Asian Students and Asian Studies in Australia

Abstract

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ASIAN nationalism in the inter-war period was characterized by the gradual substitution of Asian for European administrators and technical experts. The Indianisation of the Indian Civil Service, for example, involved a drastic reduction in the number of European members at all levels, and was accompanied by a similar shift in proportions in technical and provincial services. Quantitatively, the change was most clearly marked in British territories. The tempo of change was tremendously accelerated in the post-war period. The recognition of the independence of India, Pakistan and Burma, the granting of dominion status to Ceylon, the achievement of Indonesian independence, the effective termination of French sovereignty in Indochina after the Geneva agreement of I954, and the emergence of Malaya as an autonomous federation in 1957: all these developments involved the assumption of Asian control and responsibility for fields of administration and economic development which had been largely directed by European experts. Apart from problems of administration, the emergence of the new Asian nations brought with it a variety of plans for rapid industrialisation and the raising of living standards. A whole series of new industrial projects was put into the blueprint stage. Heavy capital investment was an obvious requirement; the existence of a labour supply was generally assumed. But development plans required skilled and semi-skilled labour, foremen and engineers as well as top-level experts. The magnitude of the problem was aggravated by the steady rise in population-an increase of approximately ten million annually. The rapid wartime development of industries in some parts of Southern Asia (such as India and Pakistan) had widened the field of skills at the technical level, but despite this there still remained an acute shortage of labour capable of adapting itself to the requirements of rapid industrial expansion. Increasing population pressure made problems of improved agrarian techniques more acute. The rising demand for skills in predominantly agrarian countries with village industries imposed a large strain on the resources of the 3,ooo universities, technical training colleges and trade schools of Commonwealth