First published in 1957, this classic work on the political situation in Southeast Asia at the start of the Vietnam War includes a supplement covering events up to mid-1958. An introductory chapter describes the general political and economic characteristics of this important region lying south of Communist China and east of neutralist India. Individual chapters are devoted to Indonesia, the Philippines, Indochina, Thailand, Malaya, and Burma. The concluding chapters analyze the international relations of Southeast Asia and describe American foreign policy in the area.

Australia as a Western society in the Orient faces a unique and paradoxical challenge in her relations with her close but unfamiliar neighbors of Southeast Asia. Explicitly dependent upon British foreign policy until the fall of Singapore in 1942, Australia has reluctantly and painfully begun the task of developing a policy of her own.

The Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia and many of the Pacific islands during the Second World War awakened Australia to the need to secure her own defenses and later, when Britain began a gradual withdrawal from Southeast Asia, Australia was thrown...

Southeast Asia, whose alienation might tilt the balance of power in favor of the Communist bloc, has become the focus of American foreign policy. Amry Vandenbosch and Richard Butwell here trace the development of the eight nations which comprise Southeast Asia and appraise their current role in international affairs.

Although led to adopt state forms similar to those of the departing colonial powers, each nation traditionally had quite different political systems. It is the authors' thesis that their historical patterns of political and social behavior are re-emerging and that the...