A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads(Blackwell History of the World)

2016 PROSE Award Honorable Mention for Textbook in the Humanities A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads presents a comprehensive history of Southeast Asia from our earliest knowledge of its civilizations and religious patterns up to the present day. Incorporates environmental, social, economic, and gender issues to tell a multi-dimensional story of Southeast Asian history from earliest times to the present Argues that while the region remains a highly diverse mix of religions, ethnicities, and political systems, it demands more attention for how it manages such diversity while being receptive to new ideas and technologies Demonstrates how Southeast Asia can offer alternatives to state-centric models of history more broadly Part of The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables xi List of Maps xii List of Illustrations xiii Series Editor’s Preface xiv Preface xvii Glossary xxii Abbreviations xxv 1 People in the Humid Tropics 1 Benign Climate, Dangerous Environment 1 Forests, Water, and People 4 Why a Low but Diverse Population? 6 Agriculture and Modern Language Families 10 The Rice Revolution and Population Concentration 13 The Agricultural Basis of State and Society 16 Food and Clothes 18 Women and Men 21 Not China, not India 26 2 Buddha and Shiva Below the Winds 30 Debates about Indic States 30 Bronze, Iron, and Earthenware in the Archaeological Record 32 The Buddhist Ecumene and Sanskritization 34 Shiva and Nagara in the “Charter Era,” 900–1300 39 Austronesian Gateway Ports – the Negeri 45 Dai Viet and the Border with China 47 The Stateless Majority in the Charter Era 49 Thirteenth/Fourteenth‐Century Crisis 53 3 Trade and Its Networks 57 Land and Sea Routes 57 Specialized Production 59 Integration of the Asian Maritime Markets 62 Austronesian and Indian Pioneers 63 The East Asian Trading System of 1280–1500 65 The Islamic Network 69 The Europeans 71 4 Cities and Production for the World, 1490–1640 74 Southeast Asia’s “Age of Commerce” 74 Crops for the World Market 76 Ships and Traders 80 Cities as Centers of Innovation 81 Trade, Guns, and New State Forms 85 Asian Commercial Organization 91 5 Religious Revolution and Early Modernity, 1350–1630 96 Southeast Asian Religion 97 Theravada Cosmopolis and the Mainland States 98 Islamic Beginnings: Traders and Mystics 101 Polarizations of the First Global War, 1530–1610 106 Rival Universalisms 111 Pluralities, Religious Boundaries, and the “Highland Savage” 114 6 Asian European Encounters, 1509–1688 120 The Euro‐Chinese Cities 120 Women as Cultural Mediators 125 Cultural Hybridities 130 Islam’s “Age of Discovery” 133 Southeast Asian Enlightenments – Makassar and Ayutthaya 135 Gunpowder Kings as an Early Modern Form 139 7 The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century 142 The Great Divergence Debate 142 Southeast Asians Lose the Profits of Long‐Distance Trade 144 Global Climate and Local Crises 149 Political Consequences of the Crisis 152 8 Vernacular Identities, 1660–1820 157 Eighteenth‐Century Consolidation 157 Religious Syncretism and Localization 158 Performance in Palace, Pagoda, and Village 167 History, Myth, and Identity 172 Consolidation and its Limitations 175 9 Expansion of the Sinicized World 177 Fifteenth‐Century Revolution in Dai Viet 177 Viet Expansion, Nam Tien 179 Cochin‐China’s Plural Southern Frontier 183 The Greater Viet Nam of the Nguyen 185 The Commercial Expansion of a “Chinese Century,” 1740–1840 188 Chinese on Southern Economic Frontiers 191 10 Becoming a Tropical Plantation, 1780–1900 196 Pepper and Coffee 197 Commercialization of Staple Crops 198 The New Monopolies: Opium and Tobacco 200 Java’s Coerced Colonial Agriculture 204 Plantations and Haciendas 207 Mono‐crop Rice Economies of the Mainland Deltas 209 Pre‐colonial and Colonial Growth Compared 211 11 The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies, 1820–1910 213 Siam as “Civilized” Survivor 214 Konbaung Burma – a Doomed Modernization 219 High Confucian Fundamentalism – Nguyen Viet Nam 224 “Protected” Negeri 227 Muslim Alternatives in Sumatra 230 Bali Apocalypse 233 Mobile “Big Men” in the Eastern Islands 235 The Last State Evaders 237 12 Making States, 1824–1940 240 European Nationalisms and Demarcations 240 From Many to Two Polities in Nusantara 241 Maximal Burma, Viable Siam 246 Westphalia and the Middle Kingdom 250 Building State Infrastructures 251 How Many States in Indochina? 255 Ethnic Construction in the New Sovereign Spaces 256 States, not Nations 260 13 Population, Peasantization, and Poverty, 1830–1940 261 More People 261 Involution and Peasantization 263 Dual Economy and the Absent Bourgeoisie 266 Subordinating Women 268 Shared Poverty and Health Crises 272 14 Consuming Modernity, 1850–2000 276 Housing for a Fragile Environment 276 The Evolution of Foods 278 Fish, Salt, and Meat 279 Stimulants and Drinks 281 Cloth and Clothing 284 Modern Dress and Identity 286 Performance, from Festival to Film 289 15 Progress and Modernity, 1900–1940 295 From Despair to Hope 296 Education and a New Elite 302 Victory of the National Idea in the 1930s 306 Negotiating the Maleness of Modernity 314 16 Mid‐Twentieth‐Century Crisis, 1930–1954 319 Economic Crisis 319 Japanese Occupation 323 1945 – the Revolutionary Moment 331 Independence – Revolutionary or Negotiated? 341 17 The Military, Monarchy, and Marx: The Authoritarian Turn, 1950–1998 347 Democracy’s Brief Springtime 347 Guns Inherit the Revolutions 350 Dictatorship Philippine Style 358 Remaking “Protected” Monarchies 359 Twilight of the Indochina Kings 364 Reinventing a Thai Dhammaraja 367 Communist Authoritarianism 370 18 The Commercial Turnaround, 1965– 373 Economic Growth at Last 373 More Rice, Fewer Babies 376 Opening the Command Economies 378 Gains and Losses 380 Darker Costs – Environmental Degradation and Corruption 384 19 Making Nations, Making Minorities, 1945– 390 The High Modernist Moment, 1945–1980 390 Education and National Identity 394 Puritan Globalism 400 Joining an Integrated but Plural World 405 20 The Southeast Asian Region in the World 413 The Regional Idea 414 Global Comparisons 419 References 423 Further Reading 431 Index 436

