“There is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness; [Africa’s past is] the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe.” Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (1914-2003), Regius Professor of History, 1957-1980
- 1 Tutorial Fellows at Oxford Colleges were, at the time of my appointment in 1979, funded through a s (...)
1It was the evening of Thursday 1 February 1979 and I was in my final year as a Prize Fellow at Magdalen (1974-79). My flat on the ground floor of the Daubeny Buildings had windows overlooking the Botanic Gardens. But it was not the view of the 17th-century walled physic (herb) garden or the monumental Danby Gate which held my attention that evening. Instead, I was glued to the evening news on my black-and-white TV set—Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-89) was descending the steps of the Air France plane which had brought him from Orly Airport in Paris. The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 had reached its final dénouement. The Shah had fled (17 January 1979) and the repressive theocracy of the Ayatollahs was about to begin. With history unfolding before my eyes, I hardly heard the excited knocking at my door and the urgent words hissed through the keyhole: “Peter! Peter! Are you at home? It’s Angus! I have come direct from a meeting of the General Board. Your election as CUF1 Fellow in History at Trinity is confirmed. Many congratulations!” When eventually I flung the door open, I found my close friend and Magdalen College colleague, Angus Macintyre (1935-94), standing before me. He had come to tell me the good news that I was now officially Laithwaite Fellow in Modern History at my undergraduate college, Trinity, a post I would hold for nearly the next 30 years (1979-2008). Ever since that day, the image of the fearsome Ayatollah returning in triumph to his shattered homeland is forever associated in my mind with a moment of pure joy in my life.
2Shortly after this historic evening, I had a dream. I was walking in Trinity gardens, the slate-grey skies of February transformed to glorious summer. Rounding a corner, who should be standing before me but my former and recently deceased Trinity history tutor, John Phillips Cooper (1920-1978; in post, 1952-1978). Dressed in a natty houndstooth tweed jacket and beaming at me, he seemed magically transformed from the history tutor I had known who had succumbed to a heart attack while driving into college from his home at Stanton St John in April 1978. No longer the hunched and sickly middle-aged don of his later years, the man who stood before me in Trinity’s famous Lime Walk was bursting with energy and well-being. My heart lifted: “Thank God, I have found you, Sir! They need you back in College!” John shook his head and replied smiling, “No! No! Peter, that is not my job any more, it is yours! Godspeed!” And there the dream ended as suddenly as it had begun. The baton had been passed to me: I had received the blessing of my predecessor. My move back to Trinity was starting well.
3“All you have here, Peter, are opportunities,” seemed to me the message of both these encounters, but how to maximise these when my specialization was as an historian of modern Indonesia? This was far outside the scope and curricula of the Oxford Modern History school as then constituted. Teaching and research on non-European history was still in its infancy. Moreover, Hugh Trevor-Roper, then in post as Regius Professor of Modern History (1957-1980), had made his views on non-European history, that of Africa in particular, plain: “It is not an historical part of the world. It has no movement or development to exhibit […] There is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness; [its past is] the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe.”2 Almost in the same breath, he had also dismissed the Oxford History School as “a retrograde provincial backwater” for excluding Fernand Braudel (1902-85) and the Annales School from any part in the History syllabus.
- 3 “Multatuli [I have Suffered Much]” was the pen name of the former colonial civil servant and Dutch (...)
4The Regius was gracious enough to invite me to dine with him in Oriel College soon after I took up my appointment at Trinity. But I wondered what he made of my own fascination with the “gyrations” of the Javanese in my particular “irrelevant” part of the world—Southeast Asia. Where to begin? Obviously, an accident of history had dealt my part of the world a bad hand when it came to securing a place amongst the stars in Oxford. If Java had been retained as a Crown Colony, as had happened with South Africa (Cape Colony, 1806-1910), instead of being handed back to the Dutch at the 13 August 1814 Convention of London during the interim administration of Thomas Stamford Raffles (1811-1816), my prospects as a young Fellow would have been totally different! From Kabul to Wellington there would have been an arc of anglophone territories. One of the foremost jewels in the British crown, Java in all its luxuriant equatorial beauty, would have been stuff of literary legend. A British “Multatuli” might even have emerged to write an English version of Max Havelaar, the book that “killed colonialism” in the Dutch East Indies.3 I would certainly not have had to make the case for being a specialist on Indonesian history!
5Since the British were already involved in the Malay peninsula following Captain Francis Light’s establishment of Penang (George Town) in 1786, Indonesia, or the “British East Indies” as the Crown Colony might have been called, would probably have been part of a wider Malay Federation. Like British Burma after the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826), it would have been ruled from India. There would have been no need to found Singapore – Batavia (post-1942, Jakarta), “the Manhattan of Southeast Asia” under the VOC, would have been a free port and principal British base in the region. Academic studies on Indonesia—a term coined by an English ethnologist, George Windsor Earl (1813-1865), and popularised by his close friend, the Penang-based lawyer, James Richardson Logan (1819-1869) through his Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia 4—would have been well provided for at Britain’s ancient universities. One could envisage a Raffles’ chair of Javanese or a Marsden lectureship in Austronesian languages to go alongside Oxford’s historic endowments in other oriental languages like the Laudian Professorship of Arabic (1636, permanently endowed 1640),5 and the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit (1832).6
6But this was the stuff of dreams. The reality which confronted me as I set out on my often lonely three decades as Laithwaite Fellow was quite different. I can remember very early on in my Fellowship being invited by the then holder of the chair of Latin American History, Christopher Platt (1934-1989; in post 1972-1989), to give a seminar in the History Faculty on “The British in Indonesia.” Perhaps Platt, who was born in Canton and spent part of his childhood in Buenos Aires, took pity on me. But if the all-encompassing title of the talk he proposed was designed to attract the multitudes, then we were in for a disappointment. The appointed hour came, and I had arrived in good time with my notes for the talk (this was the age before PowerPoints) to find Platt in his gown (this was to be a formal faculty event) standing around hesitantly as we waited together for the expected inrush. Ten minutes passed then quarter of an hour, and still no audience—not a single soul! Perhaps by “The British in Indonesia” title the punters thought I was going to talk about something obscure like the Amboyna Massacre of 1623, when twenty-one men, including ten in the service of the English East India Company, had been tortured and executed by agents of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie/VOC, 1602-1799). In fact, I intended to talk about the British in Java during the Raffles’ period (1811-1816). Whatever it was, the indifference was absolute. Not even the most intellectually curious Oxford history student could evince a scintilla of enthusiasm to find out more about such a place as obscure and insignificant as Indonesia. Rather than lecture to thin air, Platt looked at me with embarrassment and weary resignation—“Let’s just call it a day!” We went our separate ways—not even a beer at the adjacent King’s Arms could provide solace on such a night.
- 7 . According to a secret CIA report of 1968, see Schmitz 2006: 48-9.
7This experience convinced me that I would gain no traction in Oxford if I presented myself primarily as an historian of Indonesia. The fact that Indonesia was at that time under the rule of General Suharto and his repressive “New Order” regime (1966-1998), architect of one of the “worst mass murders of the 20th century” against the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia/PKI),7 meant that the country was seen as a Cold War proxy of the United States. In terms of global awareness, it was a complete zero: the Suharto regime had made no effort to project itself internationally or raise the country’s profile by the export of its cultural “brand” or “soft power.” This stood in contrast to his predecessor, Sukarno (1901-70; in office 1945-1967), who had successfully hosted the April 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung and been the inceptor of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), both initiatives which had had a resonance worldwide.
8As for Indonesia’s education system and intellectual life, these had both suffered a steep decline following the 1965-1966 massacres which had brought Suharto to power. The murder, exile and silencing of voices from the political left together with the so-called “normalization” (read: bureaucratization and political control) of government universities had destroyed the intellectual legacy of the late Dutch colonial period (1816-1942) and Sukarno’s ideologically contested “Old Order” (1945-1966). I can remember being invited to speak at one of these new government universities when I was still a research student in Indonesia in the late 1970s. This was the Eleventh March University (post-1977 Universitas Negeri Surakarta Sebelas Maret; post-1982 UNS Sebelas Maret) in Surakarta, founded (11 March 1976) under the auspices of Suharto’s wife, Ibu Tien Suharto (Siti Hartinah, 1923-1996), a minor noble from one of the court city’s royal families. They wanted me to lecture on my research subject, the Java War (1825-1830). But, when my hosts read my lecture notes and realized I was going to be quoting from contemporary Javanese sources which described in vivid detail the breakdown of law and order in the pre-war royal governments of south-central Java, their red censor pencils came out. Observations like “There were changes in the direction of the state / [and] there was much wickedness: bandits, highwaymen, robbers [and] pickpockets could move about in the kingdom” were immediately struck through. So too was the next verse from the selfsame Javanese chronicle:
“All the essential elements of the law were disregarded,
arbitrariness prevailed,
and in authority were those who were still strong,
[acting] in an unsuitable [and] unmannerly fashion.
