Decolonisation of Asia

• 1. Introduction

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  Decolonisation of Asia began not with a single revolution but with a slow, centuries-long unraveling of foreign control across the world's largest continent. The story stretches from the fall of Dutch Formosa in 1662 all the way to the independence of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste from Indonesia in 2002. Between those bookends lies one of history's most consequential reshapings of the political map. What drew so many European powers to Asia, and what finally drove them out? Why did some colonies slip free within weeks of World War II ending while others waited decades longer? And what does it mean that a continent this vast, home to so many peoples and languages and kingdoms, spent centuries under foreign administration? Those questions animate every chapter of this story.

• 2. Europe's Arrival and Expansion

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  Portugal and Spain were the first European powers to project force into Asia, but their decline in the 17th century opened the door for rivals. The Netherlands moved quickly, absorbing much of what Portugal had built and establishing a commanding presence in what is now Indonesia, planting colonies in Aceh, Bantam, Makassar and Jakarta. Dutch trade networks spread further still, reaching Siam, Japan, China and Bengal.

  Britain's foothold grew more slowly but ultimately more durably. The British East India Company anchored the enterprise, and by the mid-19th century Britain held much of India alongside Burma, Ceylon, Malaya and Singapore. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India, formalizing what had been a patchwork of company rule into something resembling an imperial crown jewel. The last British acquisition in Asia came in 1897, when the New Territories of Hong Kong were leased from the Qing emperor, extending a colony that had first been ceded in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking.

  France found India a difficult theatre, suffering defeats against the British in the 17th century. It clung on at Pondicherry and Mahar on the east coast, but its real ambition shifted eastward. In 1862 France established what became French Indochina, and by 1887 it occupied the present-day territories of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

  Japan moved along a different track altogether. Its first colony was Taiwan, occupied in 1874 and formally ceded by the Qing emperor in 1894. Korea followed with annexation in 1910. Japan was the only Asian great power with its own colonial empire, and that fact would reshape the entire region in the 1940s. The United States entered the picture in 1898 through the Spanish-American War, acquiring the Philippines in what one account describes as a mock battle in the capital, followed by formal acquisition through the 1898 Treaty of Paris.

• 3. World War II as a Turning Point

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  Burma was almost completely occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War. Many Burmese fighters sided with Japan in the early stages before the Burmese Army and most of the population switched allegiances in 1945. A British-sponsored transitional government then guided the country toward independence, which came in January 1948.

  Cambodia's path illustrates how France's wartime humiliation complicated the postwar settlement. Following France's capitulation and the formation of the Vichy regime, French Indochina's possessions passed to Japan. After the war, despite some American argument that Indochina should not revert to France, Cambodia remained under French rule. France had placed Norodom Sihanouk on the throne in 1941, expecting a compliant monarch. They were wrong. Sihanouk led Cambodia to independence in 1953, exploiting the pressure created by the ongoing First Indochina War being fought across the border in Vietnam.

  Ceylon became a vital Allied base of operations during the conflict, and Britain responded to popular independence pressure by granting the country Dominion status in February 1948.

  In the Philippines, Japan granted a short-lived nominal independence in 1943, though occupation continued until 1944 when a combined American and Filipino invasion began. The United States formally recognised Philippine independence under the 1946 Treaty of Manila. Hong Kong was returned to Britain after Japanese occupation, then governed by a British governor until the ninety-nine-year lease on the New Territories expired in 1997, at which point the territory transferred to the People's Republic of China as a Special Administrative Region.

• 4. The Philippine Thread

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  Philippine revolutionaries declared independence from Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, but sovereignty never actually transferred to them. Spain ceded the archipelago directly to the United States through the 1898 Treaty of Paris. In 1899, revolutionaries established the First Philippine Republic, and almost immediately the Philippine-American War began, ending in a U.S. victory in 1901, though isolated resistance continued for years after.

  In 1902 the Philippines formally became a U.S. territory with ratification of the Treaty of Paris on the 11th of April 1899. It became a U.S. Commonwealth in 1936. Japan occupied the islands during World War II. The first head of state upon independence under the 1946 Treaty of Manila was Manuel Roxas. The 1935 Constitution remained in force until 1973, when the Marcos regime replaced it with a newer one; that in turn was replaced by the present 1987 Constitution. Emilio Aguinaldo had led the initial Philippine Revolution against Spain, and his declaration in 1898 became a legal and symbolic reference point even though full sovereignty over the islands had to wait nearly five more decades.

• 5. The Soviet Dissolution

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  The end of European colonial power in Asia was not only a story about Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal. The Soviet Union's collapse added a cluster of new independent states across Central Asia and the Caucasus almost simultaneously. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan gained independence on the 31st of August 1991. Kazakhstan followed on the 16th of December 1991. Tajikistan declared on the 9th of September 1991. Turkmenistan on the 27th of October 1991. Georgia had moved even earlier, on the 9th of April 1991. Azerbaijan gained independence on the 30th of August 1991 and Armenia on the 21st of September 1991.

  Their capitals tell a story of geographic spread: Tashkent, Astana, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Ashgabat, Tbilisi, Baku, Yerevan. These were not territories that had been passed from European power to European power over centuries; they had been absorbed into Russian and then Soviet control by different mechanisms. Their independence in 1991 represents a distinct category within the decolonisation of Asia, one driven not by anticolonial armed struggle or negotiated transfer but by the internal fracture of a superpower.

• 6. The Last Holdouts

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  Portugal proved the most reluctant of the European colonial powers to withdraw. Portuguese India, including Goa, did not leave Portuguese control until 1961. Macau, the first European colony in China, established in 1557, was not returned to the People's Republic of China until 1999. Portuguese Timor, colonized from 1702, declared independence in November 1975 under Francisco Xavier do Amaral, but Indonesia then occupied the territory. International recognition finally came following a UN-sponsored act of self-determination in 1999, and the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste formally achieved independence in 2002, under Xanana Gusmao.

  Brunei, a British protectorate since 1888, did not gain independence until an agreement with Britain in January 1979 took full effect, with Hassanal Bolkiah as head of state. Hong Kong's 1997 handover with Tung Chee-hwa as the first Chief Executive and Macau's 1999 return under Edmund Ho closed out the formal transfer of remaining colonial territory, though the Palestinian situation remained unresolved into the 21st century, with sovereignty still disputed following the Six-Day War and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The thread running from Dutch Formosa in 1662 to Dili in 2002 spans three and a half centuries, the longest arc of any decolonisation process on earth.