Patrick Peebles is Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, where he taught courses on Asian history. He is a specialist on the modern history of Sri Lanka. In 2008–2009, he carried out research in Sri Lanka under a grant from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies for a book on the transformation of the colony from a military outpost to a plantation economy in the period from 1833 to 1850. In the fall of 2009, he taught in London in the Missouri London Program. His most recent research and book project is his microhistory of the East India Company from 1680 to 1700. He is a contributor to a number of encyclopedias and dictionaries on South Asia, and his books include History of Sri Lanka (2006), Plantation Tamils of Ceylon (2001), Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon (1995), and Classics of Eastern Thought (1994).