Southeast Asian Trajectories: Eurocentrism and the History of the Modern Nation-State; Southeast Asia: Past and Present,by D. R. SarDesai

Abstract

In the aftermath of World War II, the number of nationstates worldwide expanded dramatically. Over the course of approximately two decades colonial boundaries, sometimes the result of centuries of custom, became national boundaries. State power was transferred to, or eventually seized by, nationalist elites and movements throughout much of Asia and Africa and later Oceania. The international recognition of these former colonies and their incorporation into the international system epitomized by the United Nations conferred legitimacy on nationalist leaders and on the territorial boundaries of the new nations. Decolonization and the expansion of the nation-state system were key trends in the post-1945 era. Equally crucial was the emergence of the United States as the dominant international economic and politico-military power. The United States was driven forward by an unprecedented economic boom and by an increasingly assertive anticommunist globalism directed at the Soviet Union and its satellites or allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Connected to the onset of the cold war was the growth and professionalization of area studies. It was against this background that Asian studies was consolidated as a discrete field of knowledge production.