This innovative book rethinks the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century history of coastal and riverine southwest Indochina, the 'water frontier' of the title. It repositions old state-centered histories to reveal the region as a single, multiethnic economic zone knit together by the itineraries of junk traders and by the activities of many southern Chinese, settlers, sojourners, and merchants, whose local significance it explores. In so doing, it pioneers a new, nationally-neutral way of perceiving this dynamic region.

Chapter 1 The Water Frontier: An Introduction Part 2 Part I: Permeable Frontiers: Chinese Trade and Traders in the Region Chapter 3 Chinese Trade and Southeast Asian Economic Expansion in the Later Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: An Overview Chapter 4 Eighteenth-Century Chinese Pioneers on the Water Frontier of Indochina Chapter 5 The Junk Trade Between South China and Nguyen Vietnam in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries Part 6 Part II: Commercial Eddies and Flows Chapter 7 The Late-Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Mekong Delta in the Regional Trade System Chapter 8 The Nguyen Dynasty's Policy toward Chinese on the Water Frontier in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Chapter 9 Siam and the Contest for Control of the Trans-Mekong Trading Networks from the Late Eighteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth Centuries Chapter 10 Ships and Shipbuilding in the Mekong Delta, c. 1750-1840 Part 11 Part III: Beyond the Water Frontier Chapter 12 Water World: Chinese and Vietnamese on the Riverine Water Frontier, from Ca Mau to Tonle Sap (c. 1850-1884) Chapter 13 The Internationalization of Chinese Revenue Farming Networks Chapter 14 Appendix A: A "Coastal Route" from the Lower Mekong Delta to Terengganu Chapter 15 Appendix B: Glossary

Nola Cooke is research fellow in the Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University. Li Tana is senior fellow in the Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University.