Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era
Trade, Power, and Belief

Anthony J. S. Reid (Edited by)

9780801480935

Paperback / softback, published 24 June 1993

360 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.454 kg

The most eloquent yet judicious statement available of Southeast Asia's status and nature as a distinctive region. Those still under the impression that Southeast Asia is nothing more than a wildly diverse jumble of societies... need to spend some quality time with what Reid has to say here on the issue.

The political and religious identities of Southeast Asia were largely formed by the experiences of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, when international commerce boomed before eventually falling under the domination of well-armed European powers intent on monopoly. This book is the first to document the full range of responses to the profound changes of this period: urbanization and the burgeoning of commerce; the proliferation of firearms; an increase in the number and strength of states; and the shift from experimental spirit worship to the universalist scriptural religions of Islam, Christianity, and Theravada Buddhism.