Political heritage and nation building
Wang Gungwu, a leading historian of Chinese diaspora and Southeast Asian political history, delivered this essay as the 2000 Annual Lecture to the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, published in JMBRAS Vol. 73, No. 279 (pp. 5–30). Set against the backdrop of five decades of post-colonial state formation in Southeast Asia, the article argues that the political heritage guiding nation-building in the region was shaped by two distinct streams: Western nation-state models encountered through colonialism, and the earlier modernizing examples of Japan, China and India, with the Cold War and subsequent globalization acting as powerful external forces that redirected or complicated the process.
Summary
Wang Gungwu opens by establishing that the nation-state was an alien institution for Southeast Asian peoples, whose pre-modern political identities (Vietnamese, Khmer, Thai, Burman, Javanese, Malay) had no need to define themselves as “nations” until the twentieth century. The central problem he addresses is how leaders in newly independent states navigated the gap between the Western model they had fought against and the complex, multiethnic, multilingual realities they inherited within colonial borders. He traces how different colonial powers responded differently to nationalist demands: the Dutch, most confident in their permanence, saw no need to prepare subjects for nationhood; the British, through indirect rule, reduced the urge for independence among local elites; the French, with stronger educational ideals, impressed civilisational superiority on the Vietnamese; and the Americans, uniquely, presented themselves as a temporary tutelary power preparing the Philippines for the family of nations (pp. 5–7).
The article then turns to the Asian models that actually inspired early Southeast Asian nationalism. Japan’s defeat of the Qing in 1895 and its victory over Russia made it an early inspiration across the region, while China’s experience—first as a cautionary tale of ineffective modernisation, then as a fierce nationalist force during the Sino-Japanese War—created a complicated legacy, particularly through the overseas Chinese communities who organised national salvation movements in Southeast Asian colonies (pp. 10–15). Wang Gungwu emphasises that the Japanese wartime message of anti-colonial liberation, though later discredited by the Japanese defeat and the returning colonial powers’ propaganda, had a more significant impact on nationalist consciousness than is usually acknowledged. The Cold War then imposed a new external framework, fragmenting the region into neutralist, communist, and anti-communist blocs, and channeling nation-building efforts in directions that fitted neither the Western models nor the earlier Asian ones (pp. 16–19).
In his concluding analytical move, Wang Gungwu identifies a third and emerging model: the American elaboration of multiculturalism, which offers a fundamentally different starting point for nations composed of multiethnic and multilingual populations. He contrasts the first-generation nationalist ideal (modelled on Britain and France, with their centuries of organic growth) against this newer framework, using the generational divide between Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia as an illustrative case. His argument is that if the multicultural ideal becomes accepted, it will represent the most important single contribution the United States has made to the next generation of Southeast Asian nation-builders, because it acknowledges that artificial efforts to enforce national unity through coercion and discriminatory law are doomed in inherently plural societies (pp. 19–21).
Key Findings
- The 1942 Institute of Pacific Relations report by Rupert Emerson, Lennox Mills and Virginia Thompson (Government and Nationalism in Southeast Asia) was among the earliest systematic studies of how nationalism might determine the region’s future, with Emerson specifically studying both British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies (p. 8).
- The Dutch revolt against Spanish rule, lasting almost a century, was the first successful anti-colonial war in modern history and provided the explicit historical framework for early Indonesian nationalism; leaders like Sukarno and Hatta invoked Dutch patriotic examples to justify their own struggle (p. 6).
- Japan’s victory over the Qing Empire in 1895 and its subsequent defeat of Russia made it an inspiration for nationalist movements in Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma from the early twentieth century onward (p. 10).
- The Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 greatly intensified Chinese nationalism among overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, which then organised successful national salvation movements that complicated the anti-colonial agenda of indigenous leaders (p. 14).
- The Cold War entered the region in 1949 with Hong Kong becoming the border between the capitalist and communist blocs, fragmenting Southeast Asia into neutralist states (Burma, Indonesia), a divided Vietnam, and uncertain others, and directly shaping nation-building policy choices (p. 17).
- ASEAN, the most successful of the region’s security arrangements, has since been enlarged to include all ten states in the region and is playing an increasing role in global forums, raising questions about the continuing relationship between regionalism and domestic nation-building (p. 18).
Conclusion
Wang Gungwu’s definitive takeaway is that Southeast Asian nation-building has been a layered, contested process in which no single model has dominated. The first generation of leaders looked to Britain and France; the Cold War imposed superpower logic; and now the American multicultural ideal presents a fundamentally different challenge to the coercive, majoritarian nationalism of the earlier period. He ends on a cautiously optimistic note, suggesting that the new generation of leaders, exposed to transnational and multicultural ideals, will eventually modify the nationalist rhetoric and ideals of their predecessors, even if that transition is not yet complete.
Context
- This article is a revised version of the Annual Lecture delivered to MBRAS on 17 June 2000; it is a synthetic, analytical piece rather than one grounded in a specific archival collection. Its historiographical contribution lies in framing the “political heritage” question for Southeast Asian nation-building by connecting three distinct model streams (Western, Asian, and the emerging American multicultural) and situating them within the Cold War and globalisation contexts (p. 2).
- The essay announces a multi-author project at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, involving Taufik Abdullah, Chamvit Kasetseri, Reynaldo Ileto, Cheah Boon Kheng and Edwin Lee, which aims to write the history of nation-building policies in five Southeast Asian countries over the preceding forty to fifty years (p. 4).