This book examines the interconnections between the transfer of power and state governance in Asia, the emergence of the Cold War in Asia, and the transfer of hegemony from the UK to the US, by focusing specifically on the historical roles of international economic aid and the autonomous response from Asian nation states in the 1950s and the 1960s.

Shigeru Akita is Professor in the Graduate School of Letters at Osaka University, Japan.

Gerold Krozewski is a Research Fellow the School of Graduate Studies at University of the Free State, South Africa.

Shoichi Watanabe is Professor in the Department of History at Tohoku Gakuin University, Japan.

Introduction: The Colombo Plan, aid relations, and the international order of Asia, 1950-1965 Part I: The Colombo Plan and economic development 1. The 1950 Commonwealth Foreign Ministers' meeting and the International Aid Programme for Asia 2. 'The weapons of the weakened': British power, sterling balances, and the origins of the Colombo Plan 3. The Colombo Plan and industrialization in India: technical cooperation for the Indian Institutes of Technology 4. 'A waste of time and money'? The Colombo Plan in Malaya, Singapore and the Borneo Territories during the 1950s 5. The development and activities of the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), 1947-1965 II: Changing aid relations and the Colombo Plan 6. The transformation of the Colombo Plan and the sterling area in the late 1950s and early 1960s 7. The Colombo Plan and Japan: focusing on the Tokyo meeting 8. Britain and the reordering of overseas aid, 1956-64: from colonial development finance to assistance to sovereign states 9. The Colombo Plan and British publicity policies towards Southeast Asia, 1950-1965 Part III: The Cold War, aid policies, and the international order 10. US Cold War policy and the Colombo Plan: a continuing search for regional cooperation in Asia in the 1950s 11. Peace offensive between the two wars: Khrushchev's policy towards Asia, 1953-1964 12. Development assistance as a Cold War tool: the United States, international institutions, and the political economy of Asian development, 1947-1965 13. The changing international order in Asia and Anglo-Japanese relations: from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s