A History of Southeast Asia

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.

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.