Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia

Tobias Rettig, Karl Hack

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415486354
• eBook ISBN: 9781134314751
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia asiática

Colonial armies were the focal points for some of the most dramatic tensions inherent in Chinese, Japanese and Western clashes with Southeast Asia. The international team of scholars take the reader on a compelling exploration from Ming China to the present day, examining their conquests, management and decolonization.

The journey covers perennial themes such as the recruitment, loyalty, and varied impact of foreign-dominated forces. But it also ventures into unchartered waters by highlighting Asian use of 'colonial' forces to dominate other Asians. This sends the reader back in time to the fifteenth century Chinese expansion into Yunnan and Vietnam, and forwards to regional tensions in present-day Indonesia, and post-colonial issues in Malaysia and Singapore.

Drawing these strands together, the book shows how colonial armies must be located within wider patterns of demography, and within bigger systems of imperial security and power – American, British, Chinese, Dutch, French, Indonesian, and Japanese - which in turn helped to shape modern Southeast Asia.

Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia will interest scholars working on low intensity conflict, on the interaction between armed forces and society, on comparative imperialism, and on Southeast Asia.

Part 1
Background

1
Imperial systems of power, colonial forces and the making of modern Southeast Asia

Karl Hack with Tobias Rettig

Why do colonial subjects choose to enlist and to court death under the command of officers who come from thousands of miles away? Under what conditions do they stay loyal? When, why and with what results do they revolt?

Questions such as these can be answered only with the greatest difficulty. In part this is because comparative work on colonial forces is rare, restricted to a few short introductions to edited volumes, whose collections of articles at first seem to invite contrast, rather than comparison.¹ This is compounded by a second problem: the careless use of concepts. The terms colonial armies, colonialism and imperialism have been employed so loosely as to spread confusion.² For this reason, we must begin by examining the terminology surrounding ‘colonial armies’ and what we call ‘imperial systems of power’.³

The linguistics of domination

First of all, colonialism must be distinguished from colonisation. ‘Colonisation’ is the settlement, by members of one cultural group, of a territory occupied by people distinct from them, when also accompanied by an attempt to dominate the space settled. Where fully successful, this constitutes a settler colony, as defined under Fieldhouse’s fivefold classification of colonies as: settler, mixed, plantation, occupation and trade (Table 1.1).⁴ Settlers have a strong interest in arming themselves, at their own expense, against people whose lands they intrude upon. When settlers win independence their armies can in turn become instruments of oppression against indigenous remnants, employing their own ‘colonial’ forces. One example of this is the Native Americans who were formally recruited as Scouts from 1866 by the United States Army, and used in campaigns against other Native Americans.⁵

Colonisation is thus one subcategory of the wider phenomenon of colonialism. For political scientists, the term ‘colony’ or colonial territory has come to mean a territory with three key attributes. First, it is ruled as a unit that is administratively distinct from a ruling power’s core territory. Or at least it comes to be treated differently, if only as a result of local revolt.⁶ Second, there is a lack of consent from the population ruled.⁷ Third, the majority of the colonial territory’s population is culturally distinct from that of the ruling power.

Table 1.1 Fieldhouse’s fivefold definition of colonial territories

With regard to the lack of consent, for settler and occupation colonies, this often means acquisition by force. For territories subject to formal agreements (such as protectorate treaties), it may mean submission in fear of violence (perhaps under the glare of gunboats) or by a narrow elite who take a collaborative role. The point where a distinct sense of identity exists, meanwhile, can vary from first contact to a time when the population of a previously quiescent area gains a new sense of sharply differentiated identity and interest.⁸

The core requirement for defining colonial forces is that they are raised from within territories that qualify as ‘colonial’ in the above sense; or they are raised from non-metropolitan populations for the purpose of dominating overseas territories. Additional tendencies include being at least part-funded by the territories such forces are raised in or stationed in. Colonial forces are not necessarily ‘indigenous’, however, either to the country of recruitment or to the country of posting. They may be, though. For instance, the Malay Regiment was constituted from Malays from British Malaya, and remained locally based. Timorese, meanwhile, were encouraged to form pro-Indonesia militia groups in East Timor in the 1970s to 1990s. A special case would be those colonial guardians who were local-born or resident but not ‘indigenous’, such as many of Singapore’s nineteenth-to early twentieth-century volunteers (part-time territorial forces). These included separate companies for Europeans, Eurasians, Chinese, Indians and Malays, with rates of compensation differing by ‘race’.

More often than not, however, colonial troops are not indigenous to the country they are serving in. Hence the Algerian Zouaves for France, like the Gurkhas for Britain, were widely deployed outside their area of recruitment, notably in Indochina; likewise, the Tirailleurs Sénégalais from French West Africa served elsewhere, and also the Indian troops garrisoned in British Burma and Malaya. Similarly, Southeast Asians were also deployed in areas they were alien to: Vietnamese soldiers served in East Asia, Europe and Africa, while Moluccan, Timorese, Alfurian and Madurese soldiers took part in the Dutch conquest of Indonesia. In this way, the forces in any one colonial territory may include local conscripts, full-or part-time volunteers or militias (variously drawn from indigenous peoples, settlers, ‘ mestizo’ recruits or even recent immigrants) and recruits from other colonial territories.

The important distinction for ‘colonial’ forces is thus the contrast between their recruitment at a periphery, in contrast to control emanating from a distant, and for the most part culturally distinct, core or ‘metropolitan’ territory. Their functions may vary greatly, from contributing to the security of a single colonial territory, through posting abroad in service of transcolonial security, to service in defence of the core territory that controls them, either directly, or indirectly as war industry labour and auxiliaries.

