The United States and Britain’s Decolonization of Malaya, 1942–57

Abstract

`In the six months since the termination of hostilities with Japan it has become clear that the world is going through a colonial crisis unparalleled in history. The great empires built up by the Western European powers during four centuries have been shaken to their foundations. They are crumbling before our eyes.'1 This situation presented the United States with a dilemma. Were Americans to prop up these sick men of Europe or were they to smooth the pillow of the dying and act as midwife to emergent nations? As it happened, while ideologically committed to anti-colonialism, the United States approached Western dependencies in Southeast Asia in different ways. Transferring power to the Philippines on 4 July 1946, more or less according to a timetable set in 1935, the US held this up as a model for the European colonial powers to follow. None of them did. Impatient with Dutch intransigence in their struggle with the nascent Republic of Indonesia, in 1949 the American administration forced Holland to end its empire by threatening to withdraw Marshall Aid funding. By contrast, interpreting France's war with the Vietminh as part of the world-wide containment of communism, the United States decided to assist the French empire, prolonging its natural life until that cataclysmic collapse at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.