This book provides the basis for a reconceptualization of key features in Southeast Asia's history. Scholars from Europe, America, and Asia examine evolutionary patterns of Europe's and Japan's Southeast Asian empires from the late nineteenth century through World War II, and offer important insights into the specific events of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In turn, their different perspectives on the political, economic, and cultural currents of the "post-colonial" era - including Southeast Asia's gradual adjustment to globalizing forces - enhance understanding of the dynamics of the...