They did not think far ahead.
Many people were dismissed by ruses [and]
in the councils of state other men took their places,
descendants of common people.”8
9In fact, so many changes and omissions were demanded that my promised lecture, which had once sprouted as luxuriantly as a spring-flowering Sakura (Japanese cherry), now looked more like a telegraph pole!
- 9 Carey 2000: 3-7.
- 10 Suhardiyoto Haryadi and Carey 2014: 137-56. Suhardiyoto (Jan) later made a career for himself in th (...)
10Judging it impossible to speak with any degree of honesty and openness about my historical research, which dealt with a period which was by then already 150 years the rearview mirror, I decided to decline the invitation. Soon after, in November 1983, my initial involvement with the cause of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, then under Indonesian military occupation (1975-1999), made me immediately persona non grata with the Indonesian authorities.9 All further invitations from Indonesian universities and indeed all formal contacts with the Indonesian embassy in London ceased forthwith. During the Suharto era (1967-1998) I received no graduate or undergraduate students from Indonesia. This only changed after the dictator’s fall on 21 May 1998, when I received my first and only Indonesian graduate student, Jan Suhardiyoto Hariyadi (born 1960), a former journalist and Reuters Fellow (1999-2000), with whom I later co-authored a book chapter on the prospects for democracy in Indonesia.10
- 11 After Platt’s death in 1989, his chair of Latin American history was eventually filled after a thre (...)
11By contrast, I had several able students who hailed from other Southeast Asian countries, Singapore in particular. This made me realize that if I was to gain traction within the University, I would have to cast my net wider. Perhaps not the whole of Southeast Asia, but at least the island world, usually referred to as “Maritime Southeast Asia.” This comprised the modern states of Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia, which then accounted for nearly three-fifths of Southeast Asia’s 450 million-strong population. An immediate opportunity presented itself to get a foot in the door. The Modern History School’s undergraduate syllabus had an “Imperialism and Nationalism” Further Subject originally devised by the Beit Professor of Commonwealth History, Ronald Robinson (1920-99; in post, 1971-1987). This allowed students to study a range of non-European subjects: South Asian History (under Tapan Raychaudhuri, 1926-2014, then Reader in Modern South Asian History, 1973-1992), African history (under Tony Kirk-Greene, 1925-2018, Senior Research Fellow at St Antony’s, 1967-92), Latin America (under Professor Christopher Platt until his untimely death in 1989)11 and the Dominions (Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, initially under Colin Newbury and subsequently under John Darwin, Beit Lecturer in Commonwealth History, 1984-2019).
- 12 . Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in Baghdad in September 1960, (...)
- 13 . See Employment Tribunal Decision, 10 March 2021 (Dr K. Fogg versus The Oxford Centre for Islami (...)
12Very soon after I took up my post in Trinity in Michaelmas (Winter) Term 1979, I managed to get a fifth option added to that list, namely “Maritime Southeast Asia, 1830-1973”. This looked at historical developments from the end of the Java War (1825-1830) to the first OPEC12 oil price “shock” (22 December 1973). I was encouraged by the degree of support I received within the History Faculty, particularly from medievalists like Henry Mayr-Harting, then Faculty chairman. Taught for the first time in Hilary (Easter) Term 1982, it would continue to be offered for the next 26 years until I took early retirement in October 2008. It was then briefly revived by the economic historian of late (post-1870) colonial Southeast Asia, Dr Gregg Huff (Senior Research Fellow, Pembroke College, 2008-present), and by the young scholar of Indonesian Islam, Dr Kevin W. Fogg. The latter in particular would make a signal contribution to the teaching of Southeast Asian history at Oxford during his six years (2012-18) as Al-Bukhari Fellow in the history of Islam in Southeast Asia (2012-2018) at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) until his unfair dismissal by OCIS on 30 September 2018.13
13The inclusion of the Maritime Southeast Asian option in the “Imperialism and Nationalism” Further Subject of the History syllabus meant that almost from the start of my Fellowship at Trinity I could teach my research specialty for at least one term of the academic year. It was never going to be a popular subject, but it did attract a handful of undergraduates each year (my largest cohort was 12, it was usually under half that number). Some of these students had been born or raised in the region, others had spent a gap year backpacking through the island world, still others were just driven by curiosity. This meant that over my period as a Tutorial Fellow some 120 Oxford undergraduates had exposure to modern Southeast Asian history through this Further Subject option. As they built their careers, they could set the big events which occurred in the region during these 26 years in a wider historical perspective. Amongst these were the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos (1917-89; in office 1966-1986) and his shoe-besotted consort in the “People Power Revolution” of 22-25 February 1986 in Manila; the emergence of their now discredited fellow Oxford graduate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (born 1944),14 as a democracy icon in Burma following the 8-8-1988 uprising; the fall of President Suharto (21 May 1998) and the beginning of the Reformasi (Reform) period in Indonesia (1998-present).
14Besides this rather specialized option, two other developments increased the opportunity to bring modern Southeast Asia history into the mainstream. The first was the launch of a new general history paper, “Europe and the Wider World, 1815-1914”, which I devised with John Darwin a decade after his arrival in Oxford in 1984.15 This initiative was assisted by the arrival in Oxford of Dr Richard Drayton as Darby Fellow in History at Lincoln College (in post 1994-1998), with research interests in science and technology in 19th-century imperialism. In Darwin’s words, the new paper was aimed at exposing “history undergraduates to the bigger themes of European expansion and local resistance to it”. 16Besides imperial rivalries and the economic impact of colonialism, it also dealt with slavery, race, Christian missions, and the first stirrings of nationalism in the early 20th century. Those taking the paper were also required to engage with the historiography of at least two non-European regions, including South and Southeast Asia, East Asia (China, Japan, Korea), Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America—and to study their history from a local rather than a Western perspective.
- 17 I am grateful to Professor John Darwin for pointing this out, electronic communication, 13 Septembe (...)
15We were able to call in a range of lecturing expertise both from within the History Faculty (Avner Offer [economic history], Malcolm Deas [Latin America], David Washbrook [1948-2021, India], Albert Hourani [1915-93, Middle East], Mark Elvin [China], Ann Waswo [1940-2020, Japan], Terence (“Terry”) Ranger [1929-2015; Colonial Africa]), and we provided joint tutorial classes until I took early retirement in October 2008. Three years later, in 2011, this paper would morph into its current incarnation as “Imperial and Global History, 1750-1930” following Faculty Board chair, Professor Chris Wickham’s, success in securing a large start-up grant to found the Oxford Centre for Global History. The key architect of victory here was the German-born Beit lecturer in Commonwealth History (2002-2016), Jan-Georg Deutsch (1956-2016), a specialist in African history. The most loyal and selfless of colleagues, it was he who persuaded Chris Wickham, a medievalist, then Chichele Professor of Medieval History (in post 2005-2016), to take Global History seriously.17
- 18 Michael Aris (1944-99) was at the time of the Asian Studies Centre launch, a Senior Research Fellow (...)
16The other major development was the relaunch of the St Antony’s Centre Far Eastern Studies Centre as the Asian Studies Centre (ASC) in 1982. Originally founded in 1954 by the Far East (present-day East Asia) scholar, Geoffrey Hudson (1903-74), following his appointment as a Fellow of St Antony’s (1954-1974), this was another meeting point for scholars of South, Southeast and East Asia. Those involved in the relaunch included other St Antony’s College fellows: Mark Elvin (China), Tapan Raychaudhuri (India), Arthur Stockwin (founder-director of the Nissan Institute for Japanese Studies, 1982-2003), and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael Aris (1946-99), a specialist on Bhutanese, Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, who was then a Senior Research Fellow at Wolfson (in post, 1980-89).18
- 19 For an appreciation of Louis Allen (1925-91), see Starr 2016:94-107.
- 20 Michio Takeyama 1966.
17Together, we launched the newly rebranded ASC with a highly successful eight-week seminar program on “World War II in Asia” in Michaelmas (Winter) Term 1982, where we were able to attract a number of able and inspiring speakers. High on the list here was Louis Allen (1925-91). Portly, bearded, charismatic and fluent in Japanese, Louis’ daytime job was Reader in French at the University of Durham, but his real passion was World War II in Asia—in particular, Burma, where he had served as an intelligence officer at the end of the war taking the surrender of Japanese troops.19 He was just then putting the finishing touches to his classic wartime history, Burma: The Longest War (1984), and when he talked to us to launch the seminar series, he began with a spirited rendition of a popular Japanese wartime song from the well-known Japanese novel, Harp of Burma (1946), about a Japanese soldier who becomes a Buddhist monk and stays behind in Burma after the war to bury the bodies of his slain comrades.20
- 21 Sir John spoke on the Hukbalahap (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, People’s Army against the Japanese (...)
- 22 Toye 1959.
