Anthony Reid is a New Zealand-born historian of Southeast Asia. His doctoral work at Cambridge University examined the contest for power in northern Sumatra, Indonesia in the late 19th century, and he extended this study into a book The Blood of the People on the national and social revolutions in that region 1945–49. He is most well known for his two volume book "Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce", developed during his time at the Australian National University in Canberra. His later work includes a return to Sumatra where he explored the historical basis for the separate identity of Aceh; interests in nationalism, Chinese diaspora and economic history, and latterly the relation between geology and deep history. Professor Reid taught Southeast Asia history at University of Malaya and Australian National University. He became the founding director of the Southeast Asia Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1999–2002, and then the founding director of Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, 2002–2007. He retired from NUS in 2009. Since then he has been based in Canberra as Professor at the Australian National University. As a writer of fiction he styles himself Tony Reid. He is the son of John S. Reid, a New Zealand diplomat who held postings in Indonesia, Japan and Canada in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Contest for North Sumatra: Atjeh, the Netherlands and Britain, 1858 1898. Kuala Lumpur, OUP/UMP, 1969. Reissued by University of Malaya Press, 1974; New edition University of Malaya Press, 2017.
Indonesian translation as Asal Mula Konflik Aceh, Jakarta, Yayasan Obor, 2004
Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450 1680. Vol.II: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999, 298pp.
Indonesian translation.
An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004; 439pp.- reprinted 2005. Indonesian translation 2011.
To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the Twentieth Century. Singapore: NUS Press, 2011. Indonesian translation 2018.
A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads. Chichester, UK: Wiley/Blackwell, 2015.
Reid has also written a novel about 17th century Java depicting the experiences of Tom Hodges, an Englishman, who arrives in Java in 1608 and aims to make his fortune in the pepper trade --
