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0oc'"G TH^^W Rjap, o M M f s NEWSLETTERS 1 9 9 7 /fIstitute for As NETHERLANDS,TELEPHONE: +3,-71-527 22 27, TELEFAX: +31-71-527 4, 62, E-MAIL: , I AS N E WS @ RU L L ET. Le i d e n U n . v. N L_ P.O. BOX 9515, 2300 RA LEIDEN, THE Program m e Agenda Publication Vacancy HShort News ASIAN CULTURE GENERAL NEWS INSULAR SW ASIA The HAS is expanding slowly, At the time o f the French conquest II AS in 1895, Madagascar was already nationally as well as inter The HAS has opened a new branche a well-organized political state. nationally. Nationally, 1996 was office in Amsterdam. In 1923 young Harm Kamerlingh the year o f the deepening o f the When and how was this state born? 49 base. HAS Director. Professor Dr Rafolo Andrianaivoarivony Onnes joined his uncle D olf on Wim Stokhof, explains how this attempts to answer these questions. a voyage to Indonesia. His letters ESF ASIA COMMITTEE and sketches give us a glimpse of has been achieved. News from the ESF Asia Committee 24 Q 25 the colonial world o f Indonesia and East Asia in the 1920’s 5 2 The last decade in the run-up to the twenty-first century has been AKSE SOUTHEAST ASIA 26 O 33 particularly intriguing for its News from the Association o f contradictory but concurrent Korean Studies in Europe. centripetal and centrifugal EAST ASIA 54 impulses. As communities grow increasingly interconnected, E AS AS proclamations o f distinctiveness The i st meeting o f the European and exclusivity become more a I Association for South Asian Studies. pronounced. Lily Zubaidah Rahim 5 5 goes in search o f the 'Asian Way’ EUROSEAS 3 O 1 2 2nd Conference o f the European Assoc, for Southeast Asian Studies The collections o f the Royal 5 6 CENTRAL ASIA Botanic Gardens, Kew support the institution’s work into plants SE ALG and botany, concentrating on An introduction o f the tropical and sub-tropical regions the Southeast Asia Library Group o f the world. Kew has a long Fengshui, the name o f an ancient 5 6 standing and on-going interest in form o f Chinese geomancy, literally means ‘wind and water’. Recently the botanical region ofMalesia ASEASUK that covers insular Southeast Asia this mysterious old subject seems to News from the Association for Two recently published books about - the Malay Archipelago - have attracted the interest o f more Southeast Asian Studies in the UK. Tibet are highlighted. Tibet and including New Guinea. and more people, achieving a 57 the British Raj. The frontier cadre modern revival after being ignored for a long period o f time. 1904-1947 by Alex McKay and N VAPS Russia’s Tibet File: The unknown pa^es The i sc congress o f the Dutch Assoc, in the histoiy o/Tibet’s independence. for Asia and Pacific Studies. 58 1C AS \ SOUTH ASIA The i st International Convention o f Asia Scholars. Fifty years ago saw the beginning g 58 According to Am inul Haque Faraizi, o f what became known as the first z Some highlights of current development projects ‘stink’ in m ilitary action (eerste politionele | exhibitions o f Asian Art and VACANCIES Bangladesh. Despite the failure actie], the war in which the the Asian Art Agenda in which Vacancies in the field o f Asian Studies o f most development projects to Netherlands attempted to restore * Oda Nobunaga, the prime mover forthcoming exhibitions and 6 1 achieve their stated objectives, like its authority in the East Indies. | o f Japan’s reunification, has long had a reputation as a brutal warlord. performances on Asian art poverty alleviation, employment Photographers captured these § AGENDA are announced. generation, empowering the poor actions on film. Photos which | Jeroen Lamers re-evaluates International Conference Agenda and marginalized people, showed the harsh reality o f Nobunaga’s policies, not by denying 43 47 62 the development industry has the colonial war were never made < their cruelty but by placing them 0 in the comparative perspective grown even bigger than ever before. available to the public. NEWSLETTERS Why is this so? The historian o f photography o f the Machiavellian Prince. INDEX Newsletters on Asia in Europe. Louis Zweers has rediscovered 64 14 0 23 these censored photographs. 