Milton Osborne

I have read a number of Milton Osborne's book on SE Asia and have learned much about its history from him. However, I find it puzzling that they have a glaring omission when he writes about the early history. There is no mention of the Mon people, who were one of the earliest inhabitants of SE Asia and were responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand, Laos, and Burma. Their Dvaravati kingdom pre-dated and was a contemporary of the Angkor kingdom before being invaded by them.

River Road to China: The Search for the Source of the Mekong, 1866-73 (Search for the Sources of the Mekong, 1866-73) is the book to read, regarding Western exploration of the Mekong, in-depth. This effort by Osborne is a good primer for those interested in the Mekong River and the lands it flows through.

Throughout the book “The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future”, Milton Osborne details the experiences of the early Mekong explorations of the French expedition team back in the colonial era. Major French exploration which started in 1866 from Saigon in Vietnam upstream to Yunnan in China lasted about two years, and enabled the surveyors to map out quite detailed information, though some were still very much inaccurate, geographical characteristic of the river as a groundwork for show more their future utilization and control. show less

Southeast Asia, History, Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia, Myanmar, Phillipines