NEW DIRECTIONS IN ASIAN STUDIES IN THE NETHERLANDS By F. Husken OLD AND NEW ASIA Hoping that I am not unjust and unfair to authors of early travel accounts on Asia like Willem Rubroek (Rubruquius) from Flanders, who travelled through Asia in the mid-13th century or Jan Huygen van Linschoten who presented his report of his Asian experiences in the closing years of the 16th century, when I introduce Fran‡ois Valentijn as the first representative of Asian Studies in The Netherlands. Two hundred and seventy years ago, in 1723, he submitted his manuscript of what was to become a five-volume edition entitled Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indi‰n, a book which enjoyed immediate popularity and which was printed in large quantities throughout the 18th century. In retrospect we might also call him one of the first scholars to have done some comparative work on Asian cultures and societies. His description of Asia ranged from Surat in West India to Irian Jaya and the Moluccas in Southeast Asia to China, Taiwan, and Japan in the East. He expatiates on regions in present day countries like Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. We might say that he was the first to work within the field of Asian Studies as it is nowadays understood. If we did not know better, we could say that it was he who formulated what the International Institute for Asian Studies should consider as its fields of interest and as its regional domain. Since Valentijn's pioneering efforts, many have followed in his footsteps, thereby laying the foundation for an enduring Dutch involvement in Asian Studies. Indubitably, it was a field of interest and study which, from its very inception, was closely related to the interests of Dutch economic expansion in Asian trade and colonial administration. But throughout its history it has also reflected the idiosyncratic curiosity in other cultures, languages, and civilizations which had its roots in the interest in human universality fostered by the Enlightenment. I do not need describe to you this often quoted "glorious past" of Dutch Orientalism in greater detail. Many have done so in recent years and for good reasons. In the international academic world of Asian Studies, over the last three centuries Dutch academics have played an important part, and we certainly can be proud of what has been achieved by our predecessors. For some time, however, we have feared that a glorious past was all we had to be proud of in Asian Studies. Of course, in many places in The Netherlands we can still find valuable collections of manuscripts from different parts of Asia; vast archival sources dating back to the East India Company and incorporating the consular files from Jeddah and the records of the last years of Dutch colonial presence in Irian Jaya as well as the correspondence and reports from the Deshima trading post in Japan; archaeological exhibits and ethnographic artifacts from South and Southeast Asia as well as botanical collections. Besides these primary sources, Dutch scholarship on Asia has produced an impressive amount of authoritative studies in different fields. ENDANGERED SPECIES The reason that we had cause to fear that such a heritage would either not be continued at all or at most only in a very diluted form in the years to come, was because of the drastic changes and restructuring Dutch academic life had undergone in the last two decades. As elsewhere, the 1970s and 1980s were probably the most difficult years for Dutch universities as far as Asian Studies are concerned. While overall student enrolment boomed in the 1970s, the traditional disciplines of Asian Studies lagged behind. In the 1980s , budget cuts in all faculties probably hit the smaller departments hardest. Although in those years the number of students and Ph.D candidates was larger than ever before in the history of these departments, staff positions were reduced and research budgets minimized. As faculties tended to protect the interests of the bigger and stronger departments, non-Western studies in general found themselves in a difficult position. This engendered a rather cynical paradox: just at a time that Asia - or at least, major Asian countries - have become highly successful with regard to economic growth and political influence, and therefore at a time that scholarly interest and scientific knowledge could be of utmost practical relevance to both politicians and economic decision-makers in the 'Old World', the infrastructure of these fields of study and expertise was about to be severely damaged, if not destroyed. The famous, or rather infamous, decisions reached virtually simultaneously by the universities of Leiden and Amsterdam to do away with their departments of Asian archaeology - thereby coming within an ace of eliminating an important domain of Dutch scholarship with an international reputation - was a case in point. Or should we say a turning point, a blessing in disguise? This severe attack on what was a foremost field of research and teaching and one which politically represents a counter-balance to a colonial past, set off a call to save of what then suddenly was seen as a national heritage and to start a salvage operation. TURNING POINT It began about ten years ago with a rescue programme for Indonesian Studies - always the largest field and in many ways the backbone of Dutch academic involvement in