18During his two presentations in the series, the first an overview of the whole war in Asia and the other specifically on Burma (above), Louis introduced this classic novel to us and much more besides. In his Burma talk, we heard in vivid detail about the desperate fate of General Renya Mutaguchi’s 85,000-strong army at the twin battles of Imphal and Kohima in Manipur (northeastern India) in March-July 1944. Based on his debriefings of captured Japanese soldiers in 1944-45, Louis explained how some 55,000 of the original attacking force had been killed and wounded, many succumbing to starvation as they tried to break through to the Dimapur railhead on the Brahmaputra River, gateway for the planned Japanese invasion of India. Other speakers included the diplomat, Sir John Addis (1914-83), former ambassador to the Philippines (1963-70) and China (1972-74), and the SOAS-based scholar, Ruth T. McVey, who spoke on the Philippines and Indonesia respectively,21 while our local Wheatley-based colleague, Colonel Hugh Toye (1917-2012), another intelligence officer tasked with the interrogation of captured Japanese troops—in Singapore in his case—spoke on his book on Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945) and the Indian National Army (INA) in India and Burma.22
19We had a very strong line-up. So much so that we even attracted the attention of two former Imperial Japanese Army supply officers, then pursuing careers with Japanese banks and businesses in London. They were friends, but their respective wartime experiences could not have been more different. The first had enjoyed a cushy posting in Bandung in wartime Java (1942-45). The second had been one of Mutaguchi’s logistics officers at Imphal. He had staked his resupply strategy on capturing the British supply dumps—“Churchill Rations” as he referred to them—which he witnessed being destroyed from the air by Allied bombers on the very night that his supply unit entered the British stronghold.
20We were also joined by a senior member of the University who had served in Malaya and been captured in Singapore following the British defeat on 15 February 1942. This was Richard M. Hare (1919-2002), then White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy (in post, 1966-83), who had fought as a young officer with the 155th Artillery Regiment at the Battle of Slim River and Tanjung Malim (6-8 January 1942). Later captured by the Japanese in Singapore, he described the skill of the attacking Japanese infantry, who fired firecrackers over the heads of his fixed artillery positions creating the impression amongst his field gunners that they were coming under enfilading fire from the rear. Hare’s wartime experience in Malaya apparently had a lasting impact on his later philosophical views, in particular, his assertion that moral philosophy has an obligation to help people live their lives as moral beings, and his insistence that philosophical systems should “serve as a guide to life in the harshest conditions”.23
- 24 Horta was in residence during the eight-week Trinity (Summer) Term of 1987, which began on 26 April (...)
21With this remarkable seminar series, the Asian Studies Centre was launched. Sadly, this was an age before the internet and social media, so we have no YouTube or online text video recordings to immortalize it. Over the next decade, however, there would be a number of memorable speakers, events and seminars, some of which I helped to facilitate as the Centre’s Executive Director (1985-88). It was under my watch, for example, that the celebrated freelance war photographer, Tim Page (1944-2022), was hosted at the Centre in Trinity (Summer) Term 1987, bringing the Vietnam War (1955-75) and the post-May 1970 US invasion of Cambodia vividly to life with his remarkable images. Inspiration for the drug-crazed photojournalist immortalized by Dennis Hopper in Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning “Apocalypse Now” (1979), Page’s language was as raw as his photography. Even the former journalist and current President of East Timor, José Ramos Horta (in office, 2007-12, 2022-present), then in residence as a Senior Associate Member (SAM) of St Antony’s,24 a man used to expressing himself in unvarnished expletives, declared his amazement that such language could be used in the hallowed halls of Oxford!
22Horta’s presence was another side effect of my Directorship. I had first heard him speak on the East Timor issue to a thin crowd of students in New College in late 1984 at a talk organized by Professor Michael Dummett (1925-2011), then Wykeham Professor of Logic (1979-1992) and a doughty human rights defender. I thought that bringing Horta to Oxford for a term (Trinity 1987) as a SAM at St. Antony’s would help raise the Timor issue both within the University and more widely. In this I was greatly assisted by the then Warden, Sir Raymond Carr (1919-2015; in post 1968-87), one of Britain’s leading authorities on Iberian history, and Arthur Stockwin, who had known Horta in Canberra. The future East Timorese head of state’s presence in St Antony’s allowed us to stage a major international seminar on the former Portuguese colony, with Horta presenting on, “East Timor: Third World Colonialism and International Hypocrisy” (13 May 1987). This talk incensed the Indonesian Embassy in London, who had prevailed on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) to send the Head of the FCO’s Southeast Asian Department, Christian Adams (1939-1996; in office, 1986-88), to speak on their behalf. The impact of these Oxford events related to East Timor have been described by the present writer in a separate article.25
23Elsewhere, contacts were made with the Malaysian Government through the Director-general of the Ministry of Tourism, Dato’ Hamzah bin Abdul Majid, a former career diplomat, whom I had met at an Oxford Analytica Global Horizons Conference in September 1984. We immediately struck up a rapport. As our correspondence developed, he asked me to do something quite extraordinary—organize a one-day visit to Oxford for the Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad (born 1925; in office, 1981-2003; 2018-20), in March 1985. Planned as part of his “hatchet burying” initiative with the British Government following his “Buy British Last” campaign (1981-1983),26 this was a golden opportunity to raise the profile of Southeast Asia in the wider University and explore the possibility of establishing a specific academic link with Malaysia in terms of a graduate student scholarship scheme.
- 27 Badd, “Buy British Last: Malaysia’s Boycott Campaign that Once Crippled the British Economy,” avail (...)
- 28 Founded in Doha, Qatar, on 1 November 1996 by Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifah Al Thāni, the former Emir o (...)
24Mahathir came to Oxford with his wife and five cabinet ministers, to deliver a lecture on Malaysia in the Old Library at All Souls and to be entertained to a private lunch in Trinity. His theme was “decolonizing” Asia’s relations with the West, in particular the Anglo-Malaysian relationship, where, he argued, that Britain still looked down on Malaysia as a country not fully independent. Forcefully rejecting the Western notion of moral superiority and the idea that Westerners were the saviours of the human race, the Malaysian prime minister depicted such attitudes as a throw over from colonial days.27 One aspect of his lecture which still resonates with me nearly forty years later was Mahathir’s assertion that the reporting of world news was deeply distorted in the mass media. This was because over 90 percent of the wire services (Agence France-Presse, AP Dow Jones, Reuters etc) and news sources were then in the hands of Western media outlets. Although this was the age before the Doha-headquartered cable TV news network Al Jazeera (1996), even now (2022) well over two thirds are still dominated by Western-owned news providers.28
25The All Souls’ event was to have been hosted by the Vice-Warden, Denis Mack Smith (1920-2017), the leading British historian of modern Italy and a Research Fellow at the College (1962-1987). The Warden, Sir Patrick Neill QC (1926-2016; post-1997, Baron Neill of Bladen; in post 1977-1995), had initially declared that he would be unavailable. But, mirabile dictu, no sooner did news reach him that his College would be playing host to the stormy petrel Malaysian prime minister and five of his cabinet, than he changed his tune—he would host the Old Library lecture in person, not his genial deputy. Since Sir Patrick would go on to play a less than stellar role in determining the fate of Southeast Asian Studies in Oxford, it is a pity that his March 1985 encounter with Dr Mahathir, leader of a country which had contributed over half the US dollar earnings to the sterling area in 1951-1952, 29the penultimate year of the Korean Civil War (1950-1953), did not impress him more deeply. At the very least, it should have brought home to him the importance of the region—Malaysia in particular—to the UK economy and the future development of area studies in his own University.
- 30 “Sir Leslie Glass, Obituary”, The Times, 21 December 1988.
26The Trinity lunch, meanwhile, was a triumph of improvisation. Hosted by our sole honorary fellow with Southeast Asian interests, the former ICS/BFS (Indian Civil Service / Burma Frontier Service) colonial officer, Sir Leslie Glass (1911-1988),30 we all crammed into the Old Bursary, an elegant 18th-century oak-panelled dining room looking out onto the walled Fellows’ garden where the Malaysian Prime Minister’s party had been initially received. An experienced diplomat and close family friend from my father’s pre-war days in Burma (1931-1942), Sir Leslie rose to the challenge setting everyone at their ease with a humorous welcoming speech. Our lunch even made it into the Court Circular of The Times, Sir Leslie being deemed to have acted as the diplomatic host on the Queen’s behalf to entertain a Commonwealth Head of State! This augured well for the future—an opportunity had opened for the University to take the development of its links with Southeast Asia further now that we had made our mark with the Malaysians. The next stage was to seek funding for a post in Southeast Asian Studies in the region.
- 31 See “Trustees of the NTICVA [Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum (...)
- 32 Williams 1984:258-78.
