CLARA
For more about the CLARA
Research Programme and its activities, please turn to p. 55 in this
issue's Pink Pages.
New TANAP Students Selected
& First
International Workshop
After
almost one year of tough language classes and browsing through
metres of VOC papers, the first group of eight Asian students
in history attending the Advanced Master's Class of the programme
'Towards A New Age of Partnership' (CNWS, Leiden) is writing their
final research proposals. Meanwhile, the TANAP Program Committee
has selected twelve new students: three from India, three from
Indonesia, two from South Africa, and one each from Sri Lanka,
Vietnam, Japan, and Taiwan. The tentative topics for the year
2002 look promising, and range from the maritime trade by Surat
and its hinterland Gujurat to political coalitions and local resistance
against foreigners in eighteenth-century South Maluku. TANAP is
taking off!
* By HENDRIK E. NIEMEIJER
Creating a new international research
platform of young talented researchers is not an easy task. It
requires intensive contacts with senior historians working at
history departments in universities all over Asia. It also demands
a thorough preparation of individuals in their own academic context.
Furthermore, it confronts one with the fact that academic levels
and degrees vary from place to place, and that a lack of access
to primary sources and libraries often hinders the most talented
students. And, lest we forget: who wants to study Asia in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? What sense does it make
to decide to devote one's life to that long forgotten and seemingly
unimportant past that lies 200 to 400 years behind us? Should
we not concentrate on present-day problems instead and get ourselves
a job?
Despite the complexity of finding the right people
with the right interest and the right academic level throughout
the present, so utterly fragmented, academic world of Asia, the
Program Committee has been able to select new enthusiastic students
to form the new group that will start with the Advanced Master's
Program in January 2002.
Undeniably in part the result of intensive consultations
and 'screening on the spot', the programme is also becoming increasingly
attractive in itself. The notion that present-day regional problems
and possibilities can not be separated from the past, whether
they be of a religious, ethnic, or economic nature is steadily
growing stronger among young intellectuals. And there is also
a growing awareness that the way that European powers encountered
and confronted Asia's rulers and peoples is of utmost relevance
to and helpful in building a thorough reflection on the present
West-East encounter.
An
age of partnership?
On 26 November, the students of the 2001 group received
their diplomas from the CNWS in Leiden. However, for a full evaluation
of the 2001 TANAP Advanced Master's Program with all students
and their supervisors, a workshop will be held in Singapore. This
first 'Asia in the Age of Partnership' workshop will be promoted
by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO),
the IIAS, and the National University of Singapore. Both professors
and students will present papers and discuss new research directions.
During a business meeting, the plans for the year 2002 will be
presented, in particular the contents of the next Advanced Master's
Program, the funding of the PhD Program (beginning in 2002) and
the funding of TANAP activities in Asia. The subtitle of this
first TANAP workshop is: 'Asian and Western Attitudes Towards
Maritime Trading and Settlement in Port Cities of Monsoon Asia
1600-1800'. The TANAP website, listed here below, hosts updated
information, including a detailed list of papers to be presented
at the first TANAP workshop. *
For more information concerning the TANAP programme and the workshop: http://www.tanap.net
For
the new brochure, please contact the TANAP coordinator, Hendrik
Niemeijer at the e-mail address noted below.
Dr
Hendrik Niemeijer is a historian affiliated to the Research
School for African, Asian, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), Leiden
University, the Netherlands and is the coordinator of the TANAP
Programme.
E-mail:
H.E.Niemeijer@let.leidenuniv.nl