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Last Post: The End Of Empire In The Far East
John Keay's epic, expert study of the twenthieth-century demise of colonial rule in the Far East The names echo like the last long notes of a bugle Hiroshima, Dien Bien Phu, Tiananmen Square; MacArthur and Mountbatten; The Quiet American and Bridge over the River Kwai. In a twentieth-century welter of war, Depression and Communism four empires crumbled and the West was bundled out of the East. John Keay's acclaimed study of this imperial finale draws on contemporary sources ranging from Ho Chi Minh to Dirk Bogarde. The narrative swoops from the showpiece cities of Shanghai, Saigon and Manila to the tough backwaters of Borneo and the tinkling rice fields of Bali. Grandeur of treatment is matched by trenchant analysis; unexpected continuities are revealed; and to the interaction of West and East is traced the dynamism of the Far East today.
385 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1997
92 people want to read
About the author
John Keay
57 books252 followersJohn Stanley Melville Keay FRGS is an English journalist and author specialising in writing popular histories about India and the Far East, often with a particular focus on their colonisation and exploration by Europeans.
John Keay is the author of about 20 books, all factual, mostly historical, and largely to do with Asia, exploration or Scotland. His first book stayed in print for thirty years; many others have become classics. His combination of meticulous research, irreverent wit, powerful narrative and lively prose have invariably been complimented by both reviewers and readers.
UK-based and a full-time author since 1973, he also wrote and presented over 100 documentaries for BBC Radios 3 and 4 from 1975-95 and guest-lectured tour groups 1990-2000. He reviews on related subjects, occasionally speaks on them, and travels extensively.
John Keay is the author of about 20 books, all factual, mostly historical, and largely to do with Asia, exploration or Scotland. His first book stayed in print for thirty years; many others have become classics. His combination of meticulous research, irreverent wit, powerful narrative and lively prose have invariably been complimented by both reviewers and readers.
UK-based and a full-time author since 1973, he also wrote and presented over 100 documentaries for BBC Radios 3 and 4 from 1975-95 and guest-lectured tour groups 1990-2000. He reviews on related subjects, occasionally speaks on them, and travels extensively.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 21, 2019
Unfortunately I did not get to complete this book because, since it was from outside our library system, I could not renew it (stupid rule). So I will keep it on the tbr list and re-order it again. I guess that is the price you pay when reading three books at the same time!!
February 3, 2018
At one time almost all of the countries of East Asia - over half of the world's population if one included India - were under varying degrees of colonial control by the nations of the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some of these areas had been under imperial control for centuries, yet within a few decades of the end of World War II, all were to one degree or another independent. Parts of the Netherlands East Indies never saw Dutch rule reinstated after the war and those that did only experienced it for five trouble-filled years. France would hang on in Indo-China for only nine years and at the cost of incessant trouble in the south and a major war with the north. While the British in Malaya and Borneo did manage to put down an insurrection and restore economic prosperity, they too would be out within twelve years of the end of World War II.
Was there any common denominator in the exodus of European colonial powers in East Asia? Author John Keay says that too many works have focused on one particular colonial power - generally the United Kingdom - and pegged all of the reasons for the end of empire to certain aspects of national politics, economics, and character. Keay has sought in this book to compare and contrast the Dutch, French, British, and American experiences in East Asia, to see if there were any common threads that lead to the rise of independent nations in the region.
Keay found that all of the colonies were alike in learning first-hand that guaranteed prosperity under their distant imperial masters was at least partially mythic thanks to the worldwide depression of the 1930s as orders for colonial products disastrously declined and the average person in Asia could see that many Europeans were reduced to now unenviable standards of living. The myth of imperial invulnerability was shattered time and again by the incessant advance of Japanese forces in the early days of World War II, exposing to colonial subjects the lack of real imperial power, an absence that the colonial powers had tried to mask by informal and indirect rule and administrative flexibility. Any possible show of imperial force in retaking the colonies during the war evaporated with the sudden Japanese surrender following the atomic bombings; the colonies were simply reoccupied, not retaken, and the imperial powers were deprived of a "splendid spectacle" to help restore colonial prestige.
Further, the author asserted that the Japanese occupation in World War II heightened Asian expectations of independence and gave many at least a passing acquaintance with self-rule despite the fact that the states the Japanese set up during their occupation were generally geared towards supporting their empire and thwarting the goals of the Allies rather than from any sense of benevolence or Asian solidarity on their part.
The advance of technology in the 20th century he maintained actually served to weaken colonial control, not strengthen it. Though he did not explore this point to a huge degree, Keay wrote that the revolution in communications, "impossible to quantify and difficult to incorporate into a historical narrative," had a tremendous impact. Thanks to the advent of the radio, the telegraph, the telephone, and reliable and reasonably fast mail and passenger service (the latter two thanks to the heavily subsidized routes of such companies as Imperial Airways, Air France, and Pan Am) intervention was made much more frequently and on a much wider scale. Ministers in distant imperial capitals - imparted he writes perhaps with "a little dangerous learning" thanks to a whirlwind tour of the colony by airplane - now ordered policies that the colonial officials would never have advocated before.
