Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-296) and index.

Status and security in early Southeast Asian state systems / Nicholas Tarling -- The "Alexandrowicz thesis" re-visited : Hugo Grotius, divisible sovereignty, and private avengers within the Indian Ocean world system / Eric Wilson -- Phrakhlang ministry of Ayutthaya : Siamese instrument to cope with the early modern world / Bhawan Ruangsilp -- Applying the seas perspective in the study of eastern Indonesia in the early modern period / Leonard Y. Andaya -- Borneo in the early modern period, ca. late fourteenth to ca. late eighteenth centuries / Ooi Keat Gin -- Another past : early modern Vietnamese silk production and export in global perspective / Hoang Anh Tuan -- Van Don : an international sea port of Dai Viet / Nguyen Van Kim -- Batu Sawar Johor : a regional centre of trade in the early seventeenth century / Peter Borschberg -- Urban growth and municipal development of early Penang / Nordin Hussin -- Revisiting "kingship" in seventeenth century Aceh : from ira et malevolentia to pax et custodia / Sher Banu A.L. Khan -- Catching and selling elephants : trade and tradition in seventeenth century Siam / Dhiravat na Pombejra -- Cham-Viet Relations in Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan under Nguyen rule from the late seventeenth century to mid-eighteenth century / Danny Wong Tze Ken -- The glocalization of Christianity in early modern Southeast Asia / Barbara Watson Andaya -- The passing of rice spirits : cosmology, technology, and gender relations in the colonial Philippines / Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr.

"Presents extensive new research findings on and new thinking about Southeast Asia in this interesting, richly diverse, but much understudied period. It examines the wide and well-developed trading networks, explores the different kinds of regimes and the nature of power and security, considers urban growth, international relations and the beginnings of European involvement with the region, and discusses religious factors, including the consolidation and Islam and the spread of Christianity. One key theme of the book is the consideration of how well-developed Southeast Asia was before the onset of European involvement, and, how, during the peak of the commercial boom in the 1500s and 1600s, many polities in Southeast Asia were not far behind Europe in terms of socio-economic progress and attainments"-- Provided by publisher.