Anthony Reid was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 19 June 1939 and studied at Victoria University of Wellington and for his doctorate at the University of Cambridge. He taught at the University of Malaya (1965–1970) and the Australian National University (1970–1999), then was founding director of UCLA's Southeast Asia Center (1999–2002) and of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore (2002–2007). His work on Aceh includes The Contest for North Sumatra: Atjeh, the Netherlands and Britain 1858–1898 (1969), The Blood of the People (1979), An Indonesian Frontier (2004) and the edited Verandah of Violence (2006), alongside Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce (1988, 1993). He received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (2002) and is regarded as a founder of modern Aceh studies.