Keay wrote that neither empire nor the liberation of the colonial people from it served to created the much vaunted late 20th century Asian economic miracle; rather empire contributed to an already existing continuum. The "island-girt" Java and South China Seas of the west Pacific rim had always formed an integrated trading basin not unlike the Mediterranean, an area of trade between the Vietnamese, Malay, Chinese, Indians, and Arabs since at least 2000 B.C. European and American colonial realities such as the British East India Company's tolerance of private intra-Asian trade, America's Open Door policy in China, and the inability of the Dutch to withhold free access to the Indies served to strengthen this. Similarly the Chinese commercial networks that dominate the Far East were greatly aided by empire though arguably not created by it.
To the extent that imperial power was reasserted in the colonies there were local factors at work. The British for instance were able to achieve the success that they did in Malaya thanks to two things. First, Malaya and Borneo were extremely divided as administratively they were broken up into a four-state Federation, five Unfederated States, and several crown colonies (the Straits Settlements) and racially there was real tension between native Malays and the immigrant Chinese and Indian Malayans (if populations of the latter were to be considered from Singapore were more numerous than the native Malays). As a consequence there wasn't any true nationwide nationalism in existence to pose the British; indeed, the British helped create a real sense of Malaysian nationalism, in sharp contrast to the French in Indo-China and the Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies who sought to pit one group against another in their colonies. Secondly, the colonies after the war thanks to exports primarily of rubber were quite prosperous, removing at least one reason for dissatisfaction with colonial rule.
While Keay provided a very useful catalog of the differences in goals and methods of the various colonial powers, contrasting for instance the importance of politics in Paris and ideas of French culture, religion, and prestige in how they ran their colonies with that of the Dutch experience, heavily reliant on business interests and the willing accommodation of its empire by the British, I found his thoughts on commonality very interesting as well.
Was there any common denominator in the exodus of European colonial powers in East Asia? Author John Keay says that too many works have focused on one particular colonial power - generally the United Kingdom - and pegged all of the reasons for the end of empire to certain aspects of national politics, economics, and character. Keay has sought in this book to compare and contrast the Dutch, French, British, and American experiences in East Asia, to see if there were any common threads that lead to the rise of independent nations in the region.
Keay found that all of the colonies were alike in learning first-hand that guaranteed prosperity under their distant imperial masters was at least partially mythic thanks to the worldwide depression of the 1930s as orders for colonial products disastrously declined and the average person in Asia could see that many Europeans were reduced to now unenviable standards of living. The myth of imperial invulnerability was shattered time and again by the incessant advance of Japanese forces in the early days of World War II, exposing to colonial subjects the lack of real imperial power, an absence that the colonial powers had tried to mask by informal and indirect rule and administrative flexibility. Any possible show of imperial force in retaking the colonies during the war evaporated with the sudden Japanese surrender following the atomic bombings; the colonies were simply reoccupied, not retaken, and the imperial powers were deprived of a "splendid spectacle" to help restore colonial prestige.
Further, the author asserted that the Japanese occupation in World War II heightened Asian expectations of independence and gave many at least a passing acquaintance with self-rule despite the fact that the states the Japanese set up during their occupation were generally geared towards supporting their empire and thwarting the goals of the Allies rather than from any sense of benevolence or Asian solidarity on their part.
The advance of technology in the 20th century he maintained actually served to weaken colonial control, not strengthen it. Though he did not explore this point to a huge degree, Keay wrote that the revolution in communications, "impossible to quantify and difficult to incorporate into a historical narrative," had a tremendous impact. Thanks to the advent of the radio, the telegraph, the telephone, and reliable and reasonably fast mail and passenger service (the latter two thanks to the heavily subsidized routes of such companies as Imperial Airways, Air France, and Pan Am) intervention was made much more frequently and on a much wider scale. Ministers in distant imperial capitals - imparted he writes perhaps with "a little dangerous learning" thanks to a whirlwind tour of the colony by airplane - now ordered policies that the colonial officials would never have advocated before.
Keay wrote that neither empire nor the liberation of the colonial people from it served to created the much vaunted late 20th century Asian economic miracle; rather empire contributed to an already existing continuum. The "island-girt" Java and South China Seas of the west Pacific rim had always formed an integrated trading basin not unlike the Mediterranean, an area of trade between the Vietnamese, Malay, Chinese, Indians, and Arabs since at least 2000 B.C. European and American colonial realities such as the British East India Company's tolerance of private intra-Asian trade, America's Open Door policy in China, and the inability of the Dutch to withhold free access to the Indies served to strengthen this. Similarly the Chinese commercial networks that dominate the Far East were greatly aided by empire though arguably not created by it.
