Facing Asia: A History of the Columbo Plan By Daniel Oakman, Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004, 324 pages, paperback, $34.95. Reviewed by Matthew Ericson in the December 2004 issue. Help more readers find out about this article
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Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan by Daniel Oakman is a superb book: well researched with extensive use of primary resource material; well argued with clear and largely jargon-free language; and with a basic analytical framework that speaks volumes for the merits of clear and concise research methodology and language.
Oakman traces the origins and objectives of the Colombo Plan, which began in the 1950s and ostensibly sought to bring students of South and East Asia to Australia's eight universities, where they would be educated before returning to their own countries to propagate capitalist accumulation and European civilities. These students could not of course normally stay -- not under our White Australia policy -- but were welcomed temporarily in the name of maintaining the political and economic stability of the region: this was the best way, after all, of protecting civilised capitalism from the Red Menace/Yellow Peril to the north, and helping them from their poverty of ignorance.
Ultimately, however, there was a cultural and developmental benefit from the Colombo Plan, which is most often the focus of any discussion -- frequently self-congratulatory -- regarding the programme. While it is not evident, as Oakman claims, that Australian historians have neglected to examine the Colombo Plan, it is arguably true that never before has such a lucid and adept history been written on the Plan: this, more than any previous history of the topic, is the contribution Oakman has made with Facing Asia. Oakman points out that, while many Australians know of the Colombo Plan and may even have known some such students, they would generally: not know how and why the Colombo Plan was created, nor how it served as an instrument of Australian foreign policy in the fight against communism, and what the political and racial anxieties were upon which the scheme was built. (p 2) While Oakman's analysis is critical and intelligent, and his methodology is simple and unpretentious, the most remarkable aspect of his research effort is the extensive and intelligent application of primary research material. Oakman's adept and informative use of sources such as archive material and interviews lead to revealing observations, such as his comments regarding the professional exchange programme by which Australian experts visited and contributed their skills to Colombo Plan countries:Distinguished visitors such as [surgeon Benjamin] Rank became conduits for the [Australian] government's heavy-handed message about Australian values and the significance of Australian-Asian relations under the Colombo Plan. Leaving nothing to chance, the Department of External Affairs gave Rank a ready-made speech intended to help him answer any curly questions about the aid programme or immigration laws... At its most sanctimonious, Rank's mock-speech explained that while Indian men had long been accustomed to avoiding 'manual work,' through the scholarship programme 'many Indian students in Australia had learned from us the dignity of labour.' (pp 205-6) Such precise and revealing applications of primary source material are used shrewdly by Oakman throughout Facing Asia, and are a particularly noteworthy aspect of the book. Indeed, the sourcing of such material in itself is no easy task, as I discovered on being asked to write a magazine article on the Colombo Plan (it came to grief quite promptly amongst the sparse archives of the University of Sydney and the bumbling apathy of AusAid staff). Even the creative presentation of the book has been thoughtfully considered: the cover art, for instance, features a bookplate by Sir Lionel Lindsay, copies of which were originally pasted into the front of books donated under the Colombo Plan.
When seeking to find a fault -- and in this case one is forced to actively seek shortcomings to add some semblance of balance to the review -- one could mention that Oakman has failed to reference specific page numbers where newspapers and periodicals are cited, and that two photographs -- of Richard Casey and Percy Spender -- are printed on matt rather than quality gloss-art paper. On a more substantive note, the book may have benefited from an overview of how and why Australia's international tertiary education policies were transformed from the political and altruistic emphasis of the Colombo Plan to the commercially-orientated policies of more recent years.
Ultimately, Oakman's Facing Asia is an outstanding contribution to current knowledge, and obligatory reading for those with an interest in Australia and its history, our relationship with Asia, the politics and economics of our region, or simply just sound research methodology. The quality of research, argument, and presentation of Facing Asia is a credit to both Daniel Oakman and the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at ANU. What a wonderful book! Citation - Matthew Ericson. 'Review: Facing Asia: A History of the Columbo Plan by Daniel Oakman' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), December 2004. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 21 May 2013].
Back Cover Blurb - 'No nation can escape its geography', warned Percy Spender, Australia's Minister for External Affairs, in 1950. With the immediate turmoil of world war II over, communism and decolonisation had ended any possibility that Asia could continue to be ignored by Australia. In the early 1950s, Australia embarked on its most ambitious attempt to engage with Asia: the Colombo Plan.
This book examines the public and private agendas behind Australia's foreign aid diplomacy and reveals the strategic, political and cultural aims that drove the Colombo Plan. It examines the legacy of WWII, how foreign aid was seen as crucial to achieving regional security, how the plan was sold to Australian and Asian audiences, and the changing nature of Australia's relationship with Britain and the United States.
Above all this is the question of how Australia sought to project itself into the region, and how Asia was introduced into the Australian consciousness. In answering these questions, this book tells the story of how an insular society, deeply scarred by the turbulance of war, chose to face its regional future.
Have You Also Read? Between the Battles: A Novel
 Helen Nolan, Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005, 224 Pages, Paperback, $29.95Reviewed by Tony Smith in the June 2005 issue.When narrator of Between the Battles, Holly Gow lands in Saigon on New Year's Eve, 1967, she immediately has misgivings. Recruited by the US Post Exchange (PX) in Sydney, Holly approaches Vietnam with a sense of adventure, but disembarking at Saigon airport she feels a sense of panic, realising she is one girl among hundreds of soldiers -- 'men, wall-to-wall'. (p 4) While Siobhan McHugh's Minefields and Mini-Skirts: Australian Women and the Vietnam War (1993) notes that some one thousand Australian women worked in Vietnam during the war and three died there, they were not afforded a presence in the popular imagination then or since. It is the relative rarity of 'round eye' women in Vietnam ... read more.
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Issue 44
Popular Music: Practices, Formations and Change - Australian Perspectives
