Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T20:25:18.264Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shaping the ‘China Problem’ of Colonial Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2014

Yamamoto Nobuto
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the early 1920s Southeast Asia, before communism compelled the creation of inter-colonial intelligence networks in the late period of the decade, a situation that can be called the ‘China problem’ emerged as an issue for the colonial powers in the region. This problem refers to the political activities by local Chinese populations in response to events that were taking place in China. The colonial powers, however, could not find a common solution to this issue, but instead dealt with it individually. An explanation to this lies in the fact that, unlike in Northeast Asia where the ‘Washington System’ shaped international politics in the 1920s, in Southeast Asia no such official framework had been established to deal with regional issues. This article sets out to demonstrate that under Britain's ‘informal empire’ in Southeast Asia, the colonial powers informally started to exchange information on domestic Chinese politics in their colonies as well as the political development in China. The ‘China problem’ was thus a catalyst that brought to the region ‘international’ politics and in particular the politics of immigration control.

Keywords

China problemcolonial Southeast Asiamigrationimmigration controlsecurity
Type
Articles
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 2 , Special Issue 1: Heritage, History, and Historical Processes , January 2014 , pp. 131 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Institute of East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aldrich, Richard. 1993. The Key to the South: Britain, the United States, and Thailand during the Approach of the Pacific War, 1929–1942. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Atkins, Martin. 1995. Informal Empire in Crisis: British Diplomacy & the Chinese Customs Succession, 1927–1929. Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Program.Google Scholar
Bewley-Taylor, David R. 2001. The United States and International Drug Control 1909–1997. London and New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bestuur, Binnenlandsch 1919. Handleiding ten dienste van de Inlandsche Bestuursambetenaren No. 10/J: Toelating en vestiging van Nederlanders en vreemdelingen in Nederlandsch-Indië. Batavia: Landsdrukkerij.Google Scholar
Borel, Henri. 1900. De Chineesche kwestie. Amsterdam: L. J. Veen.Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Ian. 1998. Beyond the great divide: globalization and the theory of international Relations. Review of International Studies 24(4), 479–498.Google Scholar
Comber, Leon. 2009. The Singapore mutiny (1915) and the genesis of political intelligence in Singapore. Intelligence and National Security 24(4), 529–541.Google Scholar
Curley, Melissa G. and Siu-lun, Wong. (eds.) 2008. Security and Migration in Asia: The Dynamics of Securitisation. Oxon and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Alec. 1936. Singapore Patrol: The Experiences of a Detective-Officer in Malaya. London: Harrap.Google Scholar
Documenten betreffende de buitenlandse politiek van Nederland, 1919–1945, period A, 1919–30, vol. 4.Google Scholar
Engelbert, Thomas. 2010. Chinese politics in colonial Saigon (1919–1938): the case of Guomindang. Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 4. Available at: http://chl.anu.edu.au/publications/csds/csds2010/09-7_Engelbert_2010.pdf (accessed on 10 June 2012).Google Scholar
Ferguson, Niall. 2002. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. London: Penguin Books Ltd.Google Scholar
Foster, Anne. 2010. Projections of Power: The United States and Europe in Colonial Southeast Asia, 1919–1941. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald. 1953. The imperialism of free trade. Economic History Review 1(1), 1–15.Google Scholar
George, David Lloyd. 1927. The Chinese Puzzle. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.Google Scholar
Goldin, Ian, Cameron, Geoffrey and Balarajan, Meera. 2011. Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, Marjory and Constantine, Stephen. 2010. Migration and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
India Office Library and Records. 2000. Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) Files, 1912–1950. London: IDC Publishers.Google Scholar
Knepper, Paul. 2010. The Invention of International Crime: A Global Issue in the Making, 1881–1914. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kuo, Huei-ying. 2006. Chinese Bourgeois Nationalism in Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1930s. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 36(3), 385–405.Google Scholar
Iriye, Aakira. 1978. After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931. New York: Athenaeum.Google Scholar
Ingleson, John. 1986. In Search of Justice: Workers and Unions in Colonial Java. Singapore: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Louis, William. 1971. British Strategy in the Far East, 1919–1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Mar, Lisa Rose. 2010. Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada's Exclusion Era, 1885–1945. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKeown, Adam. 2008. Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
McVey, Ruth. 1965. The Rise of Indonesian Communism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Nio, Joe Lan. 1940. Riwajat 40 taon dari Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan Batavia, 1900–1939. Batavia: Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan.Google Scholar
Nish, Ian. 1982. Japan in Britain's view of the international system, 1919–37. In Nish, Ian (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alienation 1919–1952: Papers of the Anglo-Japanese Conference on the History of the Second World War, pp. 27–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rush, James. 1990. Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1860–1910. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Saich, Tony. 1991. The Origins of the First United Front in China: The Role of Sneevliet (alias Maring). Leiden, New York, Kobenhavn, Köln: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Shiraishi, Takashi. 1990. An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Shiraishi, Takashi. 2003. A new regime of order: the origin of modern surveillance politics in Indonesia. In Siegel, John and Kahin, Audrey (eds.), Southeast Asia Over Three Generations: Essays Presented to Benedict R.O'G. Anderson, pp. 47–74. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program.Google Scholar
Suryadinata, Leo. 1976. Peranakan Chinese Politics in Java, 1912–1942. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Tagliacozzo, Eric. 2005. Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Trocki, Carl. 1990. Opium and Empire: Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800–1910. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Trotter, Ann. (ed.) 1996. British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part II “From the First to the Second World War,” Series E, Asia, 1914–1939, Volume 49: Siam and South-East Asia, 1914–1929. Bethesda: University Publications of America.Google Scholar
Yamamoto, Nobuto. 1997. Reading and placing Semaoen's Hikajat Kadiroen: a thought on political discourse and institutional politics in early Indonesian nationalism. Keio Journal of Politics, 9, 49–79.Google Scholar
Yamamoto, Nobuto. 2011a. Print Power and Censorship in Colonial Indonesia, 1914–1942. (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Cornell University.Google Scholar
Yamamoto, Nobuto. 2011b. The Chinese connection: rewriting journalism and social categories in Indonesian history. In Dieleman, Marleen, Koning, Juliette and Post, Peter (eds.), Chinese Indonesians and Regime Change, pp. 93–116. Leiden, Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Yong, Ching Fatt. 1991. Origins and development of the Malayan Communist Movement, 1919–1930. Modern Asian Studies, 25(4), 625–648.Google Scholar
Yong, Ching Fatt. 1997. The Origin of Malayan Communism. Singapore: South Seas Society.Google Scholar
Yong, Ching Fatt and McKenna, R. B. 1990. The Kuomintang Movement in British Malaya 1912–1949. Singapore: Singapore University Press.Google Scholar
Walt, Stephen. 1987. The Origins of Alliances. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Warren, James. 2003. Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore, 1880–1940. (Second editon). Singapore: Singapore University Press.Google Scholar
Wesseling, Henk. 2004. The European Colonial Empires, 1815–1919. London: Longman.Google Scholar
William, Lea. 1960. Overseas Chinese Nationalism: The Genesis of the Pan-Chinese Movement in Indonesia, 1900–1916. Glencoe: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Thomas and Donnan, Hastings. 1998. Nation, state and identity at international borders. In Wilson, Thomas M. and Donnan, Hastings (eds.), Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, pp. 1–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar