Eric Tagliacozzo 
Associate Professor
Office: 346 McGraw Hall
Phone: (607) 254-6564
Fax: (607) 255-0469
E-Mail: et54@cornell.edu
Office Hours: W 11:00-1:00
Research and Teaching Interests
Much of my work has centered on the history of people, ideas, and material in motion in and around Southeast Asia, especially in the late colonial age. My first book, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier (Yale, 2005), examined many of these ideas by analyzing the history of smuggling in the region. Several edited volumes now in press 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. My next book project is called The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca, and this book will attempt to write a history of this very broad topic from earliest times to the present.
Courses
| Fall 2009: | 1910 |
Introduction to Modern Asian History |
|---|---|---|
7090 |
Introduction to Graduate Study of History | |
| Spring 2010: | 2430 |
History of Things |
3960/6960 |
Southeast Asian History from the Eighteenth Century |
Other Courses Taught at Cornell
Ocean: The Sea In Human HistoryThe History of Things
Archipelago: Worlds of Indonesia
The Indian Ocean World
History of Pre-Modern Southeast Asia to the 18th Century
History of Modern Southeast Asia, 1600-Present
Peddlers, Pirates, and Prostitutes: Subaltern Histories of Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia in the World System, 1500-Present
Crime and Diaspora in Southeast Asia 1750-1950
History of Modern Asia
Undergraduate Historiography Seminar
Education
Ph.D. Yale University, 1999
M.Phil Yale University, 1995
M.A. Yale University, 1993
B.A. Haverford College, 1989
Recent Publications
Books:
Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 437 pp. (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).
Refereed Articles and Book Chapters:
“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.
Links
The Comparative Muslim Societies InitiativeThe journal INDONESIA
Cornell's Southeast Asia Program