The 19th century witnessed a boom in both academic and non-academic writing on and about Southeast Asia, though many of the works that were produced then were written by men who were often part of the colonial enterprise. Of late, there has been much criticism of such works—on account of the racial bias, orientalist prejudices, etc. contained in them; and some may even regard such works as useless and not worth reading. In this talk, I will argue that such works are still worth reading for in many ways they are also confessional texts that reveal much about the agendas and subject-positions of their authors, and their entanglement with colonial power. Seen in this light, these books were not only books about Southeast Asia, but also books about the West, that reveal the workings of Western colonial-capitalism then.