This book has its origins in a KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) research project entitled “Credit, Risk, and the Economy of Debt: Indonesian Trajectories” (CREDIT), in which we have been the principal participants, and in a discussion panel on “Credit and Debt in Southeast Asia, Past and Present”, which we organized at the Fourth Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies (EUROSEAS) in Paris in September 2004. Besides six pieces which — in most cases after much revision — became chapters included here, the Paris panel also included papers by Andi Faisal Bakti, Greg Bankoff, Pramuan Bunkanwanicha, Caleb Kwong, Martin Ramstedt, and Willem Wolters. We remain grateful to these scholars for their input and insights, some of which are indirectly reflected in the present volume. Our thanks go also to Anne Booth, Thomas Lindblad, and other members of the panel audience for their critical and constructive comments. Two of our eight chapters, those by Jan Wisseman Christie and Heather Sutherland, did not originate in Paris, but were written after the conference at our request. We are particularly grateful to these contributors, without whom the range of topics and periods covered would have been much less adequate. In addition we would like to thank Rosemary Robson, for improving the English in some of the pieces; the staff of the KITLV, for their always cheerful assistance when we were in search of publications and illustrations; and Triena Ong of ISEAS Publishing, for her help, and forbearance, during the reviewing and editing process.