Back in the mid-1960s, there was quite a wave of books providing accessible, comprehensive accounts of the politics of the countries of South-East Asia, for the student and general reader. This came out of the Vietnam War. But there haven’t been books like this for more than a decade, even though Australia’s future is now more clearly interwoven with that of our neighbours. Damien Kingsbury’s new book, South-East Asia: A Political Profile, neatly fills the gap.

This work takes a political and historical approach, ‘tracing the construction of the current states of the region to their pre-colonial and colonial past’. Despite the dangers of so much material, with eleven countries and their substantial pasts and turbulent presents, it is generally more lively than not. The cover claims an ‘easy-to-read style’, and in the main it delivers, though in several places one would like a considerably greater care to style and detail. The book is accessible and informative. Damien Kingsbury has a skill in selecting the vivid detail that highlights and exemplifies a trend. The start of his Burma chapter is a fine example. But overall it could show a greater originality. The book is organised into three sections. Part I has four chapters of a thematic kind, including questions of the construction of the state, authority and legitimacy, economic and political developments, and security issues. This part is supposed to lay a basis of key themes that underpin each of the country assessments. The thematic approach is attractive, but I am not convinced that the themes have been brought out in the country chapters as clearly as the author intends. I found much of the theoretical discussion mind-numbing. It’s livelier in subsections where Kingsbury gets down to the nitty-gritty, as in the section on ‘Asian values’ (his view: tradition reinvented to prop up authoritarian rule).

The next two parts cover the eleven countries of the region, at about thirty pages a country. Part II covers five of the mainland countries: Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Each has a subtitle intended to capture the spirit of the account, like ‘Burma: The Garrison State’ (pretty good) and ‘Cambodia: The Dancing Country’ (misses the mark com-pletely). The third, final part provides assessments of the Malay/archipelagic world: Malaysia, Brunei, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, East Timor. This has catchy titles too: ‘Malaysia: Inclusion and Exclusion’ (not bad), and ‘Indonesia: Diversity in Unity’ (awkward, lacks punch and euphony).

Each country chapter is divided into several historical and thematic sections. An introduction invokes the flavour of the place and its politics. Then Kingsbury turns back to the remotest past of the country’s peoples, and works forward through major events in expanding and contracting (mandala) kingdoms and empires, to the impact of the colonising powers. The twentieth century brings nationalism and more radical beliefs, struggles for independence, nation-building, and coping with the postcolonial legacy. Political events are brought up to 2000 without much peeping into the future.

This country-by-country approach has the advantage that each section can be read independently. I think most readers will dip into the book rather than go from cover to cover. But some of the great themes of the region (for example: the spread of Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism; the impact of colonialism; the Japanese occupation; colonial borders; the postcolonial legacy) tend to be split up and revisited in each country segment. Much better would have been the wider application of the thematic approach adopted in Part I, and used to considerable effect in OUP’s other major South-East Asia project, Nicholas Tarling’s Southeast Asia: A Modern History (2001).

This is a book that focuses on leaders, kings, sultans, governments and major events. It has nothing to say to people who approach the region in terms of diasporas, hybridity, identities and gender roles. These are not Kingsbury’s concerns here. But it also does not say much about one of his own concerns: the powerless of the region’s past and present. He explains this in his introduction:

If there is one criticism in all of this it is that it tends to focus on the political activities of the elites. This, sadly, is true. In simple terms, the broad sweep of politics is most easily reflected in the affairs of the elites, and is a consequence of decisions taken by them.

This may be why the book starts in a way oddly unlike the rest, with an evocation of the daily life of ‘Ni’, an archetypical South-East Asian peasant: ‘The fine, rich mud slid with familiar sensuality way between his toes as Ni stooped down to continue planting the rice seedlings in the carefully flooded field.’ My heart sank when I read this. Fortunately, Ni disappears after this (his name should have been ‘Nil’). For me, Kingsbury is much better when he is energetically summing up some piece of elite machination.

But there is another reason for alarm here. Surely this sentence is either badly constructed or badly proofed. What does ‘with familiar sensuality way between his toes’ mean? And this is the first sentence of the introduction! There is too much of this later in the text, with typos, misspellings and areas of inattention to style. It can give the unfortunate impression that Kingsbury does not care enough about precision. Kingsbury is a prolific author, with around a book a year since 1994. This puts most academics to shame. But here there are several areas where one wants to write in the margin: ‘Write less quickly, show more care!’

With his political profile of South-East Asia, Damien Kingsbury has chosen an important theme. His book fills a notable gap. We need more books on this great topic. This work is timely, useful, accessible, informative. This is not to damn with faint praise, but to give these words their due. This book should find an audience amongst general readers who want to dip in. It will also be useful for a range of students. But their teachers will pause before setting it, wondering how the lack of care with details stacks up against the usefulness of its contents.