The Sumatra-born revolutionary, Tan Malaka, shared prison time in Hong Kong with Ho Chi Minh. In this chapter we see the then twenty-six-year-old Tan Malaka setting up in revolutionary Guangzhou under Communist International auspices. There, he networked with leading Sun Yat-sen government officials, co-hosted an important Asian trade union conference, and assumed a new role as editor and publisher. Known to Ho Chi Minh from Moscow days, the two would also meet in Guangzhou. Somewhat adrift in the Philippines prior to deportation to China, it could well have been Ho Chi Minh who summoned him to Hong Kong with a view to clarifying the status of the communist movement in Singapore/Malaya in the wake of a failed rebellion on Java. Tan Malaka was treated differently from his Vietnamese counterpart. He was arrested in the British colony, denied legal assistance, did not make a court appearance or gain media attention, although he did evade extradition to his homeland. Tan Malaka bequeathed a rich description of his experience in Victoria Prison and this chapter adds fresh detail on this episode, otherwise little acknowledged in Hong Kong writing.

The Epilogue elaborates briefly the transformation of the Indo-Islamic world in the colonial and postcolonial centuries.

Collective beliefs and the corresponding political organization influenced features of interstate relations such as the nature of warfare, alliance structure, and the absence of a hegemonic power. Except for Siam, the European colonial powers controlled every polity in Southeast Asia by the late nineteenth century. Siam adjusted to Western principles of political organization but did so against the backdrop of its existing belief system. Positivist international law nevertheless continued to exclude it from the Law of Nations, in a case similar to how the West treated the Islamic and East Asian polities.

The rapid technological advances which took place in the second half of the 19th century – most notably steam shipping, the opening of the Suez Canal, and printing -- allowed for increased exchanges and communication across Islamized Asia. The intellectual vitality that enveloped Cairo and Mecca reached many across Asia, whether directly through travel or indirectly through publications. As World War One brought about the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the Caliphate in 1924, at the same time reinforcing European colonial presence, Muslim communities world-wide became involved with pan-Islamism, whether as a reflection of their interest in the resurgence of a caliphate, or as a strategic component of their anti-colonial efforts, further reinforcing the sense of community and belonging. This chapter follows the impact of the Caliphal crisis across Asia with a focus on the Netherlands East Indies, British India and Soviet Central Asia, as Muslims in these locales became main initiators of forums to discuss the future of the Caliphate and came to embrace pan-Islamism as a rallying point to achieve independence, even though their frames were largely shaped by local understandings and experiences of culture, religion and politics. [193]

Bandmann’s engagement with the many localities on his circuit required a degree of political activity at a level which is termed here micropolitical. This term refers to personal connections and networks and how they function in a political context. For Bandmann, who attempted to build or manage theatres on his circuit, this meant forging political and business partnerships that demonstrate a much deeper engagement with locality than is normal for itinerant theatre. The micropolitics of locality are discussed in relation to the most important cities on his circuit, which were mostly entrepôts, port cities designed to facilitate colonial trade. The chapter provides detailed discussion of Bandmann’s activities in Malta, Cairo, Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, Hong Kong and the Dutch East Indies, as well as in connection with the Victoria Theatre in Singapore and Parsi theatre.

This chapter analyzes the colonial reforms of Bernhard Dernburg that culminated in the founding of the Hamburg Colonial Institute in 1908, to which Karl Rathgen was appointed. It also explores the disappointments with tropical colonies drawn from the surveys spearheaded by Max Sering, the observations of Hermann Schumacher in Southeast Asia in 1911, and Karl Rathgen’s travels in the American south and Caribbean in 1913. Dernburg successfully pushed investments in railways to better connect the German colonies to the German and world economy, and he set strict limits on white settlers. Even so, ambitions for a German temperate zone settler colony never quite died, even as it would prove elusive. The German colonial gaze did shift eastward to the Russian Empire in these years, which Sering and Schumacher visited in 1912 to inspect “inner colonization” in the Ukraine. They returned impressed with what they saw and committed to improving Russo-German relations, but better relations were increasingly hostage to Foreign Office prejudices and the Balkan rivalries of Austria and Russia.

Chapter 3 traces how the Dutch and British during the eighteenth century became increasingly concerned with the problem of piracy in Southeast Asia. The explanations for the prevalence of piracy in the writings of nineteenth-century British and Dutch authorities on the subject, such as Raffles, Crawfurd, Veth and Snouck Hurgronje, are investigated. The emphasis on racial, cultural and religious factors to explain piracy in the Malay Archipelago are highlighted. Different types of piracy in the Strait of Malacca after the 1840s are also identified, and a distinction is made between the petty Malay piracy and the larger and more organised activities perpetrated by heavily armed Chinese pirates, many of whom were based in Singapore. The British and Dutch efforts to suppress piracy are investigated, and the often dubious allegations of piracy directed against Malay states, such as Aceh, Perak and Selangor, are highlighted. It is concluded that piracy was actively securitised in order to justify colonial expansion but that such rhetoric and policies did not go unchallenged, particularly in Great Britain, where vocal opponents of colonial expansion questioned the motives of those in favour of military intervention and colonial expansion.