The six volumes that make up this set provide an overview of colonialism in South-East Asia. The first volume deals with Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch Imperialism before 1800, the second with empire-building during the 19th century, and the third with the imperial heyday in the early 20th century. The remaining volumes are devoted to the decline of empire, covering nationalism and the Japanese challenge to the western presence in the region, and the transition to independence - peaceful in the case of the Philippines, Burma and Malaysia, but violent in Indonesia and Vietnam. The authors whose...

During the Pacific War the Japanese government used a wide range of methods to recruit workers for construction projects throughout the occupied territories. Mistreatment of workers was a major grievance, both in widely publicized cases such as the use of prisoners of war and forced Asian labor to construct the Thailand-Burma "Death" Railway, and in a very large number of smaller projects. In this book an international group of specialists on the Occupation period examine the labor needs and the recruitment and use of workers (whether forced, military, or otherwise) throughout the Japanese...

During the Pacific War the Japanese government recruited hundreds of thousands of workers for military construction projects throughout the occupied territories. Mistreatment of workers was widespread, and the number of deaths arising from beatings, malnutrition, and disease was enormous, rivaling the holocaust of Europe. The victims were primarily unskilled laborers drawn from cities and rural areas across Asia. Most were men, but many women and children also found their way to the work sites, and perished there. Because most victims were illiterate, and the Japanese destroyed nearly all...

Beginning with the closing decade of European colonial rule in Southeast Asia and covering the wartime Japanese empire and its postwar disintegration, "Tensions of Empire" focuses on the Japanese in Southeast Asia, Indonesians in Japan, and the legacy of the war in Southeast Asia. It also examines Japanese perceptions of Southeast Asia and the lingering ambivalence toward Japanese involvement in Asia and toward the war in particular.
Drawing on extensive multilingual archival research and interviews, Ken'ichi Goto has produced a factually rich and balanced view of this region's historical...

The Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia between 1941 and 1945 brought with it severe food shortages, largely arising from organizational failures and inadequate transportation. the nine essays in this volume examine the situation in food exporting countries such as Burma, Thailand and Vietnam, in food deficit areas such as Malaya, the Philippines and Java, and in Sarawak which was largely self-sufficient. Two essays examine in detail the famine that struck the Tonkin area of northern Vietnam in 1945.