An IIAS Extraordinary Chair
Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia
Interview with Barend Jan Terwiel
Is it true what Americans say, that the first impression weighs as much as the sum of subsequent impressions? At least I would say that this was the case in my interview with Barend Jan Terwiel. The first handshake was warm and sincere, the entire meeting was sympathetic and open. I had e-mailed him three basic questions in advance: the interview would be about his past activities, his motivations, and his plans for the new Chair. As a well-prepared informant, he took the initiative by telling me the story of his academic life and about his plans, and his dreams. Playing the part of an ethnographer in the field, I listened and I wrote. Whenever he stopped talking, I simply waited and repeated his last sentence. Then he picked up his story again. The twenty-five supporting questions that I had prepared from reading his biography were nearly all anwered by the sequence of his story:
By ALFRED DANIELS
'I was returning from the Dutch mini-war in West New Guinea,' he started. 'I was a recruit and we were being evacuated in 1962. When they called our names to board the plane there were two young men with the name of Terwiel who stepped forward, but there was only one seat booked. I chose to wait for the next plane. It took us to Bangkok first and we waited there several days before we could fly home. So I looked around and I met this lovely student girl.When I left, she remained in my thoughts and occasionally I wrote her letters. I went to Utrecht to study and graduated in Cultural Anthropology. I specialized on Thailand by taking minors in the History of Buddhism and in the Pali language. Professor Robert van Gulik gave me a Thai language course: a book together with a collection of vinyl 78 records. I listened to them on an old gramophone. After graduation I won a scholarship to the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra and I was given the opportunity to do fieldwork in Thailand.
I met the girl again and I went to live in a village with her aunt (my Thai 'grandmother'). I could read the Buddhist scriptures in Pali and took up the role of a Buddhist monk: with shaven head and an orange robe. After six months I gave up the monk's life and I took on that of a peasant. For another six months I worked the land and continued my fieldwork before returning to Australia.
A year later I went back to Thailand for another four months of research. This time I worked with a research assistent to complete my data and to test my conclusions. In return, I taught him how to take photographs. He became a professional photographer. I remained in contact with the Thai girl throughout her life. She died about ten years ago.'
'Didn't you think about settling there permanently?' I asked him.
'It was not easy for a 'farang', a stranger, to live in Thailand. When the people knew that you spoke the language they would keep demanding your attention consistantly throughout the day. They would follow you everywhere and shouted questions at you even from a distance. No, I went back to Australia. I married an Australian there and eventually we had four children.
My first promotor at the ANU was Professor Barnes. He would allow your research to go its own way, with a minimum of steering. But then he left for Cambridge and the department was mainly populated by functionalists. I was interested in a different approach to religion. I think it pervades all aspects of life. Even aspects as 'rational' as economics have a religious aspect. Ritual and religion is what interested me most at the time, an interest that continues.
Basham, the famous historian of Indian sophy, then took me under his wing. He aroused a greater historical awareness in me.
After my PhD I went back to the Netherlands, as I had no job yet in Australia. It is not such a good country for intellectuals. The people are very practical and don't respect academic intellectuals very much. I found a job in Amsterdam as head of a training programme for volunteers in development projects at the Royal Tropical Institute. One day in the week I would teach Ethnology at Louvain in Belgium, to remain in contact with academic thinking.
In 1972 I was appointed to a lectureship at the ANU and I went back to Canberra. I worked very hard on my first book and it was published three months later: Monks and Magic. In the following years I taught the History of Mainland Southeast Asia, became a senior lecturer, a reader, and eventually associate professor there.
In the late 1970s I saw the collection of data on Thai culture and politics that had been collected by the US intelligence services during the Vietnam War. I nearly lost my interest in the Thai. They had collected about a hundred thousand entries in their archives. For a time I thought about quitting this topic and focusing on symbolism in man by studying the Aboriginals in Australia and about delving into comparative studies. Professor Basham talked me out of that plan and soon a different perspective opened up.
During a conference in Orissa in 1979, I met a Buddhist monk who came from a community in Assam, who did not speak a Tai language but claimed to be an ethnic Tai. For one month I walked with him through Assam from village to village to explore the ethnic Tai communities there.
In 1980 I was awarded a grant by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung to study the history of the dispersion of ethnic Tai over continental Southeast Asia. By comparing the rituals I could easily see the differences and similarities between these communities and the Tai in Thailand. They must have been separated 600-700 years ago. It turns out that substantial numbers of ethnic Tai live in Yunnan, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and Assam. I collected a vast amount of data on this topic and I focused on the dispersion of the Tai over Southeast Asia: their history, even their archaeological record. I work on this topic in close co-operation with a group of specialists on Chinese, Burmese, and Vietnamese.
Then I went to Munich in 1991 to become a Professor in Ethnology. My family remained in Australia and eventually the marriage broke up. By the end of 1992, I became a Professor in the Languages and Cultures of Thailand and Laos, at the Faculty of Oriental Studies in Hamburg. Thus my interest developed from religion to history to ethnology to literature, all on the region of continental Southeast Asia and on the Tai in particular.'
'I counted thirteen books and fifty-five articles in your biography. Do you write easily? How do you organize your writing?'
'I write with regularity: one or two hours every day, not less than two pages at a time. Of course, I spend more time pondering, puzzling, and searching.'
'For the next five years you have been appointed as Extraordinary Chair at IIAS, a 0.2 Professorate. How are you going to plan this?'
'In Hamburg everything continues as it is. So I plan to spend my time at Leiden in the German University vacations. Those in Germany only partly overlap with those in Holland. In February I shall be in Leiden the whole month. My Inaugural Lecture will be delivered on 15 February. In September-October I hope to be in Leiden again.
I have plans at three levels. First, an intensive course of preparations followed by an evaluation. Secondly to help relevant postgraduate students individually. And then I have the option of organizing a symposium once every two years.
The overall aim is to widen the horizon in Leiden drawing it away from its focus on Indonesia more towards continental Southeast Asia. There is a certain deficiency in knowledge on Thailand in this part of Europe because of the colonial past.
I shall begin my work by giving a course that should lead to a deepening of the understanding of how to treat primary sources. The topic of the first intensive course, from 28 January to 11 February is: The Economy of Thailand 1800-1850. For this topic we can use sources that were written in English or that have already been translated into English. By taking this step we shall make this course accessible to a wider audience.'
'What do you want the students to learn?'
'I want them to learn how to read scientifically. That is the strength of properly trained academical people. How to select information from a seemingly overwhelming amount of sources, and how to judge it. I want to teach people how to handle information in a sovereign way.'
When the interview was over, we walked to the railway station together. We strolled along taking long strides. He was wearing black jeans, a sportsjacket, and carried a small rucksack. We chatted casually and he completed some of the gaps in my information. He was going to stay with his brother that weekend. In Hamburg he found a new life companion, she is a German professor. Would he ever go on a fieldwork again? He says he hasn't thought about it. Would I join his course? Yes, I would like to. Would I send him the concept of this interview for review? That is a promise. *
Professor Barend Jan Terwiel
will hold the IIAS Special chair 'Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia' at the Universiteit Leiden between
1 September 1999 1 September 2002
Alfred Daniels is an anthropologist.
E-mail: culturalanthropology.org@planet.nl