Preface

Summary

In 1999, when I first discussed with Oxford University Press in Singapore the idea of writing a book on Southeast Asia, the commissioning editor asked for a manuscript that could be used as a text for university courses on the international relations of Southeast Asia. What turned out, however, was not as much a “textbook” (in the sense of being a comprehensive narrative of major issues and developments), but an argument about how Southeast Asia's international relations should be understood and analysed. The book's narrative on Southeast Asia's modern international relations was structured around a central thesis: that regions are socially constructed, and that regionalist ideas, a desire for regional identity and intraregional patterns of interaction are crucial factors in the making of Southeast Asia as a region. Hence, they should be given as much attention as the role of external powers and the balance-of-power dynamics stressed in the traditional literature on the region. It is this argument about the imagination and social construction of the region that would make The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia provocative reading and generate a lively debate among the scholarly and policy community interested in Southeast Asian affairs. In this sense, the book's major purpose has been accomplished.

The Making of Southeast Asia incorporates and significantly expands on The Quest for Identity. Among other changes, it contains two new chapters. Chapter 2 presents the perspective and analytical framework of the book, drawing upon recent writings on regions and regional identity in the scholarly literature as well as some of the commentary, both positive and critical, that the first edition generated. Chapter 8 examines the challenges facing Southeast Asia's regional concept since the onset of the Asian economic crisis in 1997. The book also provides important new material on the contribution of Southeast Asian studies to the regional concept. Chapter 3 adds to the discussion of the precolonial state systems that introduces more variations among them, and provides an expanded evaluation of alternative historiographical perspectives that reinforce or challenge the claim of Southeast Asia to be a region. Chapter 3 adds new material on Southeast Asian nationalist ideas of regionalism. A rich collection of photographs has been added to illustrate and supplement the text throughout the book.