The Netherlands East Indies in the Nineteenth-century experienced not only the replacement of company rule by Dutch government rule but also the complete transformation of Java into a colonial society and the successful extension of colonial rule to Sumatra and the eastern archipelago.

Japan emerged from the 19th Century as the first Asian industrialized nation. Domestic commercial activities and foreign trade had met the demands for material culture in the Tokugawa period, but the modernized Meiji and later Showa eras had radically different requirements.

The Nationalist-Communist turmoil in China provided an easy opportunity for Japan to further its goals in the 1930s. Japan saw Manchuria as a limitless supply of raw materials, a market for her manufactured goods (now excluded from many Western countries by Depression era tariffs), and as a protective buffer state against the Soviet Union in Siberia.

The assassination of Alexander II, the reformer Czar, brought to the throne his son Alexander III. Alexander III condemned the influence of Western culture, ideas, and liberalist reforms supported by his father. He believed that Russia had lost its domineering role in Eastern Europe due to Western liberalism and the only way for Russia to regain its position was through a process he instituted called "Russificiation."

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World-primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies-and the powers of the Western world, primarily the U.S. and its NATO allies.

The documents found in this file—predominantly instructions to and dispatches from diplomatic and consular officials—provide valuable information on economic relations between Russia/the Soviet Union and the United States, from the time of the last czar through the later years of Stalin. Also provided are general insights on the period 1918-1933, when the only relations maintained between the United States and the Soviet Union were commercial.

This collection puts American policy in Southeast Asia and the traumatic events of the first Indochina War and the desire for Communist containment into the larger perspective of the Cold War.

The Saigon Embassy Files Kept by Ambassador Graham Martin is one of many sub-collections that comprise the National Security Adviser Files at the Ford Presidential Library.

Following the surrender of the Japanese in September 1945, France pushed for the nullification of the 1938 Franco-Siamese Treaty and attempted to reassert itself in the region, but came into conflict with the Viet Minh, a coalition of Communist and Vietnamese nationalists under French-educated dissident Ho Chi Minh. During World War II, the United States had supported the Viet Minh in resistance against the Japanese; the group had been in control of the countryside since the French gave way in March 1945.

The Vietnam Information Group consisted of NSC staff members responsible for monitoring cable traffic from other agencies reporting on events in South and North Vietnam. The collection consists primarily of State Department cables and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intelligence information cables. In addition, this collection includes a variety of reports, memoranda, and clippings.

The collapse of the Chinese Nationalist government in 1949 sharpened American apprehensions over communist expansion in the Far East, and hastened U.S. measures to counter the threat posed by Mao's China. The U.S. sought to create and employ policy instruments similar to those it was bringing into play against the Soviets in Europe: collective security organizations, economic aid, and military assistance.

In September 1950, President Harry Truman sent a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to Vietnam to assist the French in the First Indochina war. The President claimed they were not sent as combat troops, but to supervise the use of $10 million worth of U.S. military equipment to support the French in their effort to fight the Viet Minh forces. By 1953, aid increased dramatically to $350 million to replace old military equipment owned by the French.