Monsoon Asia : a reader on South and Southeast Asia

Scholars of South and Southeast Asia from diverse disciplines reflect on the possibility and utility of conceiving the two areas as a single overarching region, referred to as Monsoon Asia. Table of Contents Preface Chapter 1. Introduction: Seasons and Civilizations Chapter 2. Revisiting the Monsoon Asia Idea: Old Problems and New Directions Chapter 3. Space and Time in the Making of Monsoon Asia Chapter 4. New Paradigms for the Early Relationship between South and Southeast Asia : The Contribution of Southeast Asian Archaeology Chapter 5. Contacts, Cosmopoleis, Colonial Legacies: Interconnected Language Histories Chapter 6. Indianization Reconsidered: India’s Early Influence in Southeast Asia Chapter 7. Local Projects and Transregional Modalities: The Pali Arena Chapter 8. Muslim Circulations and Islamic Conversion in Monsoon Asia Chapter 9. Islamic Literary Networks in South and Southeast Asia Chapter 10. Languages of Law : Islamic Legal Cosmopolis and its Arabic and Malay Microcosmoi Chapter 11. Human Traffic: Asian Migration in the Age of Steam Chapter 12. The Problem of Transregional Framing in Asian History : Charmed Knowledge Networks and Moral Geographies of “Greater India” Chapter 13. Pragmatic Asianism: International Socialists in South and Southeast Asia Chapter 14. The Informality Trap : Politics, Governance and Informal Institutions in South and Southeast Asia Chapter 15. Epics in Worlds of Performance : A South/Southeast Asian Narrativity Chapter 16. Postscript: The Many Worlds of Monsoon Asia Bibliography About the authors Index Monsoon Asia was the first venue of global trade, a zone of encounters and a crossroads of culture. This book demonstrates the continuing fertility of the Monsoon Asia perspective as an aid to understanding what South/Southeast Asia, as a connected space, has been in the past and is today. Sixteen tightly knit chapters, written by experts from perspectives ranging from Indology and philology to postcolonial and transnational studies, offer a captivating view of the region, with its rich and variegated history shaped by commonalities in human ecology, cultural forms, and religious practices. The contributions draw upon extensive research and a thorough command of the most recent scholarship. This volume will be an invaluable text for anyone interested in South And and Southeast Asia and for more specialized students in the fields of global and Indian Ocean history, transcultural studies, archaeology, linguistics, and politics