27As momentum built to gain traction for Southeast Asian studies in the wider University, an opportunity arose to project Oxford in the region. Shortly after Dr Mahathir’s Oxford visit, the Malaysian Government, through my friend, the Director-General of Tourism, Dato’ Hamzah, invited me to visit Kuala Lumpur in July 1985. At eight o’clock on my first morning in the Malaysian capital, he had arranged a meeting with the Minister of Education, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (in post, 1984-1986) to discuss how academic links between Malaysia and Oxford could be deepened. I had in mind a Southeast Asian “Rhodes Scholarship” scheme, along the lines of a roughly similar scheme for South and Southeast Asian students established by Dr Anil Seal in Cambridge.31 The Minister listened politely, but seemed more interested in exploring how the “full cost” overseas student fees, which had been introduced by Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government in the autumn of 1980, might be further reduced following the 1983 review. 32He was also interested in getting more Malaysian students in British universities, Oxbridge in particular. Still jet-lagged and disoriented from my long journey from London, I doubt I made a very deep impression on the Malaysian Education Minister, a true Malay gentleman. I certainly could not draw on the wide contacts in the region enjoyed by Anil Seal and his fellow historians of British India—many of them students of the legendary Eric Stokes (1924-81, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History, 1970-81)—in Cambridge. But at least I was determined to give it my best try.
28After visiting a number of Malaysian universities, colleges and government institutions with Arthur Stockwin to introduce the idea of a Southeast Asian Rhodes scholarship scheme, I decided to extend my tour to two other Southeast Asian countries, namely Brunei and the Philippines. I had a number of contacts in both places. These included the Brunei Education Minister, HE Pehin Dato (Dr) Haji Abdul Aziz (in post, 1984-86), whom I had met in Oxford in the late 1970s, when he was visiting Queen Elizabeth House (QEH), and who confessed that he had been hugely inspired by President Sukarno’s fiery speeches on the radio during the Ganyang Malaysia (Crush Malaysia) campaign—better known as Konfrontasi (Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, 1963-66)—until he realized that this campaign, if successful, would likely topple the Brunei sultanate and spell the end of his own political career! Meanwhile, in the Philippines, my host was the futur chairman of the National Historical Institute of the Philippines (in office, 1986-96), Dr Serafin D. Quiason Jr. (1930-2016), a Marcos appointee, who would end up encouraging one of the Philippine dictator’s close family to apply to Trinity. I had been introduced to Dr Serafin by Dr John Villiers (1936-2020), the last Director of the British Institute in Southeast Asia (in post, 1979-85), who accompanied me on my regional tour.
- 33 “Profile: Thailand’s new Eton educated prime minister,” The Telegraph, 18 January 2010, accessible (...)
29In retrospect, Brunei and the Philippines were an odd choice of countries to visit. It might have been better to start with Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. But we reckoned that Singaporean students were already well provided for in terms of Government scholarships to Oxford and Indonesia was problematic because of its lacklustre education system and my growing commitment to East Timor. As for Thailand, we lacked good Oxford contacts despite the kingdom’s long association with Oxford going back to King Vajiravudh of Siam (r. 1910-1925; Christchurch, 1899). These contacts would soon be renewed, even as we were making our Southeast Asian tour, through the presence of the Newcastle-born Abhisit Vejjajiva (born 1964), a future Thai prime minister (in post, 2008-2011), who read PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at St. Johns (1985-88).33
- 34 He would later endow OCIS with the Sultan of Brunei International Prize (1992) recognising academic (...)
- 35 Ocampo 1990; expanded second edition 1999. Ocampo’s biography is based on his historical essays in (...)
30The oil-rich Brunei Sultanate with the fourth largest per capita income in the world and its fabulously wealthy ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (r. 1967 to present), were not amenable to our proposals. They were far more interested in supporting the newly established Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) (1985 to present) than the wider University.34 The closest I got to the Sultan was the antechamber of his istana (palace) where the swifts glided effortlessly through the honey-coloured proscenium arches. Later, in the Philippines we received a typically warm Filipino reception and met with a number of Southeast Asian scholars and historians—amongst them José Rizal’s (1861-1896) brilliant biographer, Dr Ambeth R. Ocampo.35 But our idea of establishing a Southeast Asian Rhodes scholarship scheme met with a less than enthusiastic response. “Why should I go to Oxford to meet with other Southeast Asians? I want to interact with Western scholars and students! Why, we Filipinos don’t even feel Southeast Asian! We are much more part of Latin America! Remember the saying—300 years in Sunday school [under the Spanish] and 50 years in Hollywood [under the Americans]!”
31Apart from professions of friendship and respect, all we would end up with at the end of our July 1985 visit to Manila would be a couple of Filipino students who applied to read history at Trinity, the first as an undergraduate,36 and the other for a two-year graduate degree (MLitt). This latter was Philip G. Romualdez (born 1961), Mrs Marcos’s nephew, whom Serafin had steered in my direction earlier. Unlike his first cousin, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos Jr (born 1957), the current President of the Philippines (in office 2022-present),37 who had read PPE at St Edmund Hall (1975-1978) and flunked his final exams, ending up with a face-saving “special diploma in social studies”,38 Philip would go on to complete a well-researched MLitt thesis on his native Leyte-Samar region during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902). One of his examiners, Colin Newbury, even suggested that it might be developed into a doctorate. Despite these modest beginnings, my links with the Philippines continued to develop in the aftermath of my initial visit, helped in part by the fact that my brother-in-law, Keith MacInnes, became British Ambassador in Manila (1987-1992), and my first doctoral student, James Putzel (enrolled, 1984-1987), was writing his thesis on land-reform in the Philippines, which would result in a well-regarded book.39
- 40 Stanley Ho was the only licensee (up to 2002) for the island’s numerous casinos through his Tourism (...)
32An opportunity then arose in my last year as Asian Studies Centre Director (1985-88) for the University to secure funding for a permanent post in Southeast Asian Studies. The potential donor was Stanley Ho (1921-2020), a Hong Kong-Macau billionaire businessman, who had a near monopoly of Macau’s gambling industry.40 He was prepared to establish a chair at Oxford in his name with an initial brief to study the overseas (Nanyang) Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. This, my ASC colleagues and myself reckoned, was a skillful entry point for understanding the economic history of the entire region and one which avoided pivoting the post on a single Southeast Asian country.
- 41 Turnbull 1972, 1977, 2009.
33The link with Ho came through Professor Mary Turnbull (1927-2008), one of only two females ever to have served in the Malayan Civil Service (MCS, in post 1952-1955) and author of two acclaimed standard histories of Singapore and the Straits Settlements. 41In 1987-88, she was coming to the end of a distinguished career as an historian of Southeast Asia at the Universities of Malaya (1955-1971) and Hong Kong (1971-1988), and was serving as Head of HKU’s History Department. She put the University in touch with Stanley Ho through her businessman husband, Leonard Rayner (1926-1995), who worked for the Hong Kong-Macau billionaire. I was not a party to these negotiations. But it was clear that any permanent post in Southeast Asian Studies would be greatly to the benefit of both the Asian Studies Centre and St Antony’s, where the chair would most likely be attached.
34After due diligence had been done by the University Development Office, it was arranged that Sir Patrick Neill QC, then Vice-Chancellor (in post 1985-1988), would meet with Ho in Hong Kong on his Asian tour in late June 1988. A private luncheon was then organized by Ho’s team at the prestigious Hong Kong Jockey Club, at which some twenty to thirty of the billionaire’s close family and assistants would be present. A photo opportunity was scheduled at which Ho would present his cheque for the £1,500,000 sterling required to fund the post in perpetuity, and the Vice-Chancellor, suitably attired in academic regalia, would receive it. Smiles all around, cameras would click, recording the scene for posterity, and Stanley Ho’s munificence to Southeast Asian Studies at the colonial power’s ancient seat of learning would be the lead story on all Hong Kong’s TV channels and its journal of record, the South China Morning Post.
35That was the script. But nothing happened! Why? Maybe Neill was poorly briefed by his team in Hong Kong. Maybe, as an Edwardian gentleman—one of his obituaries speaks of him as a “Gladstonian figure”42—he deemed it impolite to speak of “work, women or money” in a public gathering. Maybe the University had bigger fish to fry in mainland China—Ho would later endow a chair in Chinese history at Pembroke College (2009),43 after having donated a similar £2,500,000 sterling sum for Chinese studies at Oxford (2006) and a University lectureship in Chinese history (2002).44 So the University would go on to have a good innings with the Macau “gambling king.” At the same time, in the aftermath of Sir Patrick’s ill-starred luncheon at the Jockey Club, a major benefaction would soon be secured for the University from another Hong Kong tycoon—the entertainment mogul and philanthropist, Sir Run Run Shaw (1907-2014). In 1993, he endowed the University’s professorship of Chinese in perpetuity through a £3 million sterling gift.45
36Who can fault the University? They had their own priorities. When compared to the newly emerging Asia-Pacific superpower what did the motley countries of Southeast Asia have to offer? But why traduce our efforts to raise the wind for Southeast Asian Studies in this fashion, especially one so free of national baggage given its Nanyang origins? Why indicate to a potential donor that the University wanted a chair of Southeast Asian Studies only to baulk at a semi-public event at the Jockey Club? Stanley Ho may have been temporarily perplexed at the Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s bizarre behaviour. But if he was, the confusion was temporary. A new beneficiary was speedily identified—within weeks Ho had given the money intended for Oxford to Hong Kong’s near neighbour, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, where its municipal university, Shenzhen University (SZU), received an unexpected windfall: an endowed post in Nanyang (overseas Chinese) studies!
