Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750-1880

This innovative book rethinks the 18th and early 19th century history of coastal and riverine southwest Indochina - the "water frontier". It repositions old state-centred histories to reveal the region as a single, multiethnic economic zone knit together by itineraries of junk traders and by the activities of many southern Chinese settlers, sojourners, and merchants, whose local significance it explores. In so doing, it pioneers a new nationally neutral way of perceiving this dynamic region.

Li Tana is a Senior Fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

Nola Cooke is a Research Fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

NUS Press and Rowan & Littlefield