economic privation. The four years after the fall of Japan were Asia’s time of revolution. Amid the turmoil, people still looked forward to an age of plenty when they would ‘dance among showers of gold and silver’, according to a Burmese verse. This bright future was still long decades away in the year 1949. Many people are still waiting.
In writing this book we have accumulated many more debts than we can possibly recount here: research has been undertaken in many places and over a long period of time. Historical research depends on dedication and specialist expertise, and the staffs of archives and libraries in Asia and Britain have consistently provided both. We would like to mention Kevin Greenbank of the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, and Rachel Rowe of the Centre and the Royal Commonwealth Society Collections in the Cambridge University Library. Our thanks to the librarians and archivists in the British Library, the National Archives at Kew, the Imperial War Museum, the National Army Museum, the Liddell Hart Centre in King’s College, London, and the library, archives and Burma Star Collection in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and the Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta. In Southeast Asia, the Perpustakaan Universiti Malaya, the Arkib Negara Malaysia, the National Archives of Singapore, the National Library of Singapore and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore have been particularly helpful.
We owe a special debt of thanks to Simon Winder, who has not only been a patient and indulgent editor but has also plied us with historiographical queries like the most genial of research supervisors. Katherine Prior once again contributed the index and helped us to clarify important questions. Thanks are due also to Chloe Campbell, Michal Shavit and Trevor Horwood for their editorial help over the two volumes and to Sophie Brockley, Bruce Hunter, Dr Romain Bertrand and Stuart Martin for their support and encouragement. Many other debts have been incurred. Sunil Amrith, Chua Ai Lin, Neil Khor, Gerard McCann, Emma Reisz, Felicia Yap, Lim Cheng Tju, C. C. Chin, Ronald Hyam, Christopher Goscha, Dr Syed Husin Ali and Professor Jomo K. S. all provided us with new material or insights. We owe special thanks to Professor Robert Taylor and Professor Robert Anderson for their helpful comments on portions of the manuscript. Any errors that remain are, of course, ours. Magdalene College and St Catharine’s College in Cambridge; Ms Véronique Bolhuis and the Centre Asie, Institut d’Etudes Politique, Paris; Oommen George, Yeo Seok Lian and many others in Kuala Lumpur all provided wonderful conditions in which to write. Our most unfailing supporters have been Susan Bayly and Norman and Collette Harper. We are very grateful to everyone who has helped us.