37As the facilitators for this Southeast Asian fundraising initiative, both Mary Turnbull and her husband, Leonard Rayner, deserved an explanation from the University. So did I as the luckless go-between. Instead, there was silence. None of us received any official report from the Vice-Chancellor’s office following Sir Patrick’s return to Oxford in July 1988. For the bureaucrats at Wellington Square, the Hong Kong fiasco was water under the bridge. There was not even an attempt to encourage us to try again later, still less explore further, amongst the many contacts we had made in Malaysia and the Philippines on our 1985 tour. Trevor-Roper’s “retrograde provincial backwater,” namely the University’s Modern History Faculty and its Eurocentric concerns, now dictated the agenda.
38Given this situation I immediately informed Mary and Leonard that any further fundraising for Southeast Asian Studies at Oxford should be stood down. The region was simply not a priority for the University. Not only was there no collective memory, still less tradition, of such studies in Oxford, but more pressing concerns now loomed in East Asia. Over the course of just over three decades, starting with the establishment of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies in 1981, the University would see the foundation of the Shaw Centre for Chinese Studies (1993), the Oxford China Centre (2008; post-2014 in its own building in St Hugh’s College), the Taiwan Resource Centre for Chinese Studies (2012), and a new Korean Studies (M. Stud.) program. This formidable line up meant that East Asian Studies, along with the older established posts in South Asian history, now ruled the roost in Oriental Studies (post-1 August 2022, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies).46 Southeast Asia remained on the margins. Clio’s stepchild, there would be no place for Java at Oxford’s high table.
39After Leonard’s death in 1995, Mary Turnbull moved to Oxford (1999) and played an active part in our ASC seminars until her unexpected death from a ruptured aorta on 5 September 2008. Her presence and the bequest of her substantial personal library on Southeast Asia would later inspire the Oxford “Project Southeast Asia” initiative (2009-2018), which is discussed below. As for myself, I would put my energies into non-academic projects. These included the Cambodia Trust (1989-2014), a UK-based disability charity founded in Adderbury (Oxon) in November 1989. Initially established to address the plight of landmine victims in Cambodia following the end of the long-running civil war (1979-1991) between the Vietnamese-backed Phnom Penh government and the Khmer Rouge, it would end up running five separate prosthetic-and-orthotic (P&O) training schools and clinics throughout South and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma/Myanmar). One of these—the Jakarta School of Prosthetics & Orthotics (JSPO) (2009-present)—would provide me with the bridge back to Indonesia after I took early retirement from my tutorial fellowship in October 2008.47
40Other projects were the foundation of the Dharma School, the first full-time primary school in the UK based on the Buddhist faith in Brighton (1994-2020), where I acted as one of the inceptors and first directors,48 and the Sunyata Retreat Centre in County Clare in the West of Ireland, where half the funds to build a new Dhamma (meditation) Hall were provided by the Hong Kong tycoon, Eric Hotung (1926-2017), in the millennium year 2000.49 Both of these initiatives drew on my involvement with the Theravadin sangha (community of ordained Buddhist monks and nuns) in the UK, which dated back to 1986. As of the time of writing (September 2022), only the last, namely Sunyata, is still going strong. The Cambodia Trust ceased to exist in its original form in 2014 when it was relaunched as Exceed Worldwide,50 and the Dharma School closed its doors in July 2020 shortly after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
41In terms of my direct involvement with Southeast Asia in the two decades which followed the Hong Kong Jockey Club fiasco until my October 2008 early retirement, I continued to be closely involved with a number of different issues related to the region. These included Vietnam, where I helped organize in late December 198851 a discrete track-2 diplomacy meeting in Trinity between Henry Kissinger’s top adviser at the Paris Peace Accords (27 January 1973), Ambassador William Healy Sullivan (1922-2013), and the head of the Lao Dong (Vietnamese Communist Party) in the UK, His Excellency Trang van Hung (in post, 1986-1990),52 who also served as the Vietnamese Ambassador. The initiative had originated through a close Oxford friend, Louise Vidaud de Plaud (circa 1905-2007),53 who had good contacts with the Vietnamese Embassy in London and with the reforming Vietnamese Foreign Minister, Nguyen Co Thach (1921-98; in post 1980-1991). Thach had been Sullivan’s former North Vietnamese negotiating partner, and the aim of the Trinity meeting was to explore ways in which US-Vietnam relations could be normalized. It had a positive outcome—following Sullivan’s initial discussions with the Vietnamese Ambassador in Trinity, he would go on to visit Vietnam (May 1989), meet with Thach and establish the US-Vietnam Trade Council.54 This continued to work on steps towards historic normalization, a goal achieved six years later on 11 July 1995 during President Bill Clinton’s first administration (1993-1996).
- 55 Carey 2021: 13, the genocide displaced 750,000 Rohingya, three-quarters of the Burmese Muslim popul (...)
- 56 Carey (ed.) 1997.
42I was also active on Burma, where I helped my ASC colleague, Michael Aris, to support his wife, Daw Suu’s, long-running struggle for democracy in a country dominated by the military since the early 1960s. Daw Suu was then under house arrest (July 1989-10 July 1995) and would spend a total of 15 of the 21 years between 1989 and 2010 in residential detention. Although fatally compromised by her subsequent support for the Tatmadaw (Burmese Army’s) genocide against the Rohingya (Burmese Muslim) population in Rakhine State (Arakan) in 2018,55 the Burma democracy campaign in the 1990s generated great hope. Following the award of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize to Daw Suu, I helped to organize a one-day conference on Burma in St Antony’s to celebrate her achievement. This happened in late 1992 and the proceedings were subsequently published in a volume in the St Antony’s-Macmillan monograph series under the title Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society (1997).56
- 57 “Aung San Suu Kyi defends Myanmar from accusations of genocide at top UN court,” UN News, 11 Decemb (...)
- 58 This had seen Daw Suu’s National League for Democracy (NLD) briefly in power (2015-2021).
43Throughout this decade, when I worked with Michael up to his tragically early death from prostate cancer on 26 March 1999, Burma and Daw Suu would become an international cause célèbre. Looking forward from the vantage point of the new millennium, I had no inkling of the tragedy which would unfold just twenty years later following Daw Suu’s appearance before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 11 December 2019 to defend her country from accusations of genocide.57 The subsequent military coup of 1 February 2021, Daw Suu’s rearrest and the outbreak of a civil war have undone nearly all the achievements of the period of democratic transition from 2012 to 2021.58 Today, Daw Suu is widely seen as one of history’s losers. But few could have predicted that outcome in the 1990s.
- 59 Cox and Carey 1995:51, citing the Portuguese solidarity group A Paz é Possivel em Timor Leste, whic (...)
- 60 The international impact of the massacre is detailed in the book by the British freelance photojour (...)
44Meanwhile, East Timor and its struggle for self-determination also ranked high on my agenda. This was especially the case after the 12 November 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, which saw at least 250 pro-independence demonstrators done to death by the Indonesian military in the Santa Cruz cemetery in the East Timor capital, Díli, and in subsequent killings. 59The fact that these massacres were witnessed by Western reporters and widely reported in the international
press meant that East Timor was now far better known in the West.60 This was also the case in Oxford, where, what had once been an unknown conflict, became considerably more prominent.
- 61 Carey and Carter Bentley (eds.) 1995.
- 62 We invested this block grant with Scottish Widows and drew on the five percent annual income.
- 63 Abinales 1996:776.
45On 15 December 1990, I was involved with other East Timor specialists in organising a one-day conference on East Timor co-hosted by the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony’s and the Refugee Studies programme at Queen Elizabeth House (QEH). This was the first major meeting on East Timor in Oxford and the proceedings were subsequently published.61 Some of the funding came from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), courtesy of the former British ambassador to the Philippines (1985-87) and China (1991-94), Sir Robin Mclaren (1934-2010), who had arranged for the ASC to receive a £10,000 block grant to support Southeast Asian seminars.62 Although it had never been the intention of the FCO mandarins to support anything as radical as a conference on East Timor, the grant gave us independence. As a Filipino reviewer, Patrício (“Jojo”) Abinales, put it in the prestigious US journal, Journal of Asian Studies, “in a period where many scholars are uncritically attached to the spectacular growth of Southeast Asian capitalism, or are immersed in the depoliticizing world of post-modernism, or have simply remained quiet because they fear loss of research access, it is encouraging to see scholars who openly support the East Timorese struggle for self-determination and criticize one of Southeast Asia’s [last] remaining despotic regimes.”63
- 64 “Oxford dons call for peace in East Timor,” The Independent, 27 January 1997, available at: https:/ (...)
