Not unlike Michel de Montaigne, I found that the more I ate, the bigger my appetite became. Originally I intended to write a one-volume history of mainland Southeast Asia from c. 800 to 1830, with a concluding chapter suggesting similarities to premodern Russia. But as I read, I began to sense that mainland Southeast Asia shared critical developmental features not only with Russia but with other far-flung sectors of Eurasia, and that analysis of those features could help to free Southeast Asia from the historiographic ghetto in which it had long been confined. I resolved therefore to supplement mainland history with Eurasian comparisons. Rather than try to cover Eurasia at large, I decided to develop case studies of Russia, France, and Japan, for it seemed that the history of those regions, focusing on cyclic-cum-linear state consolidation under indigenous elites, stood closest to patterns in mainland Southeast Asia's principal realms, namely, Burma, Siam, and Vietnam.

I still assumed that this would be a one-volume work, albeit a rather long one. But eventually it became clear that a single volume could not contain the necessary argument and documentation. With the deeply appreciated support of Frank Smith, Editorial Director for Academic Books at Cambridge University Press, I therefore separated the comparative material on Europe and Japan to form a second volume.

The matter, however, did not rest there. When Volume 1 appeared in 2003, the Preface said that Volume 2 would cover Russia, France, Japan, and island Southeast Asia.