A century before the Philippines came under American control, Americans were already travelling to Southeast Asia regularly. This book looks at the writings of American diplomats, adventurers, and scientists and chronicles how nineteenth-century Americans viewed and imagined Southeast Asia through their own cultural-political lenses. It argues that as Americans came to visit the region they also brought with them a train of cultural assumptions and biases that contributed to the development of American Orientalism in Southeast Asia.

[Farish A Noor](https://www.rsis.edu.sg/profile/farish-badrol-hisham-ahmad-noor/) is Associate Professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, where he teaches the history and politics of Southeast Asia.

DedicationIntroduction: The Eagle in the Indies: America's early encounters with Southeast Asia, and how Southeast Asia was imagined in the 19th century.A book about books, and why books matter.Chapter 1. The Curtain Rises: America's Independence and The Birth of a New Naval Power.1.I. 'To be considered as Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre': America's genesis and the world beyond.1.II. The Birth of a New Naval Power1.III. Between Expansionism and Isolationism: America's neutrality tested.1.IV. Marking borders and stepping out: Southeast Asia Awaits.Chapter 2. Pepper and Gunboats: The Kuala Batu Affair and America's First Gunboat Action in Southeast Asia.2.I. Boom! America's Pepper Rush begins.2.II. Not so friendly after all: The Attack on the American Merchant Vessel Friendship.2.III. 'You are authorized to vindicate our wrongs': America's first attack in Southeast Asia.2.IV. Drama Awaits: The controversy over the Kuala Batu affair back home in America.2.V. 'Conducted in a desultory manner': Francis Warriner's account of the Kuala Batu Attack.2.VI. 'We have made no conquests, dethroned no Sultans': Jeremiah Reynolds' defence of American aggression.2.VII. Far from the Madding Crowd: Embedded Writers and the Beginnings of American Scholarship on Southeast Asia.Chapter 3. Friends, but not Equals: Edmund Roberts' mission to Siam and the Birth of American Orientalism.3.I. In Search of Friends: America's mission to Siam.3.II. 'Not a single vessel of war was to be seen': Roberts' Mission to secure a friend for America.3.III. The great unknown: Edmund Roberts' arrival in Siam.3.IV. The American Eagle and the British Lion: 'Frienemies' in the Indies.3.V. Regarding the feeble, un-Christian Other: Oppositional dialectics in Roberts' narrative.3.VI. Edmund Roberts as the American Orientalist.Chapter 4. 'It was a scene of grandeur in destruction': Fitch W. Taylor and America's Second Attack on Sumatra in 1838.4.I. Boom! Back to Sumatra we go.4.II. 'May a merciful as well as a just God direct': Fitch Taylor's Christian Universe.4.III. Finding Comfort in the Familiar: Fitch Taylor's deliberate blindness.Chapter 5. Flirting with Danger: Walter Murray Gibson, The American Nobody Wanted.5.I. From Sea to Shining Sea: America's Expansion and Consolidation in the 1840s and 1850s.5.II. 'Jealousy had met me at the threshold of Netherland India': Walter Murray Gibson's misadventure in Sumatra.5.III. Will no one rid me of this troublesome man? The Walter Gibson Affair and its Impact on American-Dutch Relations.5.IV. Those who can't do, write fiction: Walter Gibson as American Orientalist.5.V. The Filibuster's Demise: Gibson's final Pacific adventure.Chapter 6. It is your shells I am after: Albert S. Bickmore's Voyage to the East Indies And America's Coming of Age.6.I. From Antebellum to Post-Civil War United States: Another America Rises.6.II. All for the Sake of Knowledge: Bickmore's Scientific Jaunt across the Dutch East Indies.6.III. 'This indicates their low rank in the human family': Bickmore and the Theory of Racial Difference.6.IV. Albert Bickmore's Adventure in Conchology and America's entry into the club of Civilized Western Nations.Chapter 7. Empire at Last: America's Arrival as a Colonial Power in Southeast Asia.7.I. Travelling in the Shade of Empire: American Tourists and Amateurs in Southeast Asia.7.II. That other Great Game to the East: America's rise as a Colonial Power from 1898.Chapter 8. Conclusion: American Orientalism in Southeast Asia.8.I. American Orientalism: The contours of a New Language-Game, and its Users.8.II. The Gathering of Minds: How the echo chamber was formed.8.III. 'Indians', Indians, Asians, and the Disabled Native Other.8.IV. Talking to themselves: American works on Southeast Asia as self-referential texts.8.V. The Stories We Tell: America and Southeast Asia's entanglement, then and now.Appendix A: The treaty