34 0 42 EDITORIAL PAGE owing to the growing importance of Asia measures were taken to protect these exotic studies at a national level from further budget cuts and now Editorial in fact they are no longer considered exotic but an indispensable tool for coming to grips with present-day Asia. ■ By PAUL VAN DER VELDE In a completely different vein Harry Haroonunian accuses the directors Editor-in-chief of the area studies institutes of an obsessive search for cash which has dis placed thinking about new ways to organize and teach knowledge of areas K,---- A s of this edition of the has Newsletter we will feature an institu- for A » ' » * like Asia, which should indubitably be their primary consideration. He A ti°nal news section which is distinguished from the rest of the compares the institutes to dinosaurs who will keep viewing the crisis in L 1 newsletter by its pink colour, hence the Pink Pages. The institution HAS NEWSLETTER N?13 area studies as a financial problem as long as they are not hit by a shower of al section consists of news of institutes and organizations, agendas and in Summer 1997 meteors. In this context Elizabeth Perry warns against undue outside in 6 4 p a g e s formation of a purely factual nature. Other Asian Studies newsletters will fluence. Because of decreased funding Asianists turn to Asian foundations also make contributions to this section, including the aseasu k Newsletter which she believes have political purposes in mind. This may be the case, EDITORIAL OFFICE and the sealg Newsletter. The board of the South East Asia Library Group but arguably do not all governments and foundations have purposes in Visiting address: Nonnensteeg 1-3, Leiden has opted to publish its sealg Newsletter in this newsletter, primarily to Mailing address: P.O. Box 9515, mind? Scholars in the field think differently (there were no comments reach a wider audience. In the regional section of this newsletter as usual 2300 ra leiden, The Netherlands Irom directors) which is born out by the contributions of the other com Telephone: +31-71-527 22 27 you will find news and opinions on developments in the field, conference T elefax: +31-71-52741 62 mentators who blame not only the directors for the crisis but also lift an reports, book reviews etc. We hope that this overhaul will go a long way to E-Mail: accusing finger at dangers of a disciplinary nature from within academia. [email protected] wards increasing the accessibility and readability of our newsletter. WWW Homepage: http://iias.leidenuniv.nl Dangers from within and without Embattled Asian Studies in the US EDITORIAL STAFF The threat from inside academia is voiced most sharply by Robert Bates On what have already been fairly numerous occasions, reflections have Editor-in-chie f - Paul van der Velde of Harvard University. In a recent essay he stated that ‘Area Studies has no Managing Editor - Ilse Lasschuijt been made in this newsletter on the development of Asian Studies in Eu place in the university worth respecting, and practitioners of it should not South Asia Editor - Netty Bonouvric rope. In general it is feasible to say that the sense of crisis in Asian Studies in Southeast Asia Editor - Dick van der Meij be hired.’ He should be considered as a proponent of the Rational Choice the eighties has disappeared. The realization that Asian Studies should be East Asia Ed. (China) - Kitty Yang-de Witte Theory in Social Sciences. The President of the aas, Jim Scott, brands Bates East Asia Editor /Japan) - Paul Wijsman more internationalized and more embedded in society are leading to a reor East Asia Editor [Korea] - Koen De Ceuster as one of the Proponents of the formal theory who aspire to intellectual- ganization of the field. It has become clear that no single European country Insular Southwest Asia Editor - Sandra Evers hegemony in which area studies would be the providers of raw data on Central Asia Editor - Ingrid Nooijens can cover the whole of Asia and therefore co-operation is a prerequisite for which they test their theories.’ This threat from the Social Sciences is one Asian Culture Editor - Fernand Pahud the fine tuning of the study programmes and teaching in the field of Asian English editor - Rosemary Robson leg of what Cumings calls a twin pincer movement of theory; the other leg Studies. In order to be able to structure Asian Studies at a European level, being the Humanities with their Cultural Studies theory based on a brew the European community should also be willing to support these endea CORRESPONDENTS of texts and French Post-Modernism. Thongchai Winichikul labels these vours. In short, the pessimistic mood of the eighties has made way for a Ann Beard (AAS, Ann Arbor) Global Studies, which she views as ‘mixed bag of challenges and diverging Victor A. van Bijtert (Bengal Studies) more upbeat mood. Rik Hoekstra (Internet) views and interests’, and points to the limits of Global Studies. These lim This picture does not apply to the US. This became clear during the Presi Leonid Kulikov (CIS) its are found where global and local confront each other.