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British Intelligence on Siam (Thailand) and Mainland Southeast Asia, c. 1887–1948

Hrsg. v. A.J. Farrington

Online

Verlag :: Publisher

Brill Academic Publishers

Preis :: Price

Preise auf Anfrage / Prices on request

Siehe auch:
British Colonial Policy and Intelligence Files on Asia and the Middle East, c. 1880–c. 1950

Das Angebot richtet sich nicht an Verbraucher i. S. d. § 13 BGB und Letztverbraucher i. S. d. PAngV.

ISBN/ISSN

2950-4953

Bestellnummer bei digento :: digento order number

10883311

Verlagsinformation :: Publisher's information

British India played an important "forward" role in British relations with Thailand, not least in countering the perceived "threat" from French Indo-China. The materials in this online collection cover British-French policies and attempts to steer local politics into a "favourable" direction. Growing attention was paid to countering nationalism and communism in the area. The files presented here document the rising influence of Japan, the Second World War, and its immediate aftermath.

The files and associated confidential print which accumulated at the India Office in London over the period 1887–1948 provide a uniquely British Government of India perspective on the affairs of mainland Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand. Theoretically, British India should have had little direct involvement with this area. Thailand was an independent country and relations with it were conducted through the Foreign Office. The Malay peninsula was partly a British colony and partly under British suzerainty, with officials reporting to the Colonial Office. Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam were colonised by the French. However, in practice India had a prominent role in the region:

• the Indian Army was always the main resource in British strategic planning;
• the evolving border between British Burma (created in three stages by annexations after the wars of 1824–26, 1852–54 and 1885–86, and administered as a province of British India until 1937) gave India several hundred miles of interface with Thailand, as well as contact with French interests along the northern Mekong;
• there were large numbers of British colonial subjects, mainly Burmese and Indians, living and working in Thailand.

Provenance and historical background

All the files and related confidential print form part of the papers of the Political & Secret Department and the Burma Office in the India Office Records (apart from two items from the Military Department library, L/MIL/17).

The files comprise a wide variety of papers received from the Government of India Foreign Department and other sources in India, from the Government of Burma, and from the Foreign Office in London, together with India Office-generated minuting, comment and replies. Incoming papers passed through the departmental registry, where they were placed on a file numbered in an annual sequence before being passed to the department’s officers. As a result of a regular programme of "weeding" and merger, the files in the present collection were eventually archived in one of five groups:

• L/P&S/10 Political & Secret Separate (or Subject) Files, 1902–1931. On-going files of documents on a particular subject accumulated over a period of years;
• L/P&S/11 Political & Secret Annual Files, 1912–1930. Files relating to business disposed of within a single year;
• L/P&S/12 Political External Collections, 1931–1950. Broad subject collections, each containing a large number of on-going files;
• M/3 Burma Office Annual Files, 1937–1948;
• M/4 Burma Office Annual Files: Foreign & Frontier, 1946–1948.

When Burma was separated from British India in 1937 officials within the India Office were nominated to constitute a Burma Office, and the Secretary of State for India assumed the same role for Burma.

The Political & Secret Department also maintained a separate series of memoranda prepared by India Office, Foreign Office or Government of India officials (L/P&S/18), and had its own reference library of secret/confidential print and official publications (L/P&S/20).

All the India Office departments were subsumed within the Commonwealth Relations Office (subsequently the Foreign & Commonwealth Office) after Independence in 1947 and 1948. In 1982 the Foreign & Commonwealth Office transferred the administration of the India Office Library & Records to the British Library, where it now forms a part of the Library’s Asian & African Collections.