Most collections of academic papers immediately enter the limbo of permanent obscurity. Or at least they used to, until Google Book Search started to index them, leading curious Internauts to serendipitous discoveries. Such was my path to this volume of papers about Chinese migrations to Southeast Asia, unearthed while searching for information about Lanfang Republic - an 18th century Chinese settlement on the western coast of Borneo.

The topic of Chinese migrations to Southeast Asia deserves a monograph treatment, but none is in print at this time. Anthony Reid's overview chapter called "Long-term Chinese Interaction with Southeast Asia" can serve as a reasonable, if brief, substitute, especially in conjunction with William Skinner's paper on "Creolized Chinese Societies in Southeast Asia." These two contributions contain useful information hard to find elsewhere. The rest of the essays dive into fairly obscure topics with tenuous connections to the book's ostensible subject, such as overview of Thai translations of "Romance of Three Kingdoms." ( )