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Since the centennial of the First World War, there has been
a proliferation of scholarly conferences, edited volumes, and monographs about
the conflict and its legacies. Among the most important contributions to the
field of world history is the recently published World War One in Southeast Asia. Streets-Salter contends that
historians have yet to capture the global reach of the First World War beyond
the frontlines of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Her case study of
Southeast Asia demonstrates the significance of the Great War to remote places
far from the trenches, as well as the importance of colonialism and empire to
this global conflict. Her latest book builds on her earlier collaborative work
with Trevor Getz, Empires and Colonies in
World History, which remains one of the few surveys that underscores the
centrality of European imperialism in modern world history. In staging the war within the Southeast Asian
region in her newest book, Streets-Salter provides rich and nuanced stories of
the intersection of local, regional, and global narratives, as well as the ways
empires and colonies were shaped by the contest between Allied and Central
powers.
The book makes two significant methodological interventions
to world history. First, Streets-Salter encourages a rethinking of empires as a
"global phenomenon" by revealing a narrative in which the colony-metropole
relationship was not central to the story of Southeast Asia. Rather, she argues
that modern empires were "porous, interconnected, and frequently disrupted by
transnational or global forces" (7). In this case, the Central Powers and
anticolonial forces collaborated in order to destabilize British authority in
the region. Equally important, the British repression of rebellion and
anti-allied schemes in Southeast Asia necessitated military, diplomatic, and
intelligence collaboration with their wartime allies like France, Russia, and
Japan. Second, Streets-Salter asserts that historians can and must tell
large-scale world histories that are documented with archival and empirical
sources. So often, the grand metanarratives of world history depend on theory
rather than historical evidence. Streets-Salter advances our understanding of
world history during the turbulent moment of the First World War with a close
reading of archival sources in English, French, and Dutch.
This well-written book is structured around chapters that
capture wartime alliances and rivalries as they played out in several
locations: Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Siam, and China. The final chapter
on China underscores its importance as a site for wartime contests and as a
base for anti-Allied efforts orchestrated by the central powers in French
Indochina and British Malaya. At the same time, this is not simply a story of
European powers and their interventions in Southeast Asia on behalf of their
wartime agenda. Other actors, notably the Indian soldiers and anticolonial
revolutionaries, have a significant role to play in the central power's strategies
to overthrow or destabilize imperialism by collaborating with Germans and
Ottomans. Indeed, a central theme is the collaboration of German, Ottoman, and
Indian anticolonial revolutionaries as they used Southeast Asia as a base to
launch mutinies and carry out plots to incite rebellion across the empire. In
other instances, Indian soldiers remained loyal to the empire and served
British imperial efforts to subdue rebellion and resistance. Finally,
Streets-Salter considers the perspective of local inhabitants, civilian and
military, who were forced to confront the implications of global war as it
played out in Southeast Asian communities. Although she contends with a scarcity
of sources from locals, Streets-Salter is able to demonstrate the significance
of the global conflict on Southeast Asian inhabitants as many were forced to
take positions on the war that impacted their everyday lives.
Writing histories of this kind poses significant challenges
for a world historian. Not only does the author need to command several
languages—Streets-Salter covers Dutch, French, and English—but also the
historiographical fields of the various empires, nations, and colonies covered
in the work. Moreover, archives have been constructed around the official
views, ideas, and imperatives of the colonial state. Tracing the networks of
ideas, propaganda, resources, and agents that defied colonial surveillance and
official record remain elusive tasks for the historian. This is perhaps the
book's greatest contribution. She delivers a book that captures as much as
possible the covert networks and seditious ideas that challenged colonialism in
Southeast Asia and beyond by reading against the grain of colonial sources and
locating the voices and agency of locals and subalterns in the region. That
said, this book prompts us to consider the dearth of archival sources beyond
the colonial archive that might reveal the perspectives of the locals in their
vernacular languages. Street-Salter is candidly aware of what the colonial
sources cannot reveal, particularly in her chapters on the Singapore mutiny in
1915. She admits that the Malay perspective is not well documented in the
archives and difficult to recover. This is not so much a criticism of the book,
but a recognition of the difficulties inherent in writing world histories from
below and in dialogue with the colonial archive.
Ultimately, this book is essential reading for historians
interested in Southeast Asia, European imperialism and colonialism, and world
history. It advances our understanding of the ways the First World War impacted
Southeast Asia and beyond. It also captures a global story that traces the
struggles between Allied and Central powers as each intersected with British,
Dutch, and French colonialism and anticolonialism in
Southeast Asia. For world historians, this book should be required reading for
methodological purposes. It considers the significance of scale and the intersections
of local, regional, and world history. Equally important, it makes a strong
case for situating archival evidence and research at the center of world
history in order to enrich the stories we tell and our conceptualization of
global transformation and connection.
Michele L. Louro is an
Associate Professor of History at Salem State University, where she specializes
in Modern South Asia, the British Empire, and World History. Her book, Comrades
against Imperialism: Nehru, India and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge
University Press, Global and International History Series), traces
the emergence of anti-imperialist internationalism in the interwar years from
the perspective of India's Jawaharlal Nehru. Her research appears in the Journal of Contemporary History, Comparative Studies
of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and the edited volume, The
Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds and Worldviews. She is
currently the faculty fellow for the Center for Research and Creative
Activities at Salem State University. She also serves as the Treasurer of the
World History Association and the Managing editor of the Journal of
World History. You may
contact her at mlouro@salemstate.edu |
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