N E W S A N D V I E W S F R O M T H E W O R L D O F A S I A N S T U D I E S
I I A S N E W S L E T T E R # 4 7 S p r i n g 0 0 8
N E T W O R K A S I A
Carolien Stolte
Encompass students receive training in reading and working with Dutch
source materials, as well as a broad introduction to histories that may be
written by using these sources. They also have the opportunity to develop
their general research skills. The programme stimulates students to devel-
op a global outlook in their studies, and to use Dutch primary sources to
write local and regional histories that go beyond the traditional colonial
interpretations. This two- and three-year educational programme, which
begins with a conversion year at the BA level, ultimately leads to an MA or
MPhil degree. It is carried out in close cooperation with the Dutch Nation-
al Archives, the Arsip Nasional Republic Indonesia in Jakarta, and several
partner universities in Asia. For five consecutive years - from 2006 to 2010
- twelve scholarships are available annually for students from Monsoon
Asia and South Africa. The first year commences with a one-month inten-
sive Dutch language course, followed by semi-intensive language courses
throughout the rest of the year. In addition, the students take courses in
history and write a BA thesis.
As this goes to press, the students of the Encompass BA group are writing
those theses. Subjects vary from concubines in the Dutch Indies between
1900-1935 to the cultural history of interaction in 17th century India. The
academic background of the students is as diverse as their thesis subjects,
but as it turns out, the two are not necessarily related. Many of the stu-
dents seize the Encompass programme as an opportunity to get involved
in new fields of study. An interview with four of the Encompass students
reveals that one student has moved from urban history to the history of
nationalism, another has switched disciplines from sociology to history
and for a third, the Early Modern period is a whole new subject.
The primary sources used by students for their research are equally
diverse and paint an excellent picture of the wealth of material that is
available in and around Leiden: pictures in the collections of the KITLV
(Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies);
17
th
century travel accounts in the Dousa Room of the University Library;
newspapers and other documents in the National Archives in The Hague
are but a few examples of the sources that are currently used by the BA
group. All students are excited about the proximity of so many sources,
and intend to work on them even more in-depth during the MPhil phase
of their programme.
However, using Dutch sources also means that the students have to mas-
ter the Dutch language prior to going to the archives. For some, this has
met with considerable difficulties. All agree that the first year of Encom-
pass is an intensive one in terms of language acquisition, and that there is
a world of difference between reading Dutch and speaking it. Second-year
student Farabi Fakih confirms that while he is now able to read Dutch
without much difficulty, conversational Dutch is progressing at a slower
pace. BA student Johny Qusyairi too is able to read Dutch now, even if not
at as fast a pace as he would like to, but he does not feel confident speak-
ing it. BA student Manjusha Kurrupath summarises the conversation: ‘It’s
a complicated language’.
In the second year, students take part in the regular MA/MPhil programme
of the Leiden History department. Students acquire the knowledge and
skills necessary to carry out historical research on Asian history between
1600 and 1950 in Dutch-language archives. Those students who wish to
focus on the VOC sources may take additional courses in reading Dutch
manuscripts from that era. Students have the option of specialising in
either the History of European Expansion and Globalisation, or Historical
Archival Science. In the middle of the second year outstanding students
may apply for the MPhil programme in History. These students work on an
MPhil thesis and write a PhD research proposal under intensive personal
guidance of experts in the field. The Department of History is currently
raising funds for an Encompass PhD programme centered around the
theme ‘Changes of Regime in Asia, 1600-1960’, which will be launched
in 2009.
The BA students are enthusiastic about starting their next year of Encom-
pass. They especially look forward to having more interaction with Dutch
students, as they will take courses in the regular MA and MPhil pro-
grammes and their classes will consist of larger groups. Since they spend
many hours in language acquisition in the first year and their history
courses are in English, they do not meet many regular Dutch students,
which is something they all look forward too.
The broad outlook of the programme is a recurring theme. As Johny Qus-
yairi says: “You learn the global context of your own history, which I never
really thought of before.” BA student Yulia Irma confirms that the connec-
tion of local histories to a larger global story is one of the most attractive
features of the programme. All of the interviewed students mention the
fact that their classes on European Expansion also paid attention to the
world across the Atlantic, which is new for many. Manjusha Kurrupath: “It
is a very new perspective from what you learn back home.”
Encompass: of local histories and
global perspectives
Alex McKay
Gangtok, the capital of the Indian Himalayan state of Sikkim, is home to
the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology (NIT), India’s foremost centre for the
study of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist culture. The Institute includes
a museum, a Tibetan library and a general reference centre on Tibet and
the Himalayas. Set in extensive grounds on a ridge at Deorali, to the south
of central Gangtok, the main buildings are constructed in typical Tibetan
Buddhist style, with the wall paintings of the veranda depicting the four
celestial guardians kings located in the four directions of the World-Moun-
tain, Mount Meru.
The Institute was established on land donated by the 11th Chogyal of Sik-
kim, Sir Tashi Namgyal, in memory of his late son Paljor Namgyal, and
the foundation stone of the Institute was laid by His Holiness the 14th
Dalai Lama of Tibet on the 10th of February 1957. It was declared open by
the then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, on the 1st of
October 1958.
