 Islands
The Dutch and the Spanish controlled much of Southeast
Asia during the early 1800s. The
Dutch East Indies was renowned
for its rich soil which allowed the harvesting of crops such
as: coffee, pepper, cinnamon, sugar, indigo, and tea. Mines
were formed to exploit the rich deposits of tin and copper.
Forests yielded valuable timber including teak, ebony, and
other hardwoods. The Dutch became notorious for the use of
forced slave labor, known as the
culture system, to
gather these
raw materials, while purposely discouraging
westernization,
or the spreading of European
culture.The Spanish used similar methods to reap the rewards from their tobacco and sugar plantations located in the Philippine
Islands. However in 1898, the Philippines were given to the
United States as part of the settlement for their loss of the
Spanish-American War.
Mainland
The British took control of Burma from their colonial
stronghold in India in the early 1800s. Meanwhile, the French
imperialized modern-day Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam forming
French Indochina in the 1880s. Siam became the embattled
buffer zone between these two European powers, but was
eventually guaranteed its independence by a treaty negotiated
between France and Great Britain.
After the
Meiji Restoration led to massive
industrialization in Japan, the nation found itself in great
need of
natural resources. Industrialization makes a nation
dependent upon iron, coal, and oil, none of which were found
in great quantity on the Japanese
archipelago. This need led
them to invade mainland Korea in order to exploit the natural
resources there
Outcome
Japan took over much of the coast of China
and the rest of Southeast Asia, eventually forming the
Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere which provided even more
natural resources to feed its vast military-industrial
complex. East Asian
raw materials such as oil from the Dutch
East Indies and rubber from French Indochina kept Japan’s
manufacturing
industry and military in China well supplied. The Japanese war
machine was eventually aimed at the United States in
WWII with
their attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
The French left
French Indochina in
the 1950s after years of warfare with
nationalist groups.
Communism seemed destined to spread into the region from
China.
The U.S. foreign policy of containment of communism would lead
to their involvement in the area in the unpopular
Vietnam
Conflict. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos all eventually became
communist in the 1970s. In Cambodia, the
Khmer Rouge orchestrated mass
killing of intellectuals and so-called reactionaries which
became known as the Killing Fields.
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