Rethinking Colonial Legacies Across Southeast Asia - Through the Lens of the Japanese Wartime Empire

This Element explores the significance of the Japanese wartime empire's occupation of Southeast Asia during World War Two for understanding the region's colonial legacies. It conceptualizes the occupation as a critical juncture that mediated the survival of American and European colonial institutions, and comparatively describes how, between 1940 and 1945, a wide variety of formal institutions for governing territories and people operated under the Japanese, who selectively kept or changed the existing arrangements of their Western predecessors, while sometimes introducing new ones altogether. The Japanese occupation, as such, generated different processes for transmitting pre-1940 colonial institutions into postwar and independent Southeast Asia. Building on new histories of the occupation, this Element offers an analytical framework that helps social scientists specify the mechanisms through which the long-run consequences of colonial institutions obtain in the context of Southeast Asia, while grappling more generally with what constitutes a meaningful rupture to historical continuity.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Two overviews of the Japanese wartime empire across Southeast Asia, 1940¿1945; 3. Varieties of wartime institutions; 4. Conclusion; References.

Summary

This Element shows the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia during World War Two, highlighting its impact on the region's colonial legacies and transmitting them into independent Southeast Asia. It helps social scientists understand the long-term consequences of colonial institutions.

Foreword

This Element rethinks Southeast Asia's colonial legacies by focusing on the Japanese occupation of the region during World War Two.

Product details

• Authors: Diana S. Kim, Diana S. (Georgetown University Kim
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.04.2025
• EAN: 9781009068468
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0906846-8
• No. of pages: 74
• Series: Elements in Politics and Society in Southeast Asia
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / General, South East Asia, Comparative Politics, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), Colonialism and imperialism, Political science and theory, Constitution: government & the state, Invasion, conquest and occupation