Imperial Alchemy represents the culmination of Anthony Reid's prolific historical work since the 1960s, bringing together a broad range of themes drawn from a variety of states across Southeast Asia. In his two much-lauded earlier volumes, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988, 1993), Reid advanced his arguments for the prior existence of a proto-region during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, long before the term “Southeast Asia” was actually used. In his latest book, he focuses on the emergence of modern nation-states in the region, offering a new explanation of the processes by which their identities were forged and realized.
In his introductory chapter, Reid sets out some of his basic premises. He views Southeast Asia as an essentially “state-averse” region and prefers not to talk about “nations.” Following Anthony Smith, his preferred term for group that sees itself as kin is “ethnie,” while he terms their assertion of political identity “ethnie nationalism.” He contrasts this with the more conventional concept of “state nationalism,” before pausing to observe that much of the nationalism found in Southeast Asia has been anti-imperial in origin, and then to note that many states in the region are characterized by what he terms “outrage at state humiliation,” an emotive variant of nationalism harbored by countries such as China, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia (pp. 1–11). He then proceeds to elaborate on these notions, primarily by demonstrating what ethnie nationalism means in the context of Southeast Asia.
Perhaps surprisingly, the first of the book's main case studies focuses on the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Reid argues that the move toward more democracy in Indonesia since 1998 has opened up much greater space for the Chinese to mainstream their place in society. While most conventional views argue that the Chinese should be given greater rights and recognition through formal legal changes to their status and identity, Reid suggests that another possible route would be for the Chinese to link themselves to the state nationalist formula by which the Indonesian ethnie link themselves to national myths (p. 80), such as by promoting an Indonesian Chinese as a national hero (pahlawan). In his second case study, Reid looks at the notion of Malayness (Melayu) as a porous category, arguing that bangsa Melayu epitomizes the idea of ethnie nationalism, while bangsa Indonesia transmutes Malayness into revolutionary state nationalism.
Aceh, the focus of much of Reid's recent work, forms the third case study. Here, he argues that Aceh's problems with the rest of Indonesia are closely related to a gap between the ethnie nationalism of Aceh, with its memories of monarchy and strong sense of its own distinctiveness, and the state nationalism of Indonesia proper. While the Acehnese have always considered themselves a nation (bangsa), the Batak ethnie was not linked to any form of state that might compete with Indonesia's, but was firmly “nested within the Indonesian in a form we may call layered identity” (p. 186).
In a fifth and final case study, Reid examines the Kadazan or Dusun of East Malaysia. He suggests that the term “Kadazan” was popularized as recently as the 1950s by the colonial government, and that Kadazan ethnie nationalism is an extremely recent construction, reflecting political moves by minority groups in Sabah to assert for themselves a powerful identity in newly independent Malaysia. Despite its recent origins, this is has become “an increasingly stable ethnie with its own clear political program” (p. 209).
What these cases illustrate is that the lure of the nation-state was extremely powerful: “lesser ethnie nationalisms had even more difficulty making a successful bid for cultural and political coherence than the broadest anti-imperial nationalism” (pp. 210–11). Indonesia was a striking example of how a nationalist movement borne out of an extremely diverse coalition of groups and forces could be transformed into more conventional state nationalism, through a process that Reid terms “imperial alchemy.” For Reid, this process is almost an unalloyed positive, borne out by the decline in international tensions across island Southeast Asia in recent decades. He declares in his final sentence that “[t]he imperial alchemy is working” (p. 218), having already declared that state nationalism “does its work in turning even borderland peoples into citizens” (p. 216), supported by the efforts of ASEAN and a favorable international political climate.
As in his previous work, Reid sketches a very positive and engaging view of an emerging, dynamic, and highly adaptive region. For some, the picture may seem unduly rose-tinted: where is Mindanao here, and what happened to Patani? If the reader's gaze extends further north, to the Thai–Burma or Cambodia–Vietnam borders, for example, the imperial alchemy may seem a little less successful. But on balance this is a magisterial book, brilliantly synthesizing an immense range of historical knowledge, and making a strong case for a positive reading of modern nationalisms in Southeast Asia.
