One of the most contentious theatres of the global conflict between capitalism and communism was Southeast Asia. From the 1920s until the end of the Cold War, the region was racked by international and internal wars that claimed the lives of millions and fundamentally altered societies in the region for generations. Most of the 11 countries that compose Southeast Asia were host to the development of sizable communist parties that actively (and sometimes violently) contested for political power. These parties were the object of fierce repression by European colonial powers, post-independence governments and the United States. Southeast Asia communist parties were also the object of a great deal of analysis both during and after these conflicts.
This book brings together a host of expert scholars, many of whom are either Southeast Asia–based or from the countries under analysis, to present the most expansive and comprehensive study to date on ideological and practical experiments with Marxism-Leninism in Southeast Asia. The bulk of this edited volume presents the contents of these revolutionary ideologies on their own terms and their transformations in praxis by using primary source materials that are free of the preconceptions and distortions of counterinsurgent narratives. A unifying strength of this work is its focus on using primary sources in the original languages of the insurgents themselves.
Author(s): Matthew Galway; Marc H. Opper
Series: Asian Studies Series Monograph, 16
Publisher: Australian National University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 365
City: Canberra
Abbreviations
Maps and plates
Plate 2.1 Head of state Norodom Sihanouk (second from right) with Communist Party of Kampuchea members, including ministers Hu Nim (far right) and Khieu Samphan (centre left), during his 1973 inspection tour of the liberated zone.
Plate 2.2 Front cover of the second issue of the Revue Association d’Amitié Khmero-Chinoise, September 1965.
Plate 2.3 Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s head of state, and other distinguished Cambodian guests arrive in Beijing on 11 April 1973 after an inspection tour of the Liberated Zone of Cambodia and a friendly visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Plate 2.4 Hu Nim (centre) warmly greets head of state Norodom Sihanouk during his 1973 inspection tour of the liberated zone.
Map 10.1 CPT strongholds from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.
Foreword
Introduction
Part One
1. ‘One eye in the chain of the Asian movement’: Muslims adapting Marx in the Dutch East Indies, 1927–42
2. ‘The most dissolute and dishonest’ Khmer to aid China: Hu Nim and indigenising the Maoist ideological system, 1955–77
3. Buddhist socialism and national identity in colonial and postwar Burma: An analysis of U Nu’s political thought
4. Heavier than Mount Banahaw: ‘Five Golden Rays’ and the ‘Filipinisation’ of Maoism
5. Partai Republik Indonesia: Communist exiles and their noncommunist approaches to anticolonialism
Part Two
6. Forging the masses in Malaya: Mass mobilisation, the united front and revolutionary violence in Malaya, 1939–51
7. Recycling violence: The theory and practice of reeducation camps in postwar Vietnam
8. Return to armed revolution: The Pathet Lao and the Chinese Communist Party on paths to national liberation
9. ‘Victory of the aggregate strength of the era’: Lê Duẩn, Vietnam and the three revolutionary tidal waves
10. Becoming Marxist: Ethnic Hmong in the Communist Party of Thailand
Index
