Introduction: The Eagle in the Indies: America's early encounters with Southeast Asia, and how Southeast Asia was imagined in the 19th century. A book about books, and why books matter. Chapter
1. The Curtain Rises: America's Independence and The Birth of a New Naval Power.
1.I. 'To be considered as Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre': America's genesis and the world beyond.
1.II. The Birth of a New Naval Power
1.III. Between Expansionism and Isolationism: America's neutrality tested.
1.IV. Marking borders and stepping out: Southeast Asia Awaits. Chapter
2. Pepper and Gunboats: The Kuala Batu Affair and America's First Gunboat Action in Southeast Asia.
2.I. Boom! America's Pepper Rush begins.
2.II. Not so friendly after all: The Attack on the American Merchant Vessel Friendship.
2.III. 'You are authorized to vindicate our wrongs': America's first attack in Southeast Asia.
2.IV. Drama Awaits: The controversy over the Kuala Batu affair back home in America.
2.V. 'Conducted in a desultory manner': Francis Warriner's account of the Kuala Batu Attack.
2.VI. 'We have made no conquests, dethroned no Sultans': Jeremiah Reynolds' defence of American aggression.
2.VII. Far from the Madding Crowd: Embedded Writers and the Beginnings of American Scholarship on Southeast Asia. Chapter
3. Friends, but not Equals: Edmund Roberts' mission to Siam and the Birth of American Orientalism.
3.I. In Search of Friends: America's mission to Siam.
3.II. 'Not a single vessel of war was to be seen': Roberts' Mission to secure a friend for America.
3.III. The great unknown: Edmund Roberts' arrival in Siam.
3.IV. The American Eagle and the British Lion: 'Frienemies' in the Indies.
3.V. Regarding the feeble, un-Christian Other: Oppositional dialectics in Roberts' narrative.
3.VI. Edmund Roberts as the American Orientalist. Chapter
4. 'It was a scene of grandeur in destruction': Fitch W. Taylor and America's Second Attack on Sumatra in
1838.
4.I. Boom! Back to Sumatra we go.
4.II. 'May a merciful as well as a just God direct': Fitch Taylor's Christian Universe.
4.III. Finding Comfort in the Familiar: Fitch Taylor's deliberate blindness. Chapter
5. Flirting with Danger: Walter Murray Gibson, The American Nobody Wanted.
5.I. From Sea to Shining Sea: America's Expansion and Consolidation in the 1840s and 1850s.
5.II. 'Jealousy had met me at the threshold of Netherland India': Walter Murray Gibson's misadventure in Sumatra.
5.III. Will no one rid me of this troublesome man? The Walter Gibson Affair and its Impact on American-Dutch Relations.
5.IV. Those who can't do, write fiction: Walter Gibson as American Orientalist.
5.V. The Filibuster's Demise: Gibson's final Pacific adventure. Chapter
6. It is your shells I am after: Albert S. Bickmore's Voyage to the East Indies And America's Coming of Age.
6.I. From Antebellum to Post-Civil War United States: Another America Rises.
6.II. All for the Sake of Knowledge: Bickmore's Scientific Jaunt across the Dutch East Indies.
6.III. 'This indicates their low rank in the human family': Bickmore and the Theory of Racial Difference.
6.IV. Albert Bickmore's Adventure in Conchology and America's entry into the club of Civilized Western Nations. Chapter
7. Empire at Last: America's Arrival as a Colonial Power in Southeast Asia.
7.I. Travelling in the Shade of Empire: American Tourists and Amateurs in Southeast Asia.
7.II. That other Great Game to the East: America's rise as a Colonial Power from
1898. Chapter
8. Conclusion: American Orientalism in Southeast Asia.
8.I. American Orientalism: The contours of a New Language-Game, and its Users.
8.II. The Gathering of Minds: How the echo chamber was formed.
8.III. 'Indians', Indians, Asians, and the Disabled Native Other.
8.IV. Talking to themselves: American works on Southeast Asia as self-referential texts.
8.V. The Stories We Tell: America and Southeast Asia's entanglement, then and now. Appendix A: The treaty.