Southeast Asia. Chinese circulations: Capital, commodities, and networks in Southeast Asia . Edited by Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. xv + 53. Maps, Index.

Chinese circulations: Capital, commodities, and networks in Southeast Asia Edited by ERIC TAGLIA COZZO and WEN-CHIN CHANG Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. xv + 53. Maps, Index. As its introduction suggests, Chinese circulations: Capital, commodities and networks in Southeast Asia is a broad survey of the scholarship on the activities of the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Spanning the fourteenth century up to the present, the chapters represent a wide variety of approaches, including commodities studies, and the accompanying business and ethnic studies anchored in sociological premises. In addition, the studies represent the increasing exploitation of a wide variety of sources, going beyond the traditional and already well-mined textual sources, such as Chinese company and organisational records, Chinese textual accounts and European sources including those of the Dutch East India Company, to include archaeological and numismatic data, ethnographic accounts, and non-governmental organisation reports. It showcases the approaches and methodologies developed and being used by scholars over the last two decades. Consisting of 20 chapters, the volume is divided into five sections. Section one deals with a number of the key paradigms that have framed the study of the economic history of the overseas Chinese thus far, and include summaries of the primary theses of research by such scholars as Anthony Reid and Carl Trocki. Section two looks at the precolonial era (up to the early eighteenth century), and provides case studies on the organic nature of the dynamics of the overseas Chinese economic activities in Southeast Asia in the absence of more formal or institutional, transregional structures. Necessarily, the chapters in this section deal with themes pertaining to the nuts and bolts of trade, including competing systems of trade (Takeshi Hamashita), notions of currency circulations and cross-border usage (Li Tana) and of socio-economic 'value' as products move from source to market (Heather Sutherland), and the dynamics of the supply chain process (Masuda Erika). Sections three and four explore the early and high colonial eras, respectively, and provide vivid case studies on the negotiation and facilitation of economic activities in the face of changing, and increasingly rigid, transregional imperial structures. Finally, section five looks at the post-colonial era, and the economic activities of the Chinese in Southeast Asia, both in terms of the diasporic groups over the last 700 years, and the newly arrived Chinese in the post-independence and post-Deng reforms period. The volume largely achieves its stated objective--providing an overview of the field through showcasing the work of an assemblage of scholars, from the freshly graduated to the established. The reader is provided with a layering of differing research parameters and new frameworks making their first foray into a well researched and well-defined historical field. To place this in perspective, the study of the Chinese in Southeast Asia has hitherto focused on four major premises--the periodisation of migratory patterns of the huashang (merchant), huagong (labourer), huaqiao (overseas Chinese citizen) and huayi (the Chinese overseas re-migrant); the roles of Chinese social institutions and associations; patterns of migration and social linkages as a means of understanding transregional exchanges and interaction; and the brokering of political-economic space and opportunities in Southeast Asia by key Chinese migrants. This volume showcases scholarship that goes beyond, and even subverts, these familiar paradigms. The study of commodities, for example, includes the transference of print culture and the production of print material (Lucille Chia and lean DeBernardi's chapters), the procurement of raw materials and production of finished products (Kwee Hui Kian and Nola Cooke's chapters), and the development of markets and supplies in products of intrinsic value (Sun Laichen and Wen-Chin Chang's chapters). …