Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-332) and index.

Ch. 1. Place Matters -- Ch. 2. Port of Entry: Colonial Singapore -- Ch. 3. The Holy Land of Victorian Science: Anna Forbes, with Henry Forbes and Alfred Russel Wallace in the Eastern Archipelago -- Ch. 4. Botany and Marianne North: Painting "A Garland about the Earth" -- Ch. 5. The Company as the Country: On the Malay Peninsula with Isabella Bird and Emily Innes -- Ch. 6. "One's Own State": Margaret Brooke, Harriette McDougall, and Sarawak -- Ch. 7. Anna Leonowens: Women Talking in the Royal Harem of Siam -- Ch. 8. Looking Behind and Ahead.

Susan Morgan's study of materials and regions previously neglected in contemporary postcolonial studies begins with the transforming premise that "place matters." Concepts derived from writings about one area of the world cannot simply be transposed to another area, in some sort of global theoretical move. Moreover, place in the discourse of Victorian imperialism is a matter of gendered as well as geographic terms. Taking up works by Anna Forbes and Marianne North on the Malay Archipelago, by Margaret Brooke and Harriette McDougall on Sarawak, by Isabella Bird and Emily Innes on British Malaya, by Anna Leonowens on Siam, Morgan also makes extensive use of theorists whose work on imperialism in Southeast Asia is unfamiliar to most American academics.