Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire

Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]30.00. xxx + 674 pages. ISBN 978-0-713-99782-8. This book is a continuation of the authors' Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-45. It covers the Asian Empire from 1945 to 1949, the land from Bengal to Thailand in the east and down the Malay Peninsula, in particular the granting of independence to Burma in 1948 and the problems faced in Singapore, Malaya and further east.

The chief of these were the resistance to colonial power and the rise of communist dictatorships. Thanks to British efforts, Singapore and Malaya (later Malaysia) remained free. The authors argue that the war in Asia was not 'a minor theatre of a global war centred upon Europe' but a series of wars that stretched from 1937 (if not earlier), when Japan invaded China, to the US defeat in South Vietnam. The Japanese defeat and the loss of Britain's Asian Empire were but parts of what the authors call the Great Asian War. The authors cover a massive range of events, peoples and crises of which the 'loss of empire' and even the Second World War were but two aspects. This is a tremendous undertaking that has been worthily carried out. (T.B.)

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