Dedication 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