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  • Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945
  • Brian P. Farrell
Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945. By Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-674-01748-X. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxxiii, 555. $29.95.

When narrative history is done well, it can be very rewarding. This book, by two noted Cambridge historians of the British Empire, is one such example. If you insist on a label, call this political history in the contemporary sense: a discussion of changing attitudes towards disposing political power. Imagine two empires imposed from outside on a large area of great human variety and complexity. Both are destroyed rapidly by outside military power, producing widespread death, destruction, dislocation, even chaos. Now imagine this happening to the same people, in the same area, twice in five years. Bayly and Harper offer this narrative as a grand portrait of that Second World War experience for "British Asia."

Bayly and Harper argue that the area from Calcutta in eastern India to Singapore, at the southern tip of the Malaya peninsula, formed a distinct "crescent" within the larger British Empire in Asia. British military, political and economic paramountcy united this "crescent." That paramountcy also made it distinct within the area now called Southeast Asia—an area long linked by the inflow of Indian and Chinese diasporas which could penetrate but not assimilate the region, as well as by geography, trade, and many other bonds. Before 1941, despite the bewildering variety of demographic, cultural, social, and economic influences at play, the "crescent" was a relatively closed world, protected from change from without by British power, from within by rigidities of race, religion, social, and cultural relations. Japanese occupation of the whole area transformed it forever. The rapid destruction of British power and subsequent experience of Japanese imperialism shattered [End Page 1245] British prestige, galvanized the ambitions, fears, frictions, and agendas of numerous Asian communities, and most of all politicized the entire area. All of this was cemented by the almost equally rapid and even more catastrophic destruction of Japanese power. This produced a lasting change in attitudes towards politics and power "on the ground." The most important change was in attitudes towards the state, as an entity. Before the war "less was best." From 1945, the state became the prime vehicle to express the aspirations of aroused nationalisms. That change was the deepest impact of the fall of "British Asia."

Like all grand portraits, this one has minor blemishes. Most come from discussions of military operations. The British did intend to defend Kota Bharu and its important airbases in December 1941; Japanese troop numbers are consistently overstated, in Burma and in the region as a whole—the authors themselves concede them to be "highly approximate" (p. 273, note 11)—apart from understating the force that invaded Singapore island; the "sook ching" massacres in Singapore and Malaya were planned in outline before the Japanese invaded Malaya, not ordered by Yamashita in retaliation for Malayan Chinese resistance; and, arguably, the Japanese conquest united Southeast Asia under one political authority before Allied Southeast Asia Command did so by taking it back. But while this is not a military history of the military struggle between the British Empire and Japan, it places that struggle where it belongs in this larger story—as the central agent of change.

"Forgotten armies" may suggest another Eurocentric book, but the case is well made. The many armies of this struggle were the vehicles of political change. They were the key instrument of state power—or else the main expression of those who wanted state power—or even the focal point for minorities hoping to resist state power. The British Army, the Indian (British) Army, the Imperial Japanese Army, and the Indian National Army were joined by the Chinese Nationalist Army, the Burma Defence Army, the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army, the Overseas Chinese Anti-Japanese Army and a good number of local defence militias, levies, and forces, in this sprawling battle for control. Sooner or later the ebb and flow of world war made them all "forgotten"—the major Allied armies by the...

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