Anti-imperialism

In twentieth century Asia and Africa, this facet of nationalism became so dominant that it was popularly thought to be the only valid variant. Most of the literature on South and Southeast Asia labels it nationalism without further need for questioning. The uncolonised variants of nationalism, Chinese, Japanese and Thai, were wholly different in nature, combining state and ethnie nationalisms in different degrees. Yet because they were contemporary with the anti-imperial phenomena of southern Asia, they have been considered part of Asian nationalism... 

Further confusion is caused by the popular and political use of nationalist as the label for anti-communist governments and parties in China, Korea and Vietnam. This obscures the way in which communist movements mobilised anti-imperial and ethnie nationalism against the state nationalism of the governments they opposed. 

Yet anti-imperial nationalism was absolutely crucial as the key ingredient for the alchemy that sought to turn empires into nations in the middle of the twentieth century. It can be categorised by the following features ... 

More than the other two forms, anti-imperial nationalism was the child of very specific conditions in the first half of the twentieth century. Imperialism changed its nature profoundly in the decades before and after 1900, as colonial governments extended their sovereignty to internationally agreed boundaries and assumed most of the unitary functions of nation-states elsewhere. The twentieth century imperial combination of creating a structure that looked like a modern nation state but lacked... 

Five case studies follow, examining particular identities and their evolution into different forms of nationalism. The first, paradoxically, is Chinese identity in Southeast Asia, in chapter 3. This is prioritised in part because overseas Chinese nationalism slightly preceded the anti-imperial nationalism of Indonesia and Malaysia (though not the Philippines), so that the different forms of nationalism emerging from the Malay category of chapter 4 emerged in critical dialectic with... 

Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei each incorporated strong elements of Malayness into their post-independence state nationalism, and even the Philippines flirted with it. Chapter 4 argues that in Malaysia this label was so powerfully fashioned into ethnie nationalism as to constantly endanger the state nationalist project. In Indonesia elements of Malayness were embedded in anti-imperial nationalism, which in turn laid the basis for state nationalism, delegitimising any distinct Malay ethnie. In Brunei nationalism of any kind is stunted by monarchy, and Malayness remains at the level of an official construct. 

The effect of this type of imperial interaction was to create expectations in the nationalisms they produced which would be very difficult to fulfil. The colonial boundaries were of course sacralised as the correct boundaries for anti-imperial nationalism. But in Burma, Burman ethnie nationalism became fatally entangled with state nationalism after independence, with a constant state of unwinnable war against minority ethnie nationalisms. Vietnam was very fortunate that the anti-imperial nationalism of the Indo-Chinese communist party was unable to take control of the whole colony in 1945, and eventually renamed itself the Vietnamese Workers Party in 1951. The French were able to steer Laos and Cambodia to a fragile independence in 1954 (Goscha 1999). The wars of Indo-China up until 1980 were nevertheless bedevilled by Vietnamese attempts to lead the anti-imperial nationalisms of Laos and Cambodia in the Indo-Chinese Revolution of which they had dreamed since 1930, and problems remain between these variants of nationalism. 

Since no demands for independence were made of the Japanese, it is difficult to classify the motives for this revolt as nationalism, either of an Acehnese or Indonesian sort. The strongest demands by Said Abu Bakar were for freedom from forced labour and tax, and punishment of the uleebalang to whom PUSA was most opposed. The anti-foreign and Islamic sentiments were still the most widespread, galvanised by modern mobilisation through PUSA, as well as anti-imperial nationalist ideas among the influential uleebalang who took part. 

The ethnie nationalism of Aceh, sustained by a strong memory of state and of resistance to the intrusion of outsiders, had come to terms with the state nationalism of Indonesia, sustained by post-revolutionary centralism built on anti-imperial rhetoric. As Michael Keating (2001 viii, 102-33) has argued persuasively, when communities come together with different nationalist expectations and experiences, providing for differential claims on the state can be the strategy most compatible with justice and democracy. Aceh has had a very different memory of state and tradition of nationalism than have most Indonesians. Its relationship to Indonesian state nationalism is clear but distinctive. 

The growing ethnie nationalism of the Toba Batak, in other words, was emphatically not shared by the Mandailing of this period, who made religion the decisive criterion of identification , as Castles puts it, and unlike the Muslims of Angkola and Sipirok, let Islam rob them of their ancestors (Castles 1972 280). Besides religion, the emotive power of anti-imperial nationalism also played a role in defining Batak identity, less in competition with ethnie nationalism than in a layered merging with it. 

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