Water Frontier focuses principally on southwest Indochina (from modern southern Vietnam into eastern Cambodia and southwestern Thailand), which it calls the Lower Mekong region. The book's excellent contributors argue that, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this area formed a single trading zone woven together by the regular itineraries of thousands of large and small junk traders. This zone in turn formed a regional component of the wider trade networks that linked southern China to all of Southeast Asia. This is the "water frontier" of the title, a sparsely settled coastal and riverine frontier region of mixed ethnicities and often uncertain settlements in which the waterborne trade and commerce of a long string of small ports was essential to local life. This innovative book uses the water frontier concept to reposition old nation-state oriented histories and decenter modern dominant cultures and ethnicities to reveal a different local past. It expands and deepens our understanding of the time and place as well as of the multiple roles played by Chinese sojourners, settlers, and junk traders in their interactions with a kaleidoscope of local peoples.

To celebrate Anthony Reid's numerous and seminal contributions to the field of Southeast Asian history, a group of his colleagues and students has contributed essays for this Festschrift. In addition to introductory essays which provide personal and intellectual histories of Anthony Reid the man, there is a range of original scholarly contributions addressing historical issues which Reid has researched during his career. Divided into sections which examine Southeast Asia in the world, early modern Southeast Asia, and modern Southeast Asia, these works engage with issues ranging from the Age of Commerce and comparative Eurasian history, to nationalism, ethnic hybridity, Islam, technological change, and the Chinese and Arabs in Southeast Asia. The authors include some of the foremost historians of Southeast Asia in our generation.

In this historical reassessment of southern Vietnam and its distinct culture, Li Tana illuminates the resourceful qualities of the Dong Trong pioneers, develops a meticulous analysis of the Nguyen trade and taxation systems, and, in the process, redefines the chief cause of the Tay Son rebellion. Li Tana's study focuses on the socio-economics of Nguyen Cochinchina, such as: the role of foreign merchants, the region's trading economy, demographic influences, religious and cultural values, how Nguyen rule affected Vietnamese settlers, relationships with uplanders, and processes of localization and identity formation.

Moving beyond past histories of Viet Nam that have focused on nationalist struggle, this volume brings together work by scholars who are re-examining centuries of Vietnamese history. Crossing borders and exploring ambiguities, the essays in "Viet Nam: Borderless Histories" draw on international archives and bring a range of inventive analytical approaches to the global, regional, national, and local narratives of Vietnamese history. Among the topics explored are the extraordinary diversity between north and south, lowland and highland, Viet and minority, and between colonial, Chinese, Southeast Asian, and dynastic influences. The result is an exciting new approach to Southeast Asia's past that uncovers the complex and rich history of Viet Nam.
"A wonderful introduction to the exciting work that a new generation of scholars is engaging in."--Liam C. Kelley, "International Journal of Asian Studies"