Eric Tagliacozzo

Eric Tagliacozzo is Professor of History at Cornell University, where he teaches Southeast Asian history. He is the director of Cornell's Comparative Muslim Societies Program, the director of Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, and the contributing editor of Indonesia journal. Tagliacozzo received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1989 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999. His teachers include Ben Kiernan, James C. Scott, and Jonathan Spence.^[1]

Research

Tagliacozzo's research focuses on the history of people, ideas, and material in motion in and around Southeast Asia, especially in the late colonial age. His first book, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier (Yale, 2005), which won the 2007 Harry Benda Prize, examined many of these ideas by analyzing the history of smuggling in the region.^[2] Several edited volumes also look at Southeast Asia’s connections with the Middle East; at the idea of Indonesia over a two thousand year-period; and at the meeting of History and Anthropology generally (and conceptually) as disciplines. His newest book, The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Oxford, 2013) attempts to write a history of this very broad topic from earliest times to the present.^[3]

Publications

Books

• The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
• Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

Winner of the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association of Asian Studies, 2007

• (editor), Southeast Asia and the Middle East: Islam, Movement, and the Longue Duree (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009).
• (co-editor), The Indonesia Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).
• (co-editor) Clio/Anthropos: Exploring the Boundaries Between History and Anthropology (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009).
• (co-editor) Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities and Networks in Southeast Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
• (editor) Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field of Indonesian Studies (Cornell: SEAP Publications, 2014).
• (co-editor) Burmese Lives: Ordinary Life Stories Under the Burmese Regime (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

• “Strange Parallels and the Big Picture: 'Asia' Writ Large Over a Turbulent Millennium” in Journal of Asian Studies (Cambridge), 70, 4 (2011): 939-963.
• “The Indies and the World: State Building, Promise, and Decay at a Transnational Moment, 1910” in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV), 166, No. 2/3 (2010): 270-292.
• “Trans-Regional Indonesia over One Thousand Years: The Art of the Long View“ in Indonesia Journal (Cornell), 90, 2, 2010: 1-14.
• “Navigating Communities: Distance, Place, and Race in Maritime Southeast Asia” in Asian Ethnicity (Routledge), 10, 2, 2009: 97-120.
• “Contraband and Violence: Lessons from the Southeast Asian Case” in Crime, Law, and Social Change (Springer), 52, 3, 2009: 243-252.
• “Morphological Shifts in Southeast Asian Prostitution: The Long Twentieth Century” Journal of Global History (Cambridge University Press/LSE), 3, 2008: 251-273.
• “The National Archives (Jakarta) and the Writing of Transnational Histories of Indonesia” Itinerario, (Leiden University Press) 32, 2, 2008: 81-95.
• “Thinking Marginally: Ethno-Historical Notes on the Nature of Smuggling in Human Societies” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 18, 2, 2008: 144-164.
• “An Urban Ocean: Notes on the Historical Evolution of Coastal Cities in Greater SE Asia” Journal of Urban History (Sage/UNC Press), 33, 6, 2007: 911-932.
• “Onto the Coast and Into the Forest: Ramifications of the China Trade on the History of Northwest Borneo, 900-1900” in Reed Wadley (ed), Histories of the Borneo Environment, (Leiden: KITLV Press), 2005: 25-60.
• “The Lit Archipelago: Coastlighting and the Imperial Optic in Insular Southeast Asia, 1860-1910” Technology and Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press), 46, 2, 2005: 306-328.
• “Ambiguous Commodities, Unstable Frontiers: The Case of Burma, Siam, and Imperial Britain, 1800-1900”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, (Cambridge University Press) 46: 2, 2004: 354-377.
• “Tropical Spaces, Frozen Frontiers: The Evolution of Border Enforcement in Nineteenth Century Insular Southeast Asia” in Remco Raben, et al., (eds), Locating Southeast Asia, (Ohio/Singapore University Presses), 2004: 149-174.
• “A Necklace of Fins: Marine Goods Trading in Maritime Southeast Asia, 1780-1860” International Journal of Asian Studies [Cambridge University Press], 1/1, 2004: 23-48.
• "Border-Line Legal: Chinese Communities and ‘Illicit’ Activity in Insular Southeast Asia" in Ng Chin Keong (ed) Maritime China and the Overseas Chinese in Transition, 1750-1850, (Wiesbaden: HV, 2004): 61-76.
• “Finding Captivity Among the Peasantry: The Malay/Indonesian World, 1850-1925”, South East Asia Research, [University of London Press] 11/2, 2003: 171-200.
• “Hydrography, Technology, Coercion: Mapping the Sea in Southeast Asian Imperialism, 1850-1900” Archipel: Etudes Interdisciplinaires sur le Monde Insulindien, [Ecole des Hautes Etudes/SS, Paris], 65, 2003: 89-107.
• “Amphora, Whisper, Text: Ways of Writing Southeast Asian History” CROSSROADS: Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, [N. Illinois University Press] 16/1, 2002: 128-158.
• “Smuggling in Southeast Asia: History and its Contemporary Vectors in an Unbounded Region” Critical Asian Studies, (Routledge), 34/2, 2002: 193-220.
• “Trade, Production, and Incorporation: The Indian Ocean in Flux, 1600-1900” Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History, [Leiden University Press] 26/1, 2002: 75-106.
• “Border Permeability and the State in Southeast Asia: Contraband and Regional Security”, in Contemporary Southeast Asia [ISEAS Press], 23, 2, 2001: 254-274.
• "Kettle on a Slow Boil: Batavia's Threat Perceptions in the Indies' Outer Islands, 1870-1910" Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, [Cambridge and Singapore University Presses] 31, #1, 2000: 70-100.

References

External links

• Homepage at Cornell