Mapping liberalism and empire in Southeast Asia

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the History of Sumatra by the colonial administrator, William Marsden who first published his history in 1783. It also discusses the self-consciously liberal era in Southeast Asia begins with the third Resident of Singapore, John Crawfurd who is the subject. The book explores one of many colonial administrators who experimented with the codification of liberal ideas into the discipline of political economy. It illustrates how attitudes among Southeast Asian British colonial administrators towards the East India Company complicate Pitts' and other post-colonial histories of a liberalism that was increasingly comfortable with empire as the nineteenth century proceeded. The book also explores how one of the greatest challenges to the British liberal social order in Southeast Asia came from within liberal thought.