The aftermath of the Second World War saw many colonial empires in a state of upheaval. In South East Asia, what had been armed resistance against the Japanese invaders and occupiers was now often turned into national liberation movements seeking independence from the European empires. The Second World War may have ended but this was anything other than an era of peace. This was an era in which Britain moved between successive crises in Palestine, Kenya, Cyprus, Suez and the wider Middle East, in addition to fighting a conventional war in Korea, maintaining a significant peacetime army in West Germany and Berlin, and honouring commitments to the South East Asia Treaty Organization.
Volume 1 of Borneo Stand-off examines the background, context and origins of Britain’s military experience in post-Second World War South East Asia as Malaya transitioned from colony to the independent state of Malaysia, up to and including the Brunei Revolt of 1962, and sets the scene for the coming Confrontation – or Konfrontasi – with the Indonesia of Sukarno, buoyed by his recent successes against the Netherlands in the former Dutch East Indies.
