Wang Gungwu is Director, East Asian Institute, and Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. His most recent publication is China and Southeast Asia: Myths, Threats, and Culture.

• 1. Seaward Sweep: The Chinese in Southeast Asia 2. The Sojourners' Way 3. The Multicultural Quest for Autonomy Notes Index

Original integrative work by a leading scholar in an important field of study. It is something entirely new: nobody has undertaken a broad overview of this subject in English, and none that I know of in other languages has achieved anything near Wang's level of inner knowledge and sophistication. The Chinese Overseas is squarely in the emerging fields of diaspora and transnational studies. But it goes well beyond these fashionable specialties by using the overseas Chinese experience to make original comparisons between the modern histories of China and the maritime West. In other words, Wang offers a new and hitherto overlooked setting for understanding China and its history over the past two millennia. Great themes of contemporary global history are illuminated by this book: the coming together of Asian and European civilizations, the role of middleman minorities, the ambiguities of ethnicity and of diasporic consciousness, and the tension between culture-maintenance and assimilation. An original work that readers in many fields will find important and stimulating.