Historians & Their Discipline: The Call of Southeast Asian History

Chance and Circumstance: A Gradual Journey towards Asian Studies

Chance and Circumstance: A Gradual Journey towards Asian Studies By JOHN LEGGE The study of Asia in Australian schools and universities before the second World War was limited in scope and in focus. Vague fears existed of a threat from the north but these were, to some extent, contained by our trust in British sea power, and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902.There was some interest in commercial possibilities, illustrated in the mission of Sir John Latham, Deputy Prime Minister, to Southeast Asia, China and Japan in 1934 and, in the later 1930s, as Japan became increasingly important as a commercial customer, the Australian Institute of International Affairs, through its periodical the Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, drew attention to our need to be more aware of Asia and to engage with it. The Institute had already become actively associated with the Americanbased Institute of Pacific Relations, formed in 1925.1 There was also some academic interest. The University of Sydney had established a Department of Oriental Studies in 1918, which focused on the study of classical language, literature and philosophy rather than on the modern world. Melbourne offered a non-degree course in Japanese for a time after 1919. But for the most part history as taught in Australian universities concentrated overwhelmingly on Britain and Europe. Even Australian history had not yet made it to the mainstream, except in Sydney. World War II changed all that. Changed political balances after the defeat of Japan posed urgent problems of policy and created a need to understand a changed world. The rise of Southeast Asian nationalisms and the emergence of new independent nations posed new questions and stimulated new forms of modern Asian studies in America, Britain, Holland and other countries of western Europe. In due course Australian scholarship was caught up in that expansion.2 55 1 See J. D. Legge, Australian Outlook: A History of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, (1999 and 2005), Chapter 1 for account of changing Australian attitudes. 2 See J. D. Legge, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (1992), Chapter I, “The Writing of Southeast Asian History”. Also “A Survey of the Development of Southeast Asian Studies in Australia since 1945”, a paper presented to a Symposium on Southeast Asian Library resources, held at the National Library of Australia, 23-24 February 1973. The beginnings were modest and indeed had a certain amateur character about them. In 1944 a survey course in Far Eastern and Southeast Asian affairs was offered in what was then the Canberra University College, later to become the ANU. It was designed specifically to meet the needs of the first intake of diplomatic cadets recruited for subsequent admission to the Department of External affairs. It was followed by others of a similar kind in the University of Tasmania and the University of Western Australia. It was perhaps odd that these courses were taught by non-specialists in what might be seen as peripheral universities. However within a few years, general survey courses appeared in Far Eastern, Southeast Asian and Indian history and politics in almost all Australian universities, with pockets of research specialization . The federal Government’s establishment of Indonesian studies in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne heralded a more general emphasis on Indonesia, and the establishment a few years later of a Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University was a significant development . In due course I was to be drawn into this process, but not immediately . Though I later came to play some part in the development of Asian studies in Australia, it was a matter of chance and circumstance rather than deliberate choice which led me, fairly late in the piece, to the study of modern Indonesia in 1954. A famous ancestor, great-granduncle James Legge, had been first a missionary, then a Chinese scholar and translator of Chinese classical writings, and ultimately first Professor of Chinese at Oxford, and within the family there were some light-hearted remarks to the effect that I might one day follow in his footsteps. But my inclinations and interests in my undergraduate days at the University of Melbourne were otherwise. As a student in Max Crawford’s School of History I was drawn more towards British History, especially 17th century British history – Charles I, the Civil War and the Protectorate, and the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. This was the period in which, it seemed to me, the foundations were laid for later constitutional development and in which debates...