Southeast Asia: A Concise History

The development of television and of mass air travel have long since put an end to the days when a British prime minister could describe a Central European state as “a faraway country of which we know nothing”, but there are still many regions the history of which is unfamiliar to us. It is fair to suggest that Southeast Asia, the subject of this latest addition to Thames and Hudson’s series of concise histories (which seems to lack a general title), would be one of them. Whereas earlier volumes in the series covered single nations, this one has the ambitious...