The late O. W. Wolters is regarded by many as the most influential historian of early Southeast Asia writing in the English-speaking world. He served in the Malayan Civil Service from 1938 to 1957 after completing his first degree at Oxford University. When the Japanese occupied Malaysia in 1942, he was imprisoned for three years. He embarked on his academic career as a Southeast Asian scholar in 1957, when he was nearly fifty years old, and begin teaching at Cornell University in 1964, where he developed the influential concept of "mandala," a paradigm of the premodern Southeast Asian kingdom.

A new edition of this classic study of mandala Southeast Asia. The revised book includes a substantial, retrospective postscript examining contemporary scholarship that has contributed to the understanding of Southeast Asian history since 1982.

Review

"Wolters...reproduces his 1982 work intact, and then adds an extended postscript, in which he reinterprets his prior analysis.." --New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies

"The revised version of the book, more than double the size of the original, builds on...important themes by integrating --Asian Perspectives

"[W]ill no doubt provide a new source of inspiration for for many readers, including graduate students and instructors... --Journal of Asian Studies