The late Oliver William (O.W.) Wolters long stood at the forefront of scholarship on the early history of Southeast Asia, having helped shape the contours of this field of study. Among his writings, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives has retained its prominence since its first publication in 1982. Few scholarly works explore such a variety of subjects in so few pages. However, this book is neither a broad outline of Southeast Asian history, nor is it an essay prepared merely for a small professional audience. Instead, Wolters attempted in the 1982 edition to "generate discussion of what is meant by earlier Southeast Asian history and the ways in which the subject could be presented" (p. 12).
