About the Author

James Francis WARREN is Professor of Southeast Asian Modern History at Murdoch University, having previously held positions at the Australian National University and Yale University. He has also been a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, and the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He has been awarded grants by the Social Science Research Council and the Australia Research Council and is a Fellow of The Australian Academy of Humanities. In 2003, he was awarded the Centenary Medal of Australia for service to Australian society and the Humanities in the study of Ethnohistory. Professor Warren's other major publications include Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore, 1880-1940 (1986); At the Edge of Southeast History (1987); Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution and Singapore Society, 1870-1940 (1993); The Sulu Zone, the World Capitalist Economy and the Historical Imagination (1998); and Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization, Maritime Raiding and the Birth of Ethnicity (2001). He lives in Perth, Western Australia with his wife Carol, an anthropologist, and daughter Kristin, a wildlife medicine veterinarian and conservationist.