To the extent that imperial power was reasserted in the colonies there were local factors at work. The British for instance were able to achieve the success that they did in Malaya thanks to two things. First, Malaya and Borneo were extremely divided as administratively they were broken up into a four-state Federation, five Unfederated States, and several crown colonies (the Straits Settlements) and racially there was real tension between native Malays and the immigrant Chinese and Indian Malayans (if populations of the latter were to be considered from Singapore were more numerous than the native Malays). As a consequence there wasn't any true nationwide nationalism in existence to pose the British; indeed, the British helped create a real sense of Malaysian nationalism, in sharp contrast to the French in Indo-China and the Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies who sought to pit one group against another in their colonies. Secondly, the colonies after the war thanks to exports primarily of rubber were quite prosperous, removing at least one reason for dissatisfaction with colonial rule.
While Keay provided a very useful catalog of the differences in goals and methods of the various colonial powers, contrasting for instance the importance of politics in Paris and ideas of French culture, religion, and prestige in how they ran their colonies with that of the Dutch experience, heavily reliant on business interests and the willing accommodation of its empire by the British, I found his thoughts on commonality very interesting as well.
December 29, 2014
An engaging, richly-detailed and v. readable account of Europeans' (and Americans) acquisition of colonies in the Far East, the attendant problems and in the post-WW II era, the retreat of empire in all its hues - amicable to violent. What I wish is that someone would write in detail on one or two aspects - the use of defeated Japanese soldiers to maintain order in the state of flux as well as of the British Indian Army...
May 8, 2018
Written in 1997, with publication time to coincide with Hong Kong's handover to China, this is the story of Spain, Portugal, Holland, Britain France and The United States' Colonial possessions and adventures in the Far East. Thus is becomes the story of what are now Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Sarawak, Borneo, Macao, The Philippines and Hong Kong. It is fascinating- and flies along at a wonderfully fast pace.
There are all sorts of fun characters and storylines. Colonialism, Trade, Opium, Nationalism and Power all intertwine and intergerminate. European commercial interests bring the inevitable soldiers and Gunboats. There are tales of derring do as with the Brookes, the White Rajahs of Sarawak and Raffles of Singapore an their conquests of piracy. There are the big National Trading companies that find themselves morphing into colonial governments. And then as the 20th Century dawns, Suppressed nationalism begins to drive the indigenous peoples to have the audacity to want to manage their own affairs. WWI and the run up to WWII see a literal sea change in the way ideas and resources moved around the Pacific Ocean. Then WWII rips rickety facade away... It's very compelling.
Many concepts in this book may challenge the younger reader, but I think it will a good test they can conquer. For the Military Enthusiast/Gamer/Modeller this is only really of use on background. You will however be for better informed about the roots of the many conflicts encapsulated here, from The Opium Wars of the 1940s-60s, to Malaya, the "Konfrontasi" and Vietnam in the 1960-70s. A good read for those interested in any facet of colonialism and its discontents.....
There are all sorts of fun characters and storylines. Colonialism, Trade, Opium, Nationalism and Power all intertwine and intergerminate. European commercial interests bring the inevitable soldiers and Gunboats. There are tales of derring do as with the Brookes, the White Rajahs of Sarawak and Raffles of Singapore an their conquests of piracy. There are the big National Trading companies that find themselves morphing into colonial governments. And then as the 20th Century dawns, Suppressed nationalism begins to drive the indigenous peoples to have the audacity to want to manage their own affairs. WWI and the run up to WWII see a literal sea change in the way ideas and resources moved around the Pacific Ocean. Then WWII rips rickety facade away... It's very compelling.
Many concepts in this book may challenge the younger reader, but I think it will a good test they can conquer. For the Military Enthusiast/Gamer/Modeller this is only really of use on background. You will however be for better informed about the roots of the many conflicts encapsulated here, from The Opium Wars of the 1940s-60s, to Malaya, the "Konfrontasi" and Vietnam in the 1960-70s. A good read for those interested in any facet of colonialism and its discontents.....
September 10, 2013
TOO MUCH HILARITY
John Keay has built up a reputation for writing a series of singular narrative histories dealing with Asia in relation to European imperialism as in this book or his history of the British East India Company ("The Honourable Company"), as well as more general histories of individual countries ("China" and "India"). His books have formed, for me at least, an excellent introduction into the history of the East, and been a starting point for further enquiry into their variety of pasts.
