Webs of Empire: Inter-Colonial Observation, Collaboration, and Resistance in British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and French Indochina

In 1925, the Malayan Bulletin of Political Intelligence noted that the island of Java had recently been beset by numerous strikes protesting the injustices of Dutch colonial rule. Alarmingly, the Bulletin had it on “good authority that practically all the strikes may be traced directly or indirectly to Communist instigation.” Implicit in the report was the need for British authorities in Malaya to keep a watchful eye on the strikes in case the unrest spread across the narrow straits to their own colony. This paper argues that such inter-colonial observation was a well-entrenched colonial strategy by 1925. Indeed, since the mid-nineteenth century British, Dutch, and French authorities found it imperative to keep in touch with events in neighboring southeast Asian colonies. They were not motivated merely by curiosity. Rather, they sought to keep abreast of any colonial disturbance, resistance, or rebellion that might negatively impact their own territories. This mutual observation was indicative of a larger phenomenon of inter-colonial connection in southeast Asia. Indeed, colonial administrators in southeast Asia consistently sought to learn from one another’s successes and mistakes, and frequently borrowed or adapted policies and ideas from one another. I argue, moreover, that these practices represented a pragmatic response to conditions in colonial southeast Asia, for colonial subjects in the region were hardly isolated from the political, cultural, and intellectual currents in neighboring societies and beyond. Because of this, it behooved colonial authorities to remain aware of events in neighboring colonies, and to create the institutional and diplomatic mechanisms through which inter-colonial channels could remain open. The result, I argue, was a set of deeply interrelated imperial systems rather than a set of separate national colonies operating in isolation from one another.