Asia. Special funds were set aside to stimulate research on Indonesia in the Humanities and Social Sciences, while the Natural Sciences and Technology received support through the Ministry of Development Co-operation. Scholars working on other parts of Asia were less fortunate, as their departments suffered from further budget cuts. It was no earlier than 1989 that the Ministry of Education and Science finally installed a committee to make an inventory of major obstacles, bottlenecks, and weak spots in the field and to develop guidelines for future policy measures. On the basis of a careful analysis, the Staal Committee handed in its report in 1990. In this report it clearly defined a policy which could and should secure and improve the quality of research and teaching on Asia in the Humanities. A year later, the Van den Muijzenberg committee presented its report in the future of Social Science research in Asia. The two committees agreed on all major issues and recommendations. In their view it was at the post-doctoral level that Asian Studies needed co-ordination and co-operation as well as financial support. Because of the weak financial position of most departments within the universities and the research institutes, Asian Studies in The Netherlands was in danger of loosing one of its major assets: promising young scholars who were forced to look elsewhere for jobs, which often bore no relation to their academic qualifications, after earning their Ph.D degree. A post-doctoral institute could prevent such a waste of cultural capital by providing opportunities to encourage further development of scholarly qualifications, by exploring new ventures in the field of Asian Studies, and by developing areas of study which had not traditionally featured on the academic agenda in The Netherlands. Such an institute should, according to the two committees, not confine itself to Dutch academia. Ever since it started, Asian Studies has been a domain in which national boundaries have been either irrelevant or non-existent. During the past decades, contacts with academic centres abroad have increased rapidly. In the future, internationalization should be further stimulated and promoted by linking in with research interests and projects at other academic institutions, organizations, and associations in Europe. Following the recommendations of the two committees, preparations for a post-doctoral institute started in 1992 under the auspices of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Its three founding fathers, the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV), the Centre for Non-Western Studies at Leiden (CNWS), and the Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam (CASA) reached an agreement in December 1992. The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) has been operational from the 1st January, 1993. IIAS Not only in name, but also in actual practice, IIAS should work towards the foundation of an European network and it should support such a network by providing an academic infrastructure through conferences, seminars, workshops, exchange programmes, and common research projects; by setting up databases of current research, recent publications, and discussion lists. In the long run, such initiatives should be given more substance by co-operation with other European institutions and associations in order to prepare a European platform. In many ways, European political unification has left its imprint on the process of Europeanization in academic affairs. Now, we should draw our attention to several paradoxes with regard to IIAS. Although based in Leiden, it is a national institution: nearly all Dutch universities and research institutes are represented on the board and the Academic Committee. Although a national institute, it aims at treating the field of Asian Studies as an international domain. As passports are irrelevant to scholarship, the research fellowships at IIAS are not granted only to Dutch nationals. As Asian Studies in The Netherlands, strong as they might be in some fields, need co-operation with other European and Asian centres in order to cope with the globalization of cultures and economies, research and teaching clearly cannot be confined by our national boundaries. INTERNATIONALIZATION AND CO-OPERATION In its policy of reaching out to the international level, IIAS is, however, very much aware that it needs to be modest in its initiatives. If we aim at European co-operation , this should be done on an equal footing and to mutual benefit of other countries in Europe. Only through co-operation of international institutions like the European Science Foundation (ESF) and European Associations for Asian Studies, and the academic centres, can a real international standard be reached. Only when and if representatives from different countries can reach an agreement on co-operation - e.g. under the aegis of the ESF - can a brighter future for Asian Studies in Europe be realized. Perhaps the clearest proof of the co-operative nature of IIAS is the fact that institutes which formerly were in competition with each other have found way to engage in reciprocally stimulating common endeavours. If this is the outcome of the four years of preparatory work, I consider all the difficulties and the complications which the founding fathers and mothers of the institute encountered to have been worthwhile.