In the imaginations of commentators, both Asian and European alike, disease and Southeast Asia have long held a close association.

For Chinese offi­cials posted to the southernmost regions of the Tang empire, it was a fearful place of miasmas and malar­ial fevers. To many Europeans, Southeast Asia was, like tropical Africa, a “white man’s grave.” In the chronicles of the inhabitants of the region, the real­ity of disease merged with that of other calamities, in a world populated with spirits that held sway over human life. Aside from biomedical considerations, there are clearly important political and cultural dimensions to these links between region and dis­ease. This essay will examine some of the factors that have given disease such a prominent place in Southeast Asian history.