<i>Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in South East Asia, 1945-1962</i>, edited by CWIHP Director Christian Ostermann is reviewed on H-Diplo.

CWIHP is pleased to announce that the latest volume in the CWIHP Book Series, Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in South East Asia, 1945-1962, edited by Christian Ostermann and Christopher Goscha was reviewed on H-Diplo.

The full text of the review is available on the H-Diplo website

Connecting Histories draws on newly available archival documentation from both Western and Asian countries to explore decolonization, the Cold War, and the establishment of a new international order in post-World War II Southeast Asia. Major historical forces intersected here—of power, politics, economics, and culture on trajectories East to West, North to South, across the South itself, and along less defined tracks. Especially important democratic-communist competitions sought the loyalties of Southeast Asian nationalists, even as some colonial powers sought to resume their prewar dominance. These intersections are the focus of the contributions to this book, which use new sources and approaches to examine some of the most important historical trajectories of the 20th century in Burma, Vietnam, Malaysia, and a number of other countries.

Christian F. Ostermann directs the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program and the Center's Cold War International History Project.

Christopher E. Goscha is associate professor of history at Université du Québec à Montréal.

About the reviewers:

Ragna Boden received her Ph.D. from the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany in 2005. Her recent publications include Soviet-Indonesian relations in the first postwar decade (1945-1954), Cold War Economics - Soviet Aid to Indonesia, Journal of Cold War Studies, and a forthcoming article titled Soviet world policy in the 1970s: a three-level game. She is currently working on a book on the Russian military colonies in the19th century.

Karl Hack is at the Open University in the United Kingdom. His books include Defence and ecolonisation in Southeast Asia. He recently edited, with Geoff Wade, the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies a special Asian Cold War symposium issue. His present projects are: a history of war and memory in Malaysia and Singapore (with Kevin Blackburn), Singapore from Srivijaya to Present: Reinventing the Global City, and a book on the analysis of empires. He has interviewed communists up to the rank of Secretary-General, and his most recent article on counterinsurgency is: Extracting Counterinsurgency lessons: Malaya and Afghanistan.

S.R. Joey Long is assistant professor of history and international affairs at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His articles have been published in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Diplomatic History, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Rethinking History, and South East Asia Research. He has also coauthored two monographs on Singapore's water security, and contributed papers to edited volumes on Asian security and Singapore's history. His first single-authored book, tentatively titled Safe for Decolonization: The Eisenhower Administration, Britain, and Singapore, is forthcoming from Kent State University Press.

Katharine McGregor is senior lecturer in Southeast Asian history at the University of Melbourne. She is author of the book, History in Uniform: Military Ideology and the Construction of Indonesia's Past. She is currently working on a major project on Islam and the Politics of memory in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia.