Public Programs @ the Institute
Series: The Institutum Series on Southeast Asia; Southeast Asia Initiative
Smuggling in the Straits of Melaka: Dissident Histories
Wednesday, April 15, 2026, 6:00pm
Eric Tagliacozzo, John Stambaugh Professor of History, Cornell University
Over the course of half a century in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the British and Dutch empires delineated colonial spheres in Monsoon Asia -- in the process creating new political boundaries. This talk analyzes the development of these frontiers in Insular Southeast Asia, as well as the accompanying smuggling activities of the opium traders, currency runners, and human traffickers who pierced such newly-drawn borders with growing success. The talk presents a history of the evolution of a 3000-km frontier, and then inquires into the smuggling of contraband: who smuggled and why, what routes were favored, and how effectively the British and Dutch were able to enforce their gathering economic, moral, and political will. Examining the history of states and smugglers playing off one another within a hidden but powerful economy of forbidden cargoes, the talk also offers insights into the modern political economies of Southeast Asia that are still with us today.
Eric Tagliacozzo is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier (Yale, 2005) which won the Harry Benda Prize from the Association of Asian Studies, and of The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Oxford, 2013). He is also the editor or co-editor of a dozen other books, including the Asia Inside Out trilogy, from Harvard University Press. He is the Director of Cornell's Southeast Asia Program (SEAP), as well as Cornell’s Modern Indonesia Project (CMIP), and serves as editor of the journal INDONESIA. His newest monograph, In Asian Waters: Charting Asia’s Maritime History From Yemen to Yokohama, recently came out with Princeton University Press (2022).
This event is a part of The Institutum Series on Southeast Asia.
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