Trade and empire are intimately connected topics, and Roger Knight demonstrates this clearly in his detailed study of the business networks of Gillian Maclaine, a young Scotsman based in Java in the early nineteenth century. Through a detailed study of Maclaine's early business experiences, from his “informal apprenticeship in business in an East India commercial house in London” to his early ventures in Java's coffee trade, we are provided with insights into the highly volatile and speculative nature of the “country trade,” as it was known at the time (p. 2). What this study provides, however, is a detailed case study of a major figure of the early Asia trade—who is now relatively unknown—and provides for the reader an understanding of how businesses could profit and prosper by operating along an imperial fault line of the nineteenth century, straddling the Dutch and British empires. By providing a “micro study” of one individual, Knight argues that Maclaine's business network raises important questions regarding scholarly understandings of World Systems in general as they fail to allow for the diversity of global patterns, in terms of production and distribution that flourished in the long nineteenth century, sometimes with little connection to the metropole (p. 2).

Through exploring the evolution of business networks from Maclaine's vantage point, Knight provides the reader with insights into the complex and often highly personalistic nature of the Asia trade. Maclaine's business interests were also affected by the politics of the era; his business operations were largely based in Java, itself a potentially hostile (yet also lucrative) setting, given the background of Anglo-Dutch tensions. For scholars of colonial Asia, Knight provides richly detailed accounts of the coffee, cotton, opium, and sugar interests of Maclaine and his associates. Maclaine, as Knight demonstrates, typifies something of the experience of many young Scotsmen attracted to Southeast Asia with the intention of making a fortune. In Maclaine's case, he was driven by the idea of obtaining financial independence from his London-based partners the McLachlans (also referred to by Maclaine as the White Lions), who sought to keep their young protégé indebted to them (p. 96). Coffee, produced in prodigious quantities in Java, seemed to Maclaine to be an answer. Knight provides a good account of the significance of coffee as a commodity and its allure to traders and planters (pp. 60–65). Maclaine's coffee plantation in south central Java became a significant aspect of his business interests in Asia.

This book makes a contribution to the field of imperial history, particularly in enriching our understanding of business interests in Southeast Asia. Too often the story of Southeast Asia is overshadowed by scholarly interest in Britain's “jewel in the crown”—the Indian subcontinent. Knight's work takes an approach similar to that of Anthony Webster's work on John Palmer in The Richest East Indian Merchant: The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767–1836 (2007) and, more recently, Lakshmi Subramanian's Three Merchants of Bombay: Business Pioneers of the Nineteenth Century (2012), both of which interweave individual biographies with larger narratives of imperial networks. This volume contributes to this arena in a substantive manner by bringing in the Dutch colonial world. Maclaine not only operated in the Dutch-controlled Batavia but also married Catherina van Beusechem, who, although possessing no fortune, was part of what “in modern day parlance would be called an ‘Empire family’” with extensive Dutch East India Company connections (p. 121).

This study also contributes to scholarship on the role of Scots and the frontiers of empire. Maclaine was proud of his Celtic origins; he was arguably also driven by them. His business network, as expounded by Knight, was largely shaped by his Celtic connections, though it also included English and Dutch partners. Knight observes what is perhaps most striking about the business network that developed: That while Gillian Maclaine & Co. (the first business venture, founded in 1822) had a Calcutta and London connection, successive business ventures such as Maclaine, Watson & Co. (founded in 1827) had no metropole connections, breaking decisively from what scholars see as a traditional pattern of colonial subordination to the imperial core. This break from the metropole supports Knight's contention that Maclaine's business developed in a manner that was truly indicative of a trans-Asian network (p. 161).

Knight's skill in this volume is in balancing a detailed analysis of Maclaine's business ventures against a larger framework of trade and empire. Perhaps we are to wonder, to what extent were Maclaine's experiences—such as his false start in the coffee trade, or his failed business dealing with his London partners—typical of those of traders at the time? And while we have some discussion of the commodities in which Maclaine was interested, an even stronger discussion of how these particular commodities shaped his understanding of his business practices would have been valuable.

As with any biographical work, there is an intimate aspect to the study; we are provided, for instance, with extracts of Maclaine's letters to his mother and other trusted confidants. Maclaine is treated with empathy and the reader is drawn into his world, his trials and jubilations. Knight draws on a range of sources that includes family papers, business records, and materials from the Dutch and British archives. Here, the author provides delightful insights into an earnest yet calculating and ambitious individual who was undaunted even when he had alienated his own sponsors from his fledgling coffee enterprise.

In this volume, Knight provides a valuable case study for understanding the mechanisms of the Asia trade from the perspective of an intra-Asian business network of Celts that stretched throughout Southeast Asia, was predominantly driven by coffee, sugar, and cotton, and, importantly, reflected the changing nature of imperial trade in the region in the nineteenth century.