Keay begins with a number of concise accounts of how the Empires that were to be lost were gained in the first place, before moving onto the end of formal imperialism in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, ending up with the handing over of Hong Kong to China. His narrative gives the main facts, as well as a good deal of detail that is strongly flavoured by Keays keen eye for the oddities of Empire. He perhaps over indulges his interest in such characters as James Innes who complains of having "no time to read his bible" while smuggling opium into Fukien; or the Commissioner of Weihaiwei who shares his office with a number of imaginary friends including the "outrageous and improper" Mrs Walkinshaw, the Earl of Dumbarton, and (most intriguingly) "The Trouserless one". History no doubt has its funny moments, and its funny characters, but these anecdotes are just the tip of the iceberg as Keay wrings out the laughs at a furious rate, some of them are very funny, though there is an occasional flop. I ended up longing for a few pages of sober narrative and analysis; the history of the end of Empire in the Far East was after all no joke for many of those concerned.
One of the strengths of Keays book is the broad coverage of the French, American, and particularly the Dutch, and their Empires in the East, as well as the Japanese "co-prosperity sphere" of 1941-45. When I first read "Last Post" a number of years ago, I had little knowledge of the Dutch in Indonesia, nor of the brutal British attack on the town of Surabaya after WW2, nor of the use of Japanese troops in support of re-Imperialising the East in the same period, and the book awakened a curiosity regarding European Imperialism in the Far East. Re-reading it now, and while still appreciating the scope of the events related, I felt disappointed in the quality of Keays accompanying analysis which can be a bit slap dash, especially with regard to the French then American involvement in Vietnam.
In short, this isn't a bad place for a reader unfamiliar with the subject to start, if they can get through the relentless word-play, the excess of eccentrics, and the torrent of humour (which to be fair can raise a smile but ought to have been rationed) they will get a good general overview of events, accompanied with some less than spectacular analysis of what was going on. For the reader who has read a good deal of the subject already, Keays "Last Post" maybe a little beyond the joke, its certainly not his best work.
John Keay has built up a reputation for writing a series of singular narrative histories dealing with Asia in relation to European imperialism as in this book or his history of the British East India Company ("The Honourable Company"), as well as more general histories of individual countries ("China" and "India"). His books have formed, for me at least, an excellent introduction into the history of the East, and been a starting point for further enquiry into their variety of pasts.
Keay begins with a number of concise accounts of how the Empires that were to be lost were gained in the first place, before moving onto the end of formal imperialism in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, ending up with the handing over of Hong Kong to China. His narrative gives the main facts, as well as a good deal of detail that is strongly flavoured by Keays keen eye for the oddities of Empire. He perhaps over indulges his interest in such characters as James Innes who complains of having "no time to read his bible" while smuggling opium into Fukien; or the Commissioner of Weihaiwei who shares his office with a number of imaginary friends including the "outrageous and improper" Mrs Walkinshaw, the Earl of Dumbarton, and (most intriguingly) "The Trouserless one". History no doubt has its funny moments, and its funny characters, but these anecdotes are just the tip of the iceberg as Keay wrings out the laughs at a furious rate, some of them are very funny, though there is an occasional flop. I ended up longing for a few pages of sober narrative and analysis; the history of the end of Empire in the Far East was after all no joke for many of those concerned.
One of the strengths of Keays book is the broad coverage of the French, American, and particularly the Dutch, and their Empires in the East, as well as the Japanese "co-prosperity sphere" of 1941-45. When I first read "Last Post" a number of years ago, I had little knowledge of the Dutch in Indonesia, nor of the brutal British attack on the town of Surabaya after WW2, nor of the use of Japanese troops in support of re-Imperialising the East in the same period, and the book awakened a curiosity regarding European Imperialism in the Far East. Re-reading it now, and while still appreciating the scope of the events related, I felt disappointed in the quality of Keays accompanying analysis which can be a bit slap dash, especially with regard to the French then American involvement in Vietnam.
In short, this isn't a bad place for a reader unfamiliar with the subject to start, if they can get through the relentless word-play, the excess of eccentrics, and the torrent of humour (which to be fair can raise a smile but ought to have been rationed) they will get a good general overview of events, accompanied with some less than spectacular analysis of what was going on. For the reader who has read a good deal of the subject already, Keays "Last Post" maybe a little beyond the joke, its certainly not his best work.
May 4, 2023
This is a masterpiece describing the demise of empires across East Asia -- the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore (and the other Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca), Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak) and Hong Kong, the French ones in Indochina, the Dutch empire in Indonesia, and the American 'reluctant empire' in the Philippines during the twentieth century. Each sordid saga is well told, although Keay under-estimates the enormous role Japan played in fatally undermining all those empires -- and generating a sense of nationalism in each of them (particularly by endorsing Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia as the lingua franca in schools and government, replacing English and Dutch respectively, and encouraging locals to take over all roles in governance).
October 28, 2016
Good info, well researched, but plenty dry.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews