Suggested reading
A number of references to the history of relations between China and
Southeast Asia can be found in the notes. Only the more significant
are included below.
The best histories of China and Southeast Asia are the respec-
tive multi-volume Cambridge University Press publications. John
King Fairbank, China: A New History (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1992) provides a one-volume overview, while
Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2nd edn (W. W.
Norton, New York, 1999) is a fine study from the Qing dynasty on.
Joanna Waley-Cohen emphasises China’s cosmopolitanism in The
Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History(W. W. Norton,
New York, 1999). For Southeast Asia, Milton Osborne, Southeast Asia:
A History, 8th edn (Allen & Unwin, Sydney, NSW, 2000) covers the
whole period, while David Joel Steinberg, ed., In Search of Southeast
Asia: A Modern History, rev. edn (Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987)
begins with the eighteeenth century. Single volume histories of the ten
countries of Southeast Asia can also be consulted, though most say
little about relations with China. The exception is Vietnam, on which
see K. W. Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam(University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1983), and Le Thanh Khoi, Histoire du Vietnam des origines à
1858 (Sudestasie, Paris, 1981).
John King Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional
China’s Foreign Relations(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1968) still provides the best study of the tributary system. Aihe Wang,
Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China(Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2000) provides a revealing analysis of the origins of
the Chinese worldview. On Confucius, see David L. Hall and Roger T.