“Pairaudeau’s book is remarkable in terms of its imagination and archival research. It examines the predicaments of subjects, whose history in the context of competing imperial enterprises has not been told; it moves away from the overstudied British empire to look at the French one; it sets up a much-needed dialogue between histories of citizenship regimes in South and Southeast Asia, thus introducing a comparative perspective; and it shatters conventional assumptions about plural society and lack of local agency.”