Travail

The restiveness of India, the bitter rebellion of Indo-China and Indonesia, the conflict within China had an immense and common impulse: the surge of a billion people toward a new place in the world.

Under the twin impact of nationalism and resentment of Western exploitation, colonial, subservient Asia had begun to disintegrate decades ago. World War II had greatly accelerated the process. The war had enfeebled, physically and psychologically, the claims of Western power over the Eastern treasure house. The French and Dutch, hungry and shivering at home, seemed particularly awkward in the role of guardians of empire.

Allied arms had driven the Japanese from the "Co-Prosperity" version of empire. But ultimate Allied victory could not erase the memory of Japan's spectacular challenge to the West, nor the effect of the Jap propaganda slogan, "Asia for the Asiatics."

Each in their own way, the Indians, Indo-Chinese and Indonesians were asking of the victorious Allies: "Is it a reconquest or truly a liberation?" The Chinese, freed at long last from Japanese shackles, struggled through civil war toward their destiny as a great modern nation.

Asia's rise had reached a point where it could seriously and persistently challenge Western domination. Relations between East and West would never be again as they had been in 1941.

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