The Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse

The nations of Southeast Asia today are rapidly integrating economically and politically, but that integration is also counterbalanced by forces ranging from hyper-nationalism to disputes over cultural ownership throughout the region. Those forces, Farish A. Noor argues in this book, have their roots in the region’s failure to come to a critical understanding of how current national and cultural identities in the region came about. To remedy that, Noor offers a close account of the construction of Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century by the forces of capitalism and imperialism, and shows how that construct remains a potent aspect of political, economic, and cultural disputes today.

Farish A. Noor is Professor of Political History at the Faculty of Social Science FOSS, Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia UIII. His work has focused on 19th century colonial Southeast Asia, looking at the modalities of racialised colonial-capitalism in the region. His recent works include Peta dan Kekuasaan (Mapping and Power, Lestari Hikmah, 2025), Data-Collecting in 19th Century Colonial Southeast Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and America’s Encounters with Southeast Asia 1800-1900 (Amsterdam University Press, 2018).