Historians & Their Discipline: The Call of Southeast Asian History

Reflections of a Pioneer

Reflections of a Pioneer By KEN TREGONNING Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson met me at the Tanjong Pagar wharf when I arrived in Singapore in mid-1953. I was on my way to North Borneo (with the ancient Straits Steamship Kajong already at anchor off Collyer Quay, preparing to sail that weekend). On return I was to join his small History Department at the new University of Malaya. It was there that we drove. My previous three years had been devoted to postgraduate research on Southeast Asia, particularly on Borneo, at Oxford and in London. As we passed through the run-down city with its crowded waterfront I enquired as to my teaching duties. I had expected that some aspect of Southeast Asia’s past would be my responsibility. Indeed I had assumed that my postgraduate experience was the reason I had been selected to come to Singapore in the first place. “Not at all”, Parkinson replied. All applicants had some Asian experience ; indeed several fought here. “You were selected not only because you had given some lectures in Adelaide but you were the only candidate with a Blue in rugby. So you have been assigned a First Year course in World History.” I gulped. My interest in Asia had been aroused by a 1942 sojourn north of Perth in Western Australia. Fresh out of school I crouched in sand hills and scrub, as one of an ill-trained, poorly equipped and badly led army antitank unit, waiting for the Japanese to follow up their bombing of Broome. Fortunately, they never came. They would have gone through us like a samurai sword through the neck of a POW. But the round-the-campfire discussions then about our Near North, of which we knew so little, made me want to know more. So, too, I thought, would Australia. Having somewhat to my surprise survived the war – my major contribution to that being the unfortunate crashing of a Wellington bomber in an unsuspecting English field – I took up my earlier ambition. I discovered that no course in Asian history was offered at any university in Australia. Indifference reigned supreme. The world history lectures I was charged with after my undergraduate years at Adelaide had been in essence devoted largely to Europe. Asia was given little more than a nod. Adroitly worded applications for various scholarships and fellowships enabled me, however, to develop my interest full-time in England. 151 Here again I was a loner. Oxford was at full stretch to find me a superviser who knew anything east of Bombay. To join a university in Asia, concentrating on Asia, was wonderful. But World History? “You are a pioneer”, said Parkinson, as we went inside the pre-war stone building of a Raffles College which had a few years before been General Yamashita’s headquarters. “You must emphasize to your students the past – hitherto neglected – of Asia in world history. Enjoy your trip to North Borneo and when you return we’ll discuss it further.” That Parkinson directive, followed by several further discussions before the Michaelmas Term began, channelled my already pro-Asian feelings into a controlled lecture programme. It was a salutary experience as early India, China, Islam and Southeast Asia itself pushed Greece, Rome and Western Europe away from their traditional pre-eminent role. At that time (and still today?) “Civilisation” meant of course western Christendom – for was there any other? Yet, as I began assembling my notes, in the nearby Orchard Road shop windows the pathetic personal effects of refugees who had fled from the new communist regime of China were being offered for sale. I recall handling an exquisite light green bowl of the Sung dynasty, 1000 years old. It was a piece of porcelain that to me was at the pinnacle of beauty and quality, epitomising a civilisation far superior to its contemporary in Europe. I could imagine a rough illiterate Norman knight crushing this beautiful eggshell with one squeeze of his mailed fist. How then could one ignore the serenity and harmony of this cultured dynasty – or the T’ang before it – in any world survey? To emphasise Europe, particularly in this Asian environment, merely perpetuated the arrogance and ignorance both of western academia as a whole, and many of the erstwhile colonial masters of this island. So I fell to work with a will. The lectures led to many friendships and two books – World History for Malayans (1957) becoming a senior school text book all over...