Peter Boomgaard is professor of environmental history of Southeast Asia at the University of Amsterdam.

David Henley is a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden.

Manon Osseweijer is coordinator of academic affairs at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden.

Other contributors include S. Robert Aiken, Isabelle Antunes, Julia Arnscheidt, Suseno Budidarsono, Paul Burgers, John G. Butcher, Freek Colombijn, James J. Fox, David M. Kummer, Gerard A. Persoon, Lesley Potter, Noelene Reeves, Peter Reeves, and Eric Wakker.

This book examines the history of the human interaction with forest and marine ecosystems in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The present excessive levels of logging and fishing in Southeast Asia have emerged only within the last generation. Until a few decades ago, it was common for marine and forest-related economic activities in Southeast Asia to have limited and, in the long run, rather stable effects on the environment. Sixteen contributions by an international selection of experts cover topics ranging from the collection of rattan, beeswax, and forest resins in the seventeenth century to the management of modern marine nature reserves.