External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893-1952.

• Author: Horowitz, Richard S.

External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893-1952. By Ja Ian Chong (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Hardcover: 293pp.

From the 1950s through to the 1970s, political scientists and historians working on Asia were often in conversation. They worked on related topics and utilized approaches and methods that were, if not the same, mutually understandable. In recent decades a chasm has emerged between the fields: historians have stepped away from political topics, and methodological developments have drawn political science ever further from the kinds of research that interest historians. Ja Ian Chong's External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation marks a welcome return of political science to Asian history.

Chong uses a comparative approach to explore the question of how sovereign states came into being in East and Southeast Asia in the middle of the twentieth century. His theory is that strong states tend to intervene in weaker states to secure exclusive access, and to prevent competitors from gaining access. He argues "Sovereign statehood develops in a weak polity when foreign actors uniformly expect high costs to intervention and settle on a next best alternative to their worst fear, domination of that state by a rival" (p. 2). The decisions of foreign states to support or accept the establishment of strong government--rather than nationalist movements, military competition, or norms of self-determination --were vital in the establishment of sovereign states in Asia in the middle of the twentieth century. Chong uses China between 1893 and 1952 as his primary example, and then adds a chapter each on Indonesia and Thailand.

At the core of his book are the four chapters on China. Utilizing the language fashionable in political science (independent variables and dependent variables, avoiding statements about causality), but often annoying to those in other disciplines, Chong avoids the emotive language of imperialism and domination that is so common in the historical literature. He shows quite convincingly that the actions of foreign powers to support local proxies and claim exclusive rights in certain regions contributed to the weakening of the Chinese state from 1893-1922. Between 1923 and 1953 foreign powers except for Japan made choices not to intervene in China, and that generally speaking they acted in ways that supported the assertion of power by a central...