Ian G. Baird. Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2025.

For many visitors to Laos, Champassak is a province in the south of the country, with the old Khmer temple site of Vat Phou the most prominent tourist attraction.But in the eighteenth century, Champassak was also an autonomous Lao kingdom, on an equal footing with Vientiane and Luang Prabang, before all three of them came under Siamese domination and later French colonial rule.Champassak's royal lineage continues to the present and has stubbornly asserted its sovereignty across time and through manifold historical vicissitudes.In his book, the geog rapher Ian Baird explores the history of Champassak, its struggles for sovereignty, and its sig nificance for the modern Lao nation-state.Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty is an insightful and original contribution to the study of political sovereignty in Southeast Asia.Taking the example of Champassak, a small polity that also included parts of present-day Thailand and Cambodia, Baird shows how sovereignty and power is contested, contingent, and shifting.The book adds a robust political economy per spective to the field of statecraft and authority in Southeast Asia, thus complementing the anal ysis of royal ritual and sociopolitical dynamics.Besides sketching the capricious history of a small Lao polity, Baird illustrates how precolonial conceptions and practices of sovereignty linger on under colonialism, in modern nation-states and diaspora communities.The originality of this contribution to the study of sovereignty in Southeast Asia stems from Baird's multifaceted political, geographical, and anthropological perspectives, including a historical long-term one.Baird creates a dazzling picture of the workings of political sovereignty and authority in Southeast Asia by highlighting the shifting levels of territoriality and (in)formality as well as the contingent and unpredictable agency of the Champassak royals.Instead of an "absolute or non-existent" dichotomy, the author identifies "a matter of degrees along a continuum" assuming "various forms" (p.14).The book offers fresh perspectives to