About the Author :
ANTHONY REID is Professor Emeritus at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He has taught and researched Southeast Asian history for 50 years, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, and the United States. He was Founding Director of the Asia Research Institute in Singapore. He has authored or edited numerous books on aspects of Southeast Asian history from the fourteenth to the twenty-first centuries, including explorations on slavery, freedom, Islam, gender, the Chinese minority and its Jewish analogy, population, and economic history.

Review :
"Among the book’s many virtues is Reid’s ability to break down the two thousand years he had to cover in order to guide the reader through space and time. ...Written in a straightforward, no-nonsense style, the book will be accessible to many, with judiciously chosen quotations to enliven the story."   (Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1 November 2015) “Understanding the region is therefore not just a matter of intellectual curiosity but also of considerable topical importance. Despite its textbook-like appearance, History is eminently readable. It succeeds at both providing a broad-brush overview of this complex region, presenting it from within, identifying and tracing major themes, while at the same time delivering a wealth of fascinating and intriguing detail.”  (Asian Review of Books, 25 November 2015) “Reid’s comprehensive survey covers all of the major societies and many of the minor ones from Burma to the Philippines throughout the centuries. The thematic approach, interpretative insights, useful bibliography, and almost encyclopaedic wealth of information will make Reid’s History of Southeast Asia an exceptionally valuable, even indispensable, resource and reference book for other scholars… this book is a splendid contribution that can and should be read and discussed with interest by scholars and teachers of Southeast Asian studies as well as world and Eurasian history.” (Asian Studies Review) "A splendid contribution that can and should be read and discussed with interest by scholars and teachers of Southeast Asian studies as well as world and Eurasian history." - Craig A. Lockard, Asian History Review no. 41 (Nov. 2016, pp.167-8)