Looking for Asian connections during the colonial period: reconfiguring from the “inside” and “outside”

April 2006 It is rare in international relations and colonial studies to talk about Asian connections during the colonial period. Colonial history tends to concentrate on a specific colonial state or on the relationship between the “coloniser” and the “colonised”. Most international historians also focus on the colonial states during this period, which were the sovereign entities at the time (the Dutch Indies or French Indochina). They then fast forward to 1945 to resume Asia’s part of the st..