The War against Japan Had the South East Asia Department Emerge in the Foreign Office

Abstract

France is unlikely, for some time at least, to be strong enough to defend Indo-China by herself, and it is therefore important to the future security of India, Burma and Malaya and of the British Commonwealth and Empire in the Southern Pacific that the United States should be directly involved in the event of an attack on Indo-China. –Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee, 22 January 1944. The establishment of South East Asia Command having been done, cannot lightly be undone. –M. E. Dening, Political Adviser to the Supreme Commander, South East Asia Command, 17 February 1944, at the foreign office. What happens inside China is Peiping's business; what happens in SEA is distinctly UK business. –M. E. Dening, assistant under-secretary for the Far East, foreign office, to Philip C. Jessup, US ambassador-at-large, 1 May 1950. When the Conservatives returned to power in late October 1951 they inherited from their Labour predecessors the overseas policy issues including Indian independence and membership of the British Commonwealth, a large-scale ‘Emergency’ military commitment to cope with the Communist rebellion in Malaya, diplomatic recognition of the PRC and the ASV as well as the direct participation in the Korean War. This chapter approaches the question how the Labour support for the French colonial rearguard action in Indo-China in particular and other Far Eastern commitments in general presented themselves to the post-war Churchill administration.