David M. Gordon received his PH.D. from Brown University. He teaches in the History Department of Bronx Community College and the CUNY Graduate Center, having previously taught as a professor at Kaohsiung Teachers University (Taiwan), and seminar director at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (Paris). The author of two books and several articles on European, African and Asian history, he is currently interested in the economic integration of China and Southeast Asia in the first half of the twentieth century.