Abstract
The general aim of the Foreign Office’s policy towards South-East Asia during the 1940s was to establish a regional organisation that would provide economic and political cooperation, leading eventually to regional security and stability.1 After the war, the British Government formed a new South-East Asian Department of the British Foreign Office and a new position of ‘Special Commissioner in South-East Asia’. This post was given the responsibility for coordinating the economic recovery of the region.2 An initial step towards some form of regional cooperation can be traced to August 1942 when the British Foreign Office and Colonial Office agreed that there should be a union of Malay states, Straits Settlements and Borneo Territories. Although, British officials wanted to avoid ‘forcing the pace’, believing ‘that it would be counter-productive to impose a scheme … and preferred that the impetus should come from community leaders’.3
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