Machine generated contents note: 15. Dramatising Siamese independence: Thai post-colonial perspectives on kingship / Irene Stengs. 2. All the king's men: regal ministers of eclipsed empires in India / Priya Naik -- 3. Decolonised rulers: rajas, maharajas and others in post-colonial India / Jim Masselos -- 4. The Himalayan kingdoms, British colonialism and indigenous monarchs after the end of empire / Robert Aldrich -- 5. Conflict and betrayal: negotiations at the end of British rule in the Shan States of Burma (Myanmar) / Susan Conway -- 6. Malaysia's multi-monarchy: surviving colonisation and decolonisation / Anthony Milner -- 7. Celebrating the `world's most ideal state': Sarawak and the Brooke dynasty's centenary of 1941 / Donna Brunero -- 8. Refashioning the monarchy in Brunei: Sultan Omar Ali and the quest for royal absolutism / Naimah S. Talib -- 9. Colonial monarchy and decolonisation in the French Empire: Bao Dai, Norodom Sihanouk and Mohammed V / Christopher Goscha -- 10. Loyalism and anti-communism in the making of the modern monarchy in post-colonial Laos / Ryan Wolfson-Ford -- 11. Indonesia: sultans and the state / Jean Gelman Taylor -- 12. Defending the Sultanate's territory: Yogyakarta during the Indonesian decolonisation, 1942 -- 50 / Bayu Dardias Kurniadi -- 13. The uses of monarchy in late-colonial Hong Kong, 1967 -- 97 / Mark Hampton -- 14. From absolute monarch to `symbol emperor': decolonisation and the Japanese emperor after 1945 / Elise K. Tipton -- 15. Dramatising Siamese independence: Thai post-colonial perspectives on kingship / Irene Stengs.
Summary:
Monarchies and Decolonisation provides new perspectives on the role of European colonial monarchies, and the monarchies of Asia, in the late colonial period, during the process of decolonization, and in its aftermath. With case studies drawn from former colonies in South and Southeast Asia, as well as Japan and Thailand, contributors examine the changes in forms of government - from colonial monarchies to those of independent states, from monarchies to republics, and from monarchies with empires to those which no longer had them - in the lead-up to the decolonization of India and Indonesia in the 1940s down to to the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It shows how monarchies, with or without success, tried to accommodate the independence of former colonies, restructuring themselves for political transition, challenges from republicanism and radicalism and, in some cases, recasting themselves in the the wake of the loss of overseas empires. Looking at the phenomenon of hundreds of rulers of princely states in India and sultanates in Indonesia, the 'white rajahs' of Sarawak and such well-known figures as King Sihanouk of Cambodia and Emperor Hirohito of Japan, it develops new transnational and comparative insights into the institution of monarchy in modern Asia. With chapters written by internationally recognized scholars from half a dozen countries, the volume will prove valuable to historians of modern Asia, of colonialism and decolonisation, and of studies in modern monarchy.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.