‘Colonial forces’ might thus be thought of as encompassing all who serve directly and indirectly in support of an imperial military system. This might require new typologies, which recognise a whole spectrum of forces, from the elite volunteer, through conscripts, militias, partisans, auxiliaries, coolies and defence labourers, to military and sexual slaves. In the Japanese case these categories encompass both the 250,000 Asian romusha (labourers inveigled by a mix of coercion through local leaders, and deception over conditions), of whom at least 60,000 died helping to build the Burma-Thailand railway in 1942–3, and the ‘comfort women’ or military sex slaves of 1931–45. ⁹

Core definitions of imperialism and colonialism

Imperialism itself we take to be the domination by one state—a core—of the effective sovereignty of one or more separate areas—‘peripheries’. Colonialism is a subcategory of imperialism. In colonialism, domination involves de jure or de facto metropolitan rights and responsibilities over the dominated area. This is described below as formal imperialism. As such, colonialism can be thought of as further subdividing into Fieldhouse’s five types of colonial territory, spanning from settler colony to protectorate and ‘factory’. Beyond colonialism, imperial policies may dominate other areas while disclaiming permanent or semi-permanent rights. This is another subcategory of imperialism, described below as informal imperialism.

Either way, the policy areas dominated may include either internal or external policies, or a combination of both. The ‘periphery’ so dominated may be contiguous, or lie over the seas. But it must constitute a separate administrative unit, be dominated without the explicit consent of most of its people and have a population that has, or develops, a distinct culture and sense of identity and interests. Imperialism encompasses the whole process of such domination.

Formal imperialism

Formal imperialism or colonialism involves the core territory assuming responsibilities for a peripheral area. The area so dominated tends to be styled a colony if domination extends over both internal and external policies. If there is an agreement transferring more limited aspects of sovereignty—for instance, defence and external affairs only, or limited to the right to ‘advise’—it is likely to be given a term reflecting this limited scope, such as protectorate.

Formal imperialism or colonialism is largely a matter of a legal or de facto international status, by which the core’s rights and responsibilities over the periphery are made manifest. But that does not tell us how a colony or protectorate is protected. The style of dominance can be further divided into methods of direct imperialism and of indirect imperialism.

Direct and indirect imperialism

At its extreme, direct imperialism implies a monopoly or near-monopoly over the key functions of state in the peripheral area. Such functions include the use of force and judicial and tax-raising activities. Direct imperial methods include raising regular, and regularly paid and drilled, police and soldiers. Such soldiers might serve under non-indigenous officers down to at least battalion, if not company or platoon, level, with indigenous NCOs helping to bridge the linguistic and cultural gap between foreigner and colonial recruit.

Indirect approaches to imperialism involve devolving significant aspects of state functions to subordinate, localised authorities. These authorities are as often as not declared to be traditional or entrenched ‘native’ representatives: sultans, rajas, chiefs, penghulu (village heads) or even Kapitan China (prominent Chinese allowed to hold sway over their own community in specified areas) and secret society leaders. The subcontracting of state and military functions to a third party, such as mercenaries or companies, could also be classified under this rubric.

This means that ‘colonial armies’ also include ‘indirect’ colonial forces; that is, the enforcers enlisted by lesser, local authorities. In the nineteenth-to early twentieth-century Netherlands East Indies, some local officials relied on jagos (literally fighting roosters or cocks) or village toughs to help to enforce their decisions, while in the American-ruled Philippines prominent families developed what became virtually private armies.¹⁰ In both cases, it has been argued that this left, and still leaves, a postcolonial legacy of non-state violence, which colours politics and governance for the worse.

In terms of colonial armies, the English East India Company on the Indian subcontinent took an increasingly direct approach from the mid-eighteenth century, recruiting Indians as sepoys (soldiers), directly in company pay, under British officers. Yet in nineteenth-century Malaya and Singapore the British initially took a more indirect approach, encouraging the cooperation of Kapitan China. The Portuguese in East Timor, meanwhile, still placed a significant emphasis on raising native levies through local chiefs, the liurai, into the early twentieth century. These levies perpetuated militia ‘repertoires of violence’, which were later tapped by pro-Indonesia militias, right up to 1999.¹¹

Direct and indirect approaches are not mutually exclusive. Territories might employ a mix of both, typically beginning with greater elements of indirect rule, and moving towards using more direct methods as state formation and increased tax revenues made this possible.

Informal imperialism

In addition to the contrast between direct and indirect techniques of dominance, there is a contrast between formal and informal imperialism. Formal imperialism involves assuming de facto or de jure responsibilities for an area; informal imperialism functions in the absence of these. It employs threats, financial dominance and ‘gunboat diplomacy.’

Domination is taken to mean the ability to influence policy in a fundamental and persistent manner, as and when needed; for instance, by enforcing extraterritorial rights or replacing unsatisfactory rulers. When people talk of a Pax Britannica, or of a twenty-first-century American Empire, or of a fifteenth-century maritime Pax Ming, it is informal imperialism that is meant, with its determination to dictate developments in ‘failed’ or ‘rogue states’, and states that are seen as threatening international norms of trade and diplomacy. Examples range from We...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Maps
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and glossary
• Part 1: Background
• Part 2: Experimenting with tools of conquest and domination
• Part 3: Loyalty and revolt in the era of nationalism and war
• Part 4: Decolonisation
• Part 5: Postcolonial analyses and residues