46Following this one-day conference support for East Timor grew in the University. Through extensive networking –I lobbied nearly every academic in the Humanities listed in the University’s list of members of Congregation (nearly 1,000 of the 5,500 names listed)—an Oxford academics’ statement on East Timor was eventually published in The Independent (27 January 1997). It called for an immediate moratorium on all further British arms sales to Indonesia and was signed by more than 40 Oxford academics and heads of colleges.64 Far away in his prison in Cipinang, Jakarta, the East Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmão, personally signed a thank-you card listing all these signatories by name. As the only major university to nail its flag to the mast in this fashion, the Oxford appeal had a worldwide impact and was a big morale boost in East Timor.
47In the event that a chair of Southeast Asian Studies had been created in 1988, all these activities could have been put to the credit of the University, thus developing a higher profile for Southeast Asia within the wider academic community. But, through a decision-making process known only to the Vice-Chancellor and his minions, a golden opportunity had been lost. In the twenty years I remained in Oxford (1988-2008), there was never another chance to secure such a permanently funded post.
48The consequences of this missed opportunity were evident when my colleague John Darwin proposed that we co-host a Global History seminar in Trinity starting in Trinity (Summer) Term (May-June) 1997. We had a stellar “steering committee”, which included Mark Elvin (China), David Washbrook (India), the aforementioned Richard Drayton (science and technology) and post-2002, the brilliant but short-lived Africanist, Jan-Georg Deutsch, whom, as we have seen, would later play such a crucial role in launching the new Imperial and Global History paper in 2010. We were even joined by one of the University’s leading medieval historians, Patrick Wormald (1947-2004), a specialist on Anglo-Saxon and early medieval England, who was just then putting the finishing touches to his magnum opus, The Making of English Law (1999).65
- 66 For a reference to this short-lived Global History Seminar (1997-98), see Drayton and Motadel 2018: (...)
49Wormald’s interest in what we were about in terms of trying to orbit global history in a still staunchly Eurocentric history faculty, underscored the fact that the international dimensions of the history of the British Isles and its European hinterlands (the Anglo-Norman and Angevin empires in France) was better understood by our medievalist colleagues than those working on the modern (post-1500) period. I still recall here Henry Mayr-Harting’s critical support in the History Faculty in 1981-1982, when I was applying to get the new “Maritime Southeast Asia, 1830-1973” option accepted, and the key role played by Chris Wickham in establishing the Oxford Centre for Global History in 2011. Unfortunately, our steering committee’s stellar line up was not enough to guarantee us a student audience. After the initial enthusiasm generated by our Trinity (Summer) Term 1997 launch, numbers steadily dwindled until we had more members of our steering committee attending than students. This soon became an embarrassment, especially when we had world-class scholars, like the Dutch economic historian, Jan de Vries (born 1943), as paper givers. The embarrassment of having such a scholar come all the way to Oxford from Berkeley (California) and face an almost empty meeting room became too much. After just a few short terms, we abandoned the seminar.66
50In the early years of the new millennium, I concentrated on supporting newly independent (post-2002) East Timor, travelling there with my family in October 2003 and spending my sabbatical year (2003-2004) in the capital Díli where I stayed with José Ramos-Horta’s relatives in their family compound in Balide. During this year, I took the lead in setting up the new Cambodia Trust-run Centre for Physical Rehabilitation in Becora, founding a local charity, the Association for the Empowerment of the Disabled of Timor (Associação Hi’it Ema Raes Timor), to act as the local Timorese counterpart. Funded by Leprosy Mission International and the Christian Blind Mission (CBM), a leading German NGO, the Centre was opened by the then prime minister, Marí Alkatiri (in office, 2002-2006). and the First Lady of Timor, Kirsty Sword-Gusmão, formerly a visiting researcher at Oxford’s Refugee Studies’ Centre (1989-1990), in April 2005. This soon became the key referral point for those with severe physical disabilities. Princess Anne, in her capacity as President (post-2017, Patron) of the Save the Children Fund UK, and her husband, Commander (post-2007, Vice-Admiral) Timothy Laurence, included it in their official tour of East Timor in September 2005.
51East Timor was a physically beautiful place to live—the sea, beaches and mountains were all within easy reach. I found it a big wrench to return to Oxford again. Everything seemed insipid and colourless—humdrum even—after East Timor. The following academic year (2004-2005), I spent every vacation in East Timor trying to keep in touch with the project, attending the official opening in April 2005, and witnessing the early beginnings of the rehabilitation programme as well as the preparations for Princess Anne’s official visit. These were all deeply satisfying developments. In early January 2006, on my return from East Timor, as my mother lay dying at our family home in Surrey, I was awarded the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator by the Portuguese Government, the highest civilian honour for a foreign national, for my work in East Timor. I had a deep feeling of satisfaction—a job well done.
- 67 The Sasakawa Foundation, officially known as the Nippon Foundation, was established in 1962 by susp (...)
52In late 2006, the Cambodia Trust contacted me to ask whether I might be interested in going out to Indonesia. The post offered to me was that of Project Director of the new Sasakawa-funded Indonesia programme to establish a School of Prosthetics & Orthotics in Jakarta. “First in, last out” the CEO of Cambodia Trust told me, indicating that the job would be a long-term commitment—perhaps ten years, the usual life of a Sasakawa-funded project.67 I suppose I could have played safe and said yes, I would take the job but only for a year and after that I would return to my Fellowship at Trinity. This is what I had done in 2003-2004 when I had suspended my Fellowship, taken a year’s leave of absence without pay, and then returned to my teaching duties at Trinity. This would be hedging my bets, but hardly in the spirit of adventure which I had first envisaged. No, I thought, if I went to Indonesia it must be for longer than a year. What could I achieve in a year, especially working with a government partner as slippery and difficult as the Indonesian Ministry of Health? Surely it would be at least two years before the Cambodia Trust could get something effectively established in Jakarta? But then if I went for two years would not that be short-changing Trinity? In the two years I was away, my history undergraduates would be taught by a short-term replacement. At best, this would be a young part-time lecturer or a newly minted doctoral student. This was hardly a recipe for continuity and quality of tutorial teaching. So, I decided that if I did go to Indonesia it would be all or nothing. I would make a clean break and resign my Fellowship.
- 68 After graduating in June 1969 with a First Class Honours in history, I spent a year at Cornell Univ (...)
53This I did in November 2007 with effect from the following October, by which time I had precisely one taker signed for my “Maritime Southeast Asia, 1830-1973” optional subject in the Hilary (Easter) Term of my final academic year (2007-2008). It seemed the time was right for me to move on after having been—man and boy—forty-two years in Oxford since coming up to Trinity as a callow History undergraduate in 1966.68
54Looking back from the vantage point of 2022—now as a permanent resident of Indonesia fourteen years on from my early retirement (1 October 2008)—it is difficult to judge whether this Southeast Asian region, which is home to more than half a billion people collectively living in eleven nation states with some of the most diverse populations on earth, including over 300 million Muslims, will ever enter the lists as an established field of study in the UK’s oldest university. During my nearly thirty years’ “before the mast” as an Oxford don, I certainly gave the project for an Oxford Centre for Southeast Asian Studies my best shot. In this period, the University was presented with a host of opportunities for fundraising in the region through contacts with high-worth individuals. But a combination of indifference on the part of the University authorities, lack of collective memory, and the inability of the region’s largest country, Indonesia (2022 population 280 million) to project itself internationally, all meant that getting traction for posts in Southeast Asian Studies proved problematic. The situation remains largely unchanged to this day.
55There is also another problem, namely that unlike other regions such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, North America and East Asia, which have widely shared lingua franca such as Spanish (Portuguese for Brazil), Russian, English and Chinese (Mandarin), Southeast Asia shares no such linguistic unity. True, Malay/Indonesian is in the world’s dozen top languages in terms of speakers—over 300 million worldwide—but it is not an international language. Outside Maritime Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Timor-Leste) and a few outliers like Surinam and New Caledonia, it is not a language which is taught or spoken globally. In Mainland Southeast Asia (Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam), for example, there is no support for Indonesian/Malay as the lingua franca for the main regional grouping, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). Instead, the Association continues to rely on English.
56This means that raising money for Southeast Asia as a whole is tricky. Most potential funders in the region will want to prioritise their own national interests. This can be seen in the experience of Oxford’s rival, Cambridge, where the University’s Malaysian Studies Centre (post-1995, Malaysian Commonwealth Studies Centre),69 and the Cambridge Thai Foundation (CTF, 1990),70 both founded in part by the aforementioned Dr Anil Seal, Director of the Cambridge Overseas Trust (COT), drew on substantial backing from Malaysia and Thailand respectively. Regional donors have understandably focused their support on ensuring that their own nationals are prioritized when it comes to scholarships and fixed term research posts in Cambridge. This means that the only meaningful avenue for regional funding for a Southeast Asian post in Oxford is likely to come from an overseas (Nanyang) Chinese funder, which is why the University’s failure to secure the Stanley Ho endowment in 1988 was such a missed opportunity.
