Northern (Outer) Mongolia
was practically independent of China after 1911 and became the Mongolian
People’s Republic (MPR) in 1924 with support and intervention from Soviet
Russia. Laos was separated from Siamese hegemony by the French who moved
inland from Vietnam in the late nineteenth century. Although there was always
some tendency amongst both French and Vietnamese to regard Laos as a natural
area for Vietnamese expansion, Vietnamese nationalism crystallized within
narrower borders and Laos was given independence in 1953. The Malay
Peninsula was allocated to the British by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 and
achieved independence as the Federation of Malaya in 1957, whereas Sumatra
became part of the Netherlands Indies and achieved independence as part of Indonesia
in 1945.9 In this respect, the partition of the lands of the Mongols, the
Lao, and the Malays has much in common with the later division of Germany,
Korea, China, and Vietnam, all of them likewise a consequence of the encounter
of two hegemonic powers on the territory of another people.