Countries in the region therefore gained independence inspired by a variety of ideological projects and under different strategic conditions. Vietnam was perhaps the most complex as the north initially fought and gained its measure of independent from the French. While the south remained under US influence, by the end of the Vietnam war in 1975 the whole country was reunified under the communist regime. Cambodia and Laos initially sustained non-communist regimes after the French departure in 1954 but were overtaken by communist movement in the wake of the victory in Vietnam. The Philippines and Malaya (renamed Malaysia a few years later) gained gradual independence respectively in 1946 from the Americans and in 1957 from the British. In both case new political institutions resembled the political systems of their former colonial master. The British subsequently gave independent to Singapore in 1959. Singapore soon chose integration with Malaya and former British territories to form the Federation of Malaysia. Singapore seceded and became fully independent only two years later. In Indonesia, nationalists led a revolutionary movement after the second world war ended in 1945 and the Dutch attempted to regain control of the archipelago as the Japanese occupying forces retreated. Although Indonesian leaders officially declared independence in 1945, they only succeeded in practice in 1949, when the Dutch finally departed.
Political change: alternative explanations
During the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty first, many Southeast Asian countries experienced profound and frequent political change while others remained very stable. Why is it so, and why is it important? There are many explanations that range from unique historical events to broad patterns that we can observe in clusters of countries. History matters and unique event often shape the political landscape. Most countries in the region were set on relatively different paths given varied colonial histories. Large-scale killings often left permanent scars. The Khmer rouge massacres of the 1970s in Cambodia still have an impact today, including a traumatic relationship to the past and Hum Sen’s dominance of the political regime. The 1965 massacre of 500,000 people in Indonesia provided the instability