Silkworm Books was founded in 1987 and published its first book in 1991. It was the vision of Trasvin Jittidecharak, who wanted to establish an international publishing house based in her hometown of Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.

Silkworm Books specialized, from the outset, in producing quality English-language books on Southeast Asia and has since developed into an internationally recognized and highly regarded publisher of excellent books in history, political science, anthropology, and many other fields of study, all centered around the culture and society of Southeast Asia. In 2005, Silkworm Books founded Mekong Press with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 2007, Mekong Press was registered as a nonprofit organization designed to encourage and support the work of local scholars, writers, and publishing professionals in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and the other countries in the Greater Mekong sub-region. Mekong Press also holds seminars and training workshops on different aspects of book publishing, and helps find ways to overcome some of the huge challenges faced by small book publishers in Southeast Asia.

Despite its growth and international presence, the foundations on which Silkworm was built are the same today as they were twenty-five years ago: to bring high-quality Western scholarship on Southeast Asia to the region, and likewise, to make Southeast Asian scholarship on the region as accessible as possible to people around the world.