Rohan Price 
Reading Colonies-Property and Control of the British Far East [PDF ebook] 

This book investigates how the British held on for so long. Rent control legislation and other measures of property law are nominated as key tools used to frustrate decolonization in most Eastern colonies. British colonial administrations tried long and hard to inhibit the dialectical discord between their colonial hierarchism and local forms of nationalism with the prompts and plaudits of property policy.