- 71 Namely, College-University Fund (CUF) and University Lecturers (UL), see above footnote 1.
- 72 See, in particular, Huff 2020, which won the biennial Lindert-Williamson Prize from the Economic Hi (...)
57In the absence of permanent posts, the default setting for Southeast Asian Studies at Oxford is what might be called “birds of passage,” namely, academics with Southeast Asian interests who hold permanent University posts,71 but are required to teach subjects which have nothing to do with their research specialty and on whose departure no Southeast Asian institutional legacy remains. During my nearly three decades teaching at Oxford, I fell into that category. I was employed as a CUF lecturer and College tutor to teach a whole range of undergraduate history subjects—Plato to NATO—none of which were specifically linked to Southeast Asia. When I took early retirement in 2008, I was replaced by an historian whose specialty was North African (Algerian) history not Southeast Asia. The same holds for Professor Gregg Huff, who moved from Glasgow to Oxford to take up a Senior Research Fellowship in Economic History at Pembroke College in October 2008. During his time at Oxford he has enriched Southeast Asian historiography with a series of impressive publications on the economic development of post-1870 Southeast Asia, culminating in his benchmark World War II and Southeast Asia: Economy and Society under the Japanese Occupation.72 But his post is not specifically linked to Southeast Asia, so he will not necessarily be replaced by a Southeast Asianist when he retires.
58Besides these University positions, which happen to be filled fortuitously by Southeast Asian specialists, there are also a number of other short-term posts which have brought young Southeast Asian scholars to Oxford. The case of Dr Kevin Fogg, Al-Bukhari Fellow in the history of Islam in Southeast Asia (2012-18) at OCIS, has already been mentioned. Shortly after Fogg took up his appointment, two new fixed-term research posts in Burmese Studies were created in the name of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (DASSK). These were a Junior Research Fellow (JRF) in gender studies at Lady Margaret Hall and a Senior Research Fellowship in Modern Burmese Studies at St Antony’s. Filled by Dr Ma Khin Mar Mar Kyi (in post 2014-2016; now Gender Research Fellow in Burmese Studies, Oxford, 2016-present),73 a social anthropologist, gender specialist and filmmaker, and Dr Matthew Walton (in post 2013-18), a specialist on the religion and politics of Southeast Asia, particularly Buddhism in contemporary Myanmar/Burma, they became the inaugural DASSK Junior Research and Senior Research Fellows respectively. Together they made an impact on the teaching of Southeast Asia in the University, Walton coordinating the Southeast Asian seminar at St Antony’s, establishing the Oxford-Myanmar blog Tea Circle, and producing a monograph on Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar (CUP 2016).74
59Unfortunately, Burma’s ongoing political turmoil, turbo-charged by the 1 February 2021 military coup and Daw Suu’s implication in the September 2018 Rohingya genocide, compromised their position as DASSK Fellows. Who, after all, would want to hold a post named after a suspected génocidaire? In July 2018, the funding for Walton’s Senior Research Fellowship came to an end and he moved to the University of Toronto where he is currently Assistant Professor in Comparative Political Theory.75 Meanwhile, the DASSK rubric of Dr Khin Mar Mar Kyi’s post, now attached to the International Gender Studies Centre at Lady Margaret Hall,76 has been quietly dropped. With the collapse of the short-lived experiment in democracy, the ongoing civil war and the deepening contestation between the Burmese army (Tatmadaw) and the ethnic militias, Burmese studies have lost their sheen. The fate of Daw Suu’s former economic adviser, the Australian economist, Dr Sean Turnell (born 1964), detained in Insein Prison in Yangon for 21 months (6 February 2021-17 November 2022) and initially sentenced to three years imprisonment for violating the Official Secrets Act (29 September 2022) before being released, underscores the dangers for academics of conducting research in, or even visiting, Burma at this time of Tatmadaw terror.
60Another initiative taken independently by Oxford academics in this selfsame period, 2012-2018, when Burmese Studies were being given renewed support in Oxford, was Oxford Project Southeast Asia. Established as an independent educational charity, it was founded in 2009 to raise funds for the establishment of a world-class Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at the University.77 Spearheaded by two Singaporean graduate students—historian, Dr Pingtjin (PJ) Thum, and medic, Dr Xin Hui Chan (until March 2014), it was also supported by two Oxford academics with strong interests in Southeast Asia, Dr Philip Kreager, a demographer,78 and Jeffery (Jeff) Burley (1936-2021), a forester who had served as Vice-Warden of Green (post-2008, Green-Templeton) College.79 Meanwhile, the present writer and Dr Gerry Bodeker,80 a public health researcher and academic specializing in lifespan wellness and integrative healthcare, based in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur respectively, provided support from the region. The former Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir David Weatherall (1933-2018; in post 1992-2000), agreed to be our patron. He had strong Southeast Asian interests having been the first to identify and research thalassaemia, a group of inherited blood conditions which affects 1-2 percent of the world’s population, amongst those of Asian ethnicity during his period of national service in Singapore in 1958-1960.81 It was a strong team.
- 82 The Symposia were held between 2012 and 2018 in St Antony’s (March 2012), St Anne’s (March 2013), K (...)
- 83 In early 1987, I received a Leverhulme travel grant to visit three European countries—the Netherlan (...)
61Over time, we began to develop a profile both within the University and internationally for our annual Southeast Asian Studies Symposia, which attracted participants from all over the world. Starting modestly in 2012, with a 30-strong mini-symposium in St Antony’s, we developed into one of the largest annual gatherings of Southeast Asianists in the world. By 2016, the annual meeting, which was held in the University’s Mathematical Institute, featured over 200 papers in 80 sessions spread over three days. The following year, we were chosen jointly with the Asian Studies Centre (ASC), then under the able direction of Dr Matthew Walton, who did the lion’s share of the preparatory work with his ASC colleagues, to host the biennial European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS, founded 1992) in the Examination Schools.82 This was an organization which I had played a small role in helping to develop in the late 1980s.83 Once again, the University was being given a golden opportunity—and one which was offered entirely free of charge. Given the presence of Jeff Burley and Gerry Bodeker at Green-Templeton, one might have expected the then Warden, Sir David Watson (1949-2015; in post 2010-2015), to lend us a hand and allow the College to be cited more prominently in our literature, but he refused.
62Sir David’s refusal reflected the wider attitude of the University. During these six years (2012-2018), the University’s top brass tolerated what we were doing but held us at arm’s length. Then, early in 2018, they informed us that they wanted Oxford Project Southeast Asia stood down. Their reason was that they needed to take all fundraising initiatives relating to Southeast Asia into their own hands. Belatedly, they had woken up to the importance of the region and they now had their very own knight in shining armour to enter the lists to lead the charge as Southeast Asian fundraiser on their behalf. This was His Royal Highness Sultan Nazrin Shah of Perak (r. 2014-present). An Oxford graduate who had read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at Worcester College in 1976-1979, his outstanding generosity to the University had already been evidenced in his recent endowment of the £17 million Sultan Nazrin Shah Conference Centre at his own college.84 On 10 October 2018, flanked by the Vice-Chancellor, Louise Richardson (in post, 2016-2023), and the Head of the Division of Social Sciences, Professor Sarah Whitmore (in post, 2018-present), the Oxford Southeast Asian Studies Centre initiative was launched outside his recently completed Worcester Conference Centre, with the pledge that within two years “this ambitious thoughtfully-integrated knowledge enterprise will put Southeast Asia at its heart, benefitting both the citizens of the ASEAN countries and the people of the wider world.”85
- 86 A postgraduate college, Linacre was founded in 1962 and named after the early 16th-century humanist (...)
- 87 Camilla Turner, “Oxford college renaming in doubt after donation from ‘bikini’ airline tycoon fails (...)
63Four years on we still await the outcome of this “thoughtfully integrated knowledge enterprise,” although, unrelated to this fundraising initiative, the prospect of a major Southeast Asian originated donation was briefly in prospect for Oxford’s poorest college, Linacre, in 2022.86 This was the ₤155 million sterling (US$176.5) offered by Vietnam’s sole woman billionaire, Madame Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao (born 1970). This looked set to increase Linacre’s endowment eightfold and greatly enhance the flow of postgraduate scholars from Southeast Asia. But, given that the donation required Linacre to change its name to Thao College in honour of a donor who had begun her business career with a low-budget Vietjet airline involving bikini-clad flight attendants, Linacre’s feminist and green alumni, the majority of their college community, were not amused. As of the time of writing (8 October 2022), the first tranche of ₤50 million sterling (US$59 million), originally due on 30 June 2022, has still not been paid.87
64Meanwhile, Southeast Asian Studies at Oxford continue in the doldrums, repudiated stepchildren of Clio. Although the waters have long closed over my less than stellar career as an Oxford Southeast Asianist, I still imagine in my dreams being transported back to my former University on a magic carpet and having a present-day Professor Christopher Platt advertise yet another talk by a much younger self on “The British in Indonesia” and for us still to be fumbling with our gowns and waiting forlornly besides an empty door through which no student ever passes. Oh! Oxford! Home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs; unpopular names and impossible loyalties! Stet fortuna domus!
