How to Use This Book

Although we would like everyone to read this book from cover to cover, we realize that very few people will actually read it (or any other general history) straight through. We would therefore like to point out some features of its organization that may help readers in approaching it.

Those who do read the book from start to finish will find it oscillating between general thematic chapters, primarily on social, economic, and cultural change, and "country" chapters emphasizing developments, mostly political, within specific areas. The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia is concerned as much with the processes of historical transformation as with the chronological narrative of events.

Readers interested in synoptic analyses of developments that do not fit easily into conventional chronology and are not unique to a single country may wish to focus primarily on the "general" chapters. Part 1 introduces the eighteenth-century world, when colonialism was still marginal to most of Southeast Asia, and the first chapter of part 2 ushers in imperialism. Part 3 examines change in the era of direct Western domination in the region, roughly from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. The first two chapters of part 5 are about the social and economic transformation of Southeast Asia over the last half century.

Readers primarily interested in a particular society may follow its history in the "country" chapters in parts 2, 4, and 5. (Vietnam, for example, is the topic of chapters 7, 23, and 34.) Beyond the facts and interpretations presented, readers might note that the periodization of these national histories often diverges from more conventional patterns, even those employed in earlier versions of this book. They should remember, however, that much information on these countries--particularly on social, economic, and cultural change--can also be found in the "general" chapters and located there through the index.