Pacific strife
This book, the author tells us, grew out of his earlier work, The Netherlands Indies and the Great War [KITLV Press, 2007]. Writing that, he had realised ‘how much international developments in the Pacific in the previous decades had shaped Dutch anxieties about the Netherlands being able to hold on to its colony in the East’ [p. 9] The data he had collected to depict the background of Dutch anxieties, which for reasons of space could not be included in the earlier work, formed the basis of the present work.
Kees van Dijk’s method is, as it were, to circle round the whole vast area, going from region to region in the Asia-Pacific, and discussing the critical changes precipitated by the colonial powers: Fiji, Samoa, New Guinea, Central Asia, back to Samoa, Tonkin and Thailand, the Sino-Japanese war, Yunnan, Port Arthur, Wei-hai-wei, Tibet, Hawaii and the Philippines, back to Samoa and Tonga, the Entente deals, the US and Japan and the Pacific. We are not given an account of the reaction of the Dutch in The Hague or Jakarta to all this, only an occasional reference. What we are given is quite substantial narratives of the various crises and clashes.
These are supported by wide-ranging research. The author particularly acknowledges to the KITLV Library, now incorporated into that of Leiden University. Perhaps that accounts for one of the rather unusual features of the work: it draws on many published sources contemporary with the events discussed, including publicists and politicians of the day. That gives the text an unusual liveliness, though it may risk circumnavigating some of the conclusions other authors have since drawn from the archives. Professor van Dijk also makes considerable use of Hansard on-line, though, again, what was said in Parliament, where governments are often on the defensive, or not anxious to show their hand, may not have an explicatory relationship to the making of policy.
This is not to say that the works of recent historians are ignored. Many of them are represented and acknowledged, but the choice seems somewhat idiosyncratic. No doubt, in pursuing such a large subject, some kind of selectivity is essential.
The approach to each region is very much ‘on the spot’. The book tells us what happened in Asia and the Pacific, rather less about what led the powers to do what they did, and perhaps not enough about the insecurities in Europe itself, the ultimate source of the Great War. Perhaps, too, one might have expected a more analytical ‘epilogue’, though there is something to be said for letting a reader draw his or her own conclusions.
The nineteenth century is sometimes seen as a period of British primacy. The book irresistibly brought to your reviewer’s mind a kind of international anarchy, in which powers acted not only out of greed but for fear of others, pressing ahead lest others got there first, sometimes acquiring territories that proved quite useless or quite unable to offer the benefits held out by the advocates of their acquisition and the often preposterous public rhetoric of the day. It may be best to see the period from 1870 – where van Dijk rightly begins the book – as one in which Britain’s primacy was under pressure and other centres of power were emerging. It often compromised. What it could not compromise about was, of course, the security of its homeland.
Though it was greatly weakened by the War, Britain’s empire survived until a second world war. One might still witness its legacy, for example, in the frontiers of the world of nation-states that has succeeded the world of empires. Those the author mentions [pp. 496-7], but rather in respect of the points still in dispute than for their substantial acceptance, small relationship though they may have to a sense of nationality. The very existence of some states owes something to the policies of the British in the days of their primacy and in the period covered by this book. The late S.A.M. Adshead used to argue for the success of Manchu policies rather than the humiliations they involved, and certainly the independence of China was a policy the British never abandoned. And, surrounded by growing anarchy, would Netherlands India itself have survived without British patronage, however difficult it was to bear?
The book is well produced, though the maps are not very legible. It is rather rare nowadays to read a book that is without typos and other such errors, as this one is. The author’s own mistakes seem to be remarkably few. One might be worth signalling: the rather confusing references to Annam on p. 201, which seem to imply Vietnam was already divided into three pays before the French did it. Your reviewer enjoyed his task, though he found the earlier book more rewarding.
Nicholas Tarling, New Zealand Asia Institute, The University of Auckland