Taking as its case study a cluster of schools, libraries, and learned societies in Southeast Asia, this chapter considers the operation of nineteenth-century colonial cultural institutions on multiple scalar and conceptual levels. First, as local, regional, and transnational networks of people, enabling both bonding networks with local and regional institutions and bridging networks with metropolitan institutions. Second, as geographical nodes and/or centres of regional knowledge collection, production, and accumulation that extend and disseminate knowledge gathered in the colonies to metropoles and regional centres via cultural goods such as journals, publication exchanges, and printed works. And third, as perceived beacons attracting European and non-European knowledge producers and consumers within a global system of useful knowledge societies for the diffusion of moral and intellectual improvement. Focusing on the transmission of what Andrew Sartori has called a global ‘culture concept’, the chapter argues that these institutions were critical both to British expansionism in Southeast Asia and to the creation of Chinese and Malay counterpublics that opposed British cultural hegemony.

Chapter 3 traces how the Dutch and British during the eighteenth century became increasingly concerned with the problem of piracy in Southeast Asia. The explanations for the prevalence of piracy in the writings of nineteenth-century British and Dutch authorities on the subject, such as Raffles, Crawfurd, Veth and Snouck Hurgronje, are investigated. The emphasis on racial, cultural and religious factors to explain piracy in the Malay Archipelago are highlighted. Different types of piracy in the Strait of Malacca after the 1840s are also identified, and a distinction is made between the petty Malay piracy and the larger and more organised activities perpetrated by heavily armed Chinese pirates, many of whom were based in Singapore. The British and Dutch efforts to suppress piracy are investigated, and the often dubious allegations of piracy directed against Malay states, such as Aceh, Perak and Selangor, are highlighted. It is concluded that piracy was actively securitised in order to justify colonial expansion but that such rhetoric and policies did not go unchallenged, particularly in Great Britain, where vocal opponents of colonial expansion questioned the motives of those in favour of military intervention and colonial expansion.