Anthony Reid (academic)
Anthony John Stanhope Reid was a New Zealand-born historian of Southeast Asia. He is most well known for his two volume book, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, developed during his time at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, in Canberra. His later work includes a return to Sumatra where he explored the historical basis for the separate identity of Aceh; interests in nationalism, Chinese diaspora and economic history, and latterly the relation between geology and deep history.
Academic career
Reid was the son of John Stanhope Reid, a New Zealand diplomat who held postings in Indonesia, Japan and Canada in the 1950s and 1960s. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics and History, and his Master of Arts in History from Victoria University of Wellington. Reid's doctoral work at the University of Cambridge examined the contest for power in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, in the late 19th century, and he extended this study into a book The Blood of the People on the national and social revolutions in that region between 1945 and 1949.Reid taught Southeast Asian history at the University of Malaya between 1965 and 1970, and the Australian National University from 1970 to 1999. Between 1999 and 2002, he was the founding director of the Southeast Asia Center, University of California, Los Angeles, and then the founding director of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore from 2002 to 2007. He retired from NUS in 2009. Thereafter, he was based in Canberra as a professor emeritus at the Australian National University.
Fiction
As a writer of fiction, Reid styled himself Tony Reid.Death
Reid died at a hospital in Canberra, on 8 June 2025, at the age of 85.Honours and awards
Reid was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1987. He won the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in the category of academics in 2002. He was elected as a Corresponding Fellow at the prestigious British Academy on 17 July 2008.List of major publications
- The Contest for North Sumatra: Atjeh, the Netherlands and Britain, 1858–1898. Kuala Lumpur, OUP/UMP, 1969. Reissued by University of Malaya Press, 1974; New edition University of Malaya Press, 2017.
- The Indonesian National Revolution, 1945–1950. Hawthorn, Vic. Longmans Australia, 1974. Reprinted by Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn., 1986.
- The Blood of the People: Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra. Kuala Lumpur, OUP, 1979.
- Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680. Vol.I: The Lands below the Winds. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988.
- Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680. Vol.II: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven, Yale University Press.
- Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999, 298pp.
- An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004; 439pp.- reprinted 2005. Indonesian translation 2011.
- Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the Twentieth Century. Singapore: NUS Press, 2011. Indonesian translation, 2018.
- A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads. Chichester, UK: Wiley/Blackwell, 2015. Chinese and Japanese translations, 2021.
- as editor, Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia. St Lucia: Queensland University Press and New York, St Martin's Press, 1983.
- as editor, Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.
- as editor with Daniel Chirot, Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1997.