The dropping of the atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender did not signal the end of the Second World War in Asia. Instead, between 1945 and 1949, South and Southeast Asia were engulfed in an era of violent decolonization marked by civil wars, anticolonial freedom movements, communist-led guerilla insurrections, and intercommunal massacres. These “Forgotten Wars,” which threatened European occupation of Asia, have largely been ignored by the historiography both of the Second World War and of decolonization in Asia. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper's Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia redresses these gaps by innovatively reintegrating comparative histories of the birth of Asian nation-states with that of decolonization and the onset of Cold War politics in the region.

Set against the backdrop of postwar Asia and spanning the geographical crescent from Bengal and Burma, down to the Indonesian archipelago, Forgotten Wars critically examines British-led efforts to regain European imperial control of the region, and the challenges from regional nationalist and communist groups that contested such efforts. In 1946, Asia, under colonial rule, be it under British, Dutch, or French, was “a connected arc of protest” (190), as local nationalists in India, Indonesia, Malay, and Burma looked to one another for political inspiration and to learn the lessons of armed resistance against their respective colonial governments. Further, under the aegis of the South East Asian Command (under Admiral Mountbatten), southeast Asia emerged as a distinct geopolitical entity. However, the authors are quick to indicate that the “second colonial conquest” of the crescent overstretched imperial manpower and exposed postwar Britain's ambivalent attitudes toward its colonial empire. While Conservative leaders such as Churchill and Anthony Eden were staunchly against any form of imperial retreat after the war, surprisingly, the Labour Party's colonial policies were not that far removed. Bayly and Harper argue that although Atlee and his contemporaries were “by no means convinced of the inherent value of territorial empire, they were none the less sure of the doctrine of the white man's burden” (96). Many within the Labour Ministry strongly believed that the “Burmese, Malays, Arabs, and Africans … might well require decades more imperial tutelage before they could emerge into the light of freedom and democracy” (96). Such ambiguity, at a time when the British hold in India was becoming tenuous, added weight to the British decision to enter into complicated power-sharing relationships with the French in Indo-China and the Dutch in Indonesia after the war.

Consequently, Britain's Asian empire was further exposed to different nationalist and communist liberation movements. Bayly and Harper assert that the British failed to immediately appreciate that nationalisms within Asia had been transformed by the war and Japanese rule. Military skills imparted generously by both the Japanese and the Allies during the Second World War, access to weapons, and readily identifiable enemies provided the necessary template to test the limits of imperial rule. Radical ideologies such as Marxism, principles of social democracy, and the ethics of religious revivalism sought to implement respective visions of just and good societies and jockeyed with one another for control of the emerging nationalities in India, the Malay Union, and Burma. As Bayly and Harper note, “for many, this sense of possibility, this call to be agents of historical change, was irresistible” (517).

In Burma, for instance, one “agent of historical change” the authors focus on is Aung Sun, whose efforts to keep different political and ethnic minorities on board ensured that civil strife was kept at bay initially. However, his assassination in 1947 ensured that the fruits of Burmese independence in January 1948 were quite bitter, as the state quickly came under authoritarian rule and became a hotbed of ethnic insurgencies. While not ignoring the colonial roots of such insurgencies, Bayly and Harper suggest that factional politics, a bankrupt government, and the arming of the ethnic minorities under British reoccupation were critical in the fragmentation of the Burmese territorial state after 1948.

Forgotten Wars complicates the colonizer/colonized paradigm by closely examining the complex intersections between different British officials and diverse sections of Asian elites. In the Malayan peninsula, British officials such as the new Commissioner General Malcolm Macdonald negotiated with conservative Malayan and Chinese leaders to bring about the Federation of Malay. The Malaya Tribune described the federation as “a gentleman's agreement under which the Malays are granted certain privileges on the understanding that they will leave all real authority in the hands of the British bureaucracy” (408). Ironically, conservative Malay support for British officials was engendered by their fear of the Malayan Communist Party, whose cadres had been trained by the British to fight the Japanese. In 1948, matters came to a head as the Malayan Communist Party under the leadership of Chin Peng declared war against the colonial government. The authors provide a chilling narrative of the Emergency period, the brutality of the killings at Batang Kali, and the cycle of terror and counterterror that engulfed the peninsula in the ensuing decades.

Bayly and Harper present a fascinating tale of political intrigue during the constitutional endgame of the British Empire and the onset of the Cold War in Asia. The book focuses minutely on the clash of powerful personalities, the aims and ambitions of colonial military commanders, and nationalist and communist leaders. Colorful anecdotes and acerbic exchanges of and between such men pepper each chapter and make for lively reading. The dynamism of this period is evocatively captured through a prodigious use of contemporary newspapers, biographies, private papers of British officials, and writings of Indian, Burmese, Malayan, and Indonesian leaders. Forgotten Wars movingly brings out the travails of ordinary people who got caught up within a vicious cycle of political turmoil, economic deprivation, and violence. This is a “must read” for those interested in histories of British imperialism and decolonization in Asia and those who would like an introduction to the comparative regional histories of nation-states in Southeast Asia after 1945.