1 – Dr John Darwin, Beit Lecturer in Commonwealth History, Oxford (1984-2018), shortly after his arrival at Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1984. Photograph courtesy of Dr John Darwin.
2 – Front cover of Michio Takeyama, Harp of Burma (1946), Shinchosha edition, Tokyo, 1988. Photograph courtesy of Shinchosha Publishing Co, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
3 – Tim Page (1944-2022), British-Australian war photographer, famous for his coverage of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s in which was wounded four times. Photograph by Clare Clifford, Page's third wife (m. 1992). Image Eye Ubiquitous/Photoshop/Avalon. Photograph courtesy of Alamy Stock Fotos.
4 – Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad (in office, 1981-2003, 2018-20), image taken following his meeting with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow on 13 November 2018. From the website of the President of the Russian Federation and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
5 – José Ramos-Horta, currently President of Timor-Leste (May 2022-present),at the time of his appointment as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Guinea-Bissau and head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS ), 2 January 2013. Evan Schneider/UN Photo.
6 – Stanley Ho (1922-2020), the "gambling king" of Macao, and Oxford's potential donor for the endowment in perpetuity of a chair in Nanyang (Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia) Studies, a donation which was mishandled by the then Oxford Vice-Chancellor, Sir Patrick Neill QC (post-1997, Baron Neill of Bladen) (in office, 1985-1989), during his visit to Hong Kong in June 1988. Photograph by Tài Pí from his 2006 Flickr account licensed under Creative Commons.
7 – Constance Mary Turnbull (1927-2008), historian of Singapore and the Straits Settlements, during her induction into the Singapore Women's Hall of Fame on 1998. Photograph by Wi-Cin Liauw, courtesy of The Straits Times, 11 September 2008 (obituary notice).
8 – Sir Patrick Neill QC, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (1985-89). Photograph courtesy of Rex/Shutterstock.
9 – The Cambodia Trust clinic in Calmette Hospital, Phnom Penh, with prosthetist-orthotist Prum Sovann in the in the late 1990s. Sovann, who graduated as a Category II (BSc) prosthetist-orthotist in the first graduation of the CSPO (Cambodian School of Prosthetics & Orthotics) in March 1997, is still active as a senior prosthetist-orthotist in Cambodia. Photograph courtesy of The Cambodia Trust (post-2014, Exceed Worldwide).
10 – Louise Vidaud de Plaud (circa 1905-2007) visiting the nurses' crèche at the Children's Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (pre-1975 Saigon) in June 1980. Photograph Mike Goldwater courtesy of Alamy Stock Fotos.
11 – Ambassador William Healy Sullivan (1922-2013), who came to Trinity College, Oxford, in the last week of December 1988 to meet with the Vietnamese Ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Trang van Hung, to discuss ways forward for the normalization of US-Vietnam diplomatic relations. Photograph by William E. Sauro courtesy of The New York Times, 28 October 2013 (obituary notice).
12 – Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach (1921-98; in office, 1980-91), Ambassador Sullivan's counterpart in the negotiations which followed the December 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Photograph by Bert Verhoeff for ANEFO (Algemeen Nederlandsch Fotobureau). Image courtesy of the Dutch National Archives (Nationaal Archief), The Hague, Fotocollectie Nederlands Persbureau, 1945-1989, file number 2.24.01.05, order number 928-8800.
13 – East Timorese President Xanana Gusmão (in office, 2002-2007) and Peter Carey at a New Year's Eve Party at José Ramos-Horta's residence, 31 December 2003. Photograph Peter Carey.
14 – Peter Carey with his arm around former Falintil commander, Ma'huno Bulerek Karathayano (alias José António Gomes da Costa, 1949-2021; in post, 1992-93) at the inauguration of the renovation of the new Centre for Physical Rehabilitation in Becora, Díli in March 2004. Ma’huno had suffered a major stroke in November 1999 as a result of the prolonged torture he suffered at the hands of the Indonesians (1993-95). He was a strong supporter and patron of ASSERT (Associação Hi'it Ema Raes Timor, Association for the Raising up of the Disabled of East Timor). Our project contractor, Pak Frans (a Hakka Chinese born in Makassar), is at the rear. Photograph Peter Carey.
15 – Peter Carey with his wife, Lina Surjanti, at Tutuala at the extreme eastern point of East Timor in late 2003 or early 2004. Photograph Peter Carey.
1 – Dr John Darwin, Beit Lecturer in Commonwealth History, Oxford (1984-2018), shortly after his arrival at Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1984. Photograph courtesy of Dr John Darwin.
Plate 2 – Front cover of Michio Takeyama, Harp of Burma (1946), Shinchosha edition, Tokyo, 1988. Photograph courtesy of Shinchosha Publishing Co, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
Plate 3 – Tim Page (1944-2022), British-Australian war photographer, famous for his coverage of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s in which was wounded four times. Photograph by Clare Clifford, Page’s third wife (m. 1992). Image Eye Ubiquitous/Photoshop/Avalon. Photograph courtesy of Alamy Stock Fotos.
Plate 4 – Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad (in office, 1981-2003, 2018-20), image taken following his meeting with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow on 13 November 2018. From the website of the President of the Russian Federation and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
Plate 5 – José Ramos-Horta, currently President of Timor-Leste (May 2022-present),at the time of his appointment as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Guinea-Bissau and head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS ), 2 January 2013. Evan Schneider/UN Photo.
Plate 6 – Stanley Ho (1922-2020), the «gambling king» of Macao, and Oxford’s potential donor for the endowment in perpetuity of a chair in Nanyang (Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia) Studies, a donation which was mishandled by the then Oxford Vice-Chancellor, Sir Patrick Neill QC (post-1997, Baron Neill of Bladen) (in office, 1985-1989), during his visit to Hong Kong in June 1988. Photograph by Tài Pí from his 2006 Flickr account licensed under Creative Commons.
Plate 7 – Constance Mary Turnbull (1927-2008), historian of Singapore and the Straits Settlements, during her induction into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame on 1998. Photograph by Wi-Cin Liauw, courtesy of The Straits Times, 11 September 2008 (obituary notice).
Plate 8 – Sir Patrick Neill QC, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (1985-89). Photograph courtesy of Rex/Shutterstock.
Plate 9 – The Cambodia Trust clinic in Calmette Hospital, Phnom Penh, with prosthetist-orthotist Prum Sovann in the mid-1990s. Sovann, who graduated as a Category II (BSc) prosthetist-orthotist in the first graduation of the CSPO (Cambodian School of Prosthetics & Orthotics) in March 1997, is still active as a senior prosthetist-orthotist in Cambodia. Photograph courtesy of The Cambodia Trust (post-2014, Exceed Worldwide).
Plate 10 – Louise Vidaud de Plaud (circa 1905-2007) visiting the nurses’ crèche at the Children’s Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (pre-1975 Saigon) in June 1980. Photograph Mike Goldwater courtesy of Alamy Stock Fotos.
Plate 11 – Ambassador William Healy Sullivan (1922-2013), who came to Trinity College, Oxford, in the last week of December 1988 to meet with the Vietnamese Ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Trang van Hung, to discuss ways forward for the normalization of US-Vietnam diplomatic relations. Photograph by William E. Sauro courtesy of The New York Times, 28 October 2013 (obituary notice).
Plate 12 – Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach (1921-98; in office, 1980-91), Ambassador Sullivan’s counterpart in the negotiations which followed the December 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Photograph by Bert Verhoeff for ANEFO (Algemeen Nederlandsch Fotobureau). Image courtesy of the Dutch National Archives (Nationaal Archief), The Hague, Fotocollectie Nederlands Persbureau, 1945-1989, file number 2.24.01.05, order number 928-8800.
Plate 13 – East Timorese President Xanana Gusmão (in office, 2002-2007) and Peter Carey at a New Year’s Eve Party at José Ramos-Horta’s residence, 31 December 2003. Photograph Peter Carey.
Plate 14 – Peter Carey with his arm around former Falintil commander, Ma’huno Bulerek Karathayano (alias José António Gomes da Costa, 1949-2021; in post, 1992-93) at the inauguration of the renovation of the new Centre for Physical Rehabilitation in Becora, Díli in March 2004. Ma’huno had suffered a major stroke in November 1999 as a result of the prolonged torture he suffered at the hands of the Indonesians (1993-95). He was a strong supporter and patron of ASSERT (Associação Hi’it Ema Raes Timor, Association for the Raising up of the Disabled of East Timor). Our project contractor, Pak Frans (a Hakka Chinese born in Makassar), is at the rear. Photograph Peter Carey
Plate 15 – Peter Carey with his wife, Lina Surjanti, at Tutuala at the extreme eastern point of East Timor in late 2003 or early 2004. Photograph Peter Carey.