European control continued until the Second World War. During the centuries in which the western world was industrializing and developing, Southeast Asians were kept as virtual slaves. The average height and weight of Southeast Asians was approximately the same as the Europeans prior to colonization; after, they are significantly smaller and lighter as a result of consistent deprivation.
The Second World War saw the occupation of nearly all of Southeast Asia by conquering Japanese forces. While this was one colonizer replacing another, it did give Asian people the belief that Europeans were not godlike and invincible but could be expelled. At the end of the war, the Europeans sought to reclaim their imperial possessions. The Southeast Asians began a series of wars of opposition aimed at independence. This was a time when Communism appeared to be a very attractive alternative to colonization. The example of China, where the Chinese people had thrown off the imperial system and seemed set fair to introduce a much fairer and more equitable system. The only real alternative to Communism appeared to be Islamic fundamentalism or absolute monarchy, as had been the case in Thailand until the constitutional revolution of 1932. The desire for Communism characterized the Southeast Asian wars of liberation and caused much of the rest of the world, especially the USA, to refuse support. As a result, when success was achieved in overthrowing European colonizers (the Philippines remained under the control of the Americans).
After the Vietnamese managed to evict the French as a result of a long struggle, a confrontation between the Communist north and the pro-American south seemed inevitable. Massive American support for the Southern Vietnamese was fruitless and the North Vietnamese, supported by other Indochinese people who saw the American war as a continuation of the struggle for independence, drove the American forces out. In the aftermath of this war, communism took a hold in Laos where the Lao People's Democratic Republic still stands and more tragically in Cambodia, which had initially taken the monarchist route but could not hold out against a revolution mounted by the Red Cambodians - the Khmer Rouge.
The resulting regime caused the deaths of millions of people, from starvation, from judicial execution, from murder and overwork. The chaos that this led to eventually inspired the Vietnamese government to launch an invasion to restore order. This was successfully achieved but sparked the wrath of the Chinese, who have had a historic rivalry with the Vietnamese. The outcome was a border war between China and Vietnam which ended in a standoff after the Chinese forces were repelled from the difficult and mountainous terrain of northern Vietnam. Relations have since been normalized but are still hardly friendly.
In the last twenty years or so, many Southeast Asian states have tried to follow the Asian Tigers (Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong) in achieving economic development. Many policies have been brought in to try to achieve development almost at any price. Certainly, the environment and human rights have been sacrificed in many cases. Some success has been achieved, particularly in large cities. However, the success is shallow - people in rural areas are in most cases no better off than a generation ago - perhaps the only difference for them is that now they are aware of all the new consumer goods that are available but they cannot have. That makes many people unhappy.
Now Southeast Asia is a mixture of rich and poor, powerful and powerless, lucky and unlucky. No one knows what will happen in the future, but everyone agrees that it will come as a surprise.