Since its inauguration, the Namgyal Institute has sponsored and promot-
ed research on the religion, history, language, art and culture of the people
of the Tibetan cultural area, which includes the Indian Himalayan state
of Sikkim. Interested researchers and visitors are welcome, and the NIT
welcomes and can facilitate scholarly research in relevant areas.
The Institute has published a scholarly journal, the Bulletin of Tibetology
since 1964, along with numerous books over the years. The NIT’s library
holds one of the largest collection of Tibetan works in the world outside of
Tibet, as well as a museum of Tibetan iconography and religious art. The
museum contains a collection of rare statues, ritual objects, traditional art
objects, thangkas (painted, woven and embroidered scrolls) and ancie=nt
manuscripts in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese and Lepcha (the language of
one of Sikkim’s indigenous tribal groups). Among the most notable of the
manuscripts are: the Prajna Paramita and Astasahastra written in Tibetan
golden script; an 11th century palm leaf manuscript of the Saratama Praj-
naparamita by Ratnakara Shanti; and a 12th century Chinese manuscript
of the Prajana Paramita Sutra that was brought from South Korea. The
exhibition of statues and art objects is dominated by a majestic silver
image of Manjushri – the Bodisattva of knowledge – that was brought to
the Institute from Tibet.
In the summer of 2002, the NIT’s current Director, Mr Tashi Densapa,
undertook to expand the Institute, restructure its research wing and
increase international collaboration. This is being done through the crea-
tion of new research programmes, lectures, seminars, exhibitions, fellow-
ships, publications and collaboration with foreign scholars.
Among its new research programmes is a project to document the social
history of Sikkim’s 60-odd monasteries and digitalise their textual hold-
ings, while the Visual Sikkim project undertook to digitalise and document
old and rare photographs of Sikkim, both in India and abroad. This has
resulted in the creation of a digital image bank and a number of photo-
graphic exhibitions at the NIT; currently the Institute is hosting an exhibi-
tion of photographs documenting the historical relations between Sikkim
and Bhutan, which was opened by the Bhutanese ambassador to India in
November 2007.
The Institute has also established a visual anthropology project in order to
produce an enduring digital record of Sikkim’s vanishing indigenous and
Buddhist cultures. Its first film, “Tingvong: a Lepcha village in Sikkim” has
been screened at several ethnographic film festivals in Europe and Asia.
The Institute can assist PhD level students and senior scholars in carrying
out field research in Sikkim. Sikkimese Studies are indeed in their infancy
and we would particularly welcome research in Lepcha ethnography and
ethno-botany, archaeology, history, linguistics, art history and Buddhist
Studies. With the aim of promoting Sikkimse Studies, recent research
carried out by both local and foreign scholars on Sikkim’s Buddhist and
indigenous cultures has been published in the latest volumes of the Bul-
letin of Tibetology.
Further details on the NIT may be obtained via its website, www.tibetology.
net, or by email from info@tibetology.net. The website includes a link to
the Digital Himalaya site, where articles from the collection of editions of
the Bulletin of Tibetology published between 1964 and 2004 may be freely
downloaded.
Further details on the NIT may be obtained via its website, www.tibetology.
net, or by email from info@tibetology.net.
The Namgyal Institute
of Tibetology
Evert Groenendijk
I
n commemoration of 400 years of Dutch relations with Guangzhou
(Canton), the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
in Guangzhou published an edited volume in 2004, written by Chinese
and Dutch historians titled: Sailing to the Pearl River. Because the book
was very well received, an academic follow-up on a comparative theme
seemed a good idea. In close cooperation with scholars from Japan,
China and the Netherlands it was decided to organise two international
academic conferences – one in China in 2007, and one in Japan in 2009
– on the ancient port cities of Canton and Nagasaki, as well as their satel-
lite cities Macao and Hirado.
The first of these two conferences, titled: Canton and Nagasaki Com-
pared 1730 – 1830: Dutch, Chinese, Japanese relations, was held between
December 3-7, 2007, in Guangzhou and Macao. This conference was
organised by the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in
Guangzhou, in cooperation with the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou,
the Guangzhou Museum, the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao S.A.R.
Government, and financially supported by Leiden University, the Univer-
sity of Tokyo, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Inter-
national Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden. Some 25 scholars
presented their research. Comparative studies of the port cities of Canton
and Nagasaki, which both served as a window to the outer world during
the early modern period of China and Japan, are few and far between, even
though in the past both cities played similar historical roles as brokers of
trade, information and culture with foreign powers. Coincidentally, Dutch
East India Company servants were active in both cities for a very long time
and kept diaries of their daily routine and dealings with the Chinese and
Japanese merchants and officials. (The English translations of the diaries
composed at the Deshima factory in Nagasaki have been published for
most of the 17th and 18th centuries and are available at the Japan-Nether-
lands Institute, Tokyo and the Leiden History Department. The first Can-
ton diary was recently published in Macao and is available at the Macao
Cultural Institute.)
The conference started at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. The
three keynote speakers and co-organisers opened the conference on Mon-
day morning: Professor Cai Hongsheng (Sun Yat-sen University) described
Canton en Nagasaki and their respective hinterlands, Professor Leonard
An International Conference in Guangzhou and Macao, December 3-7, 2007.
Guangzhou and Nagasaki compared
The Encompass programme, established in 2006 by the Department of History at Leiden
University, aims to make the priceless sources left by the Dutch East India Company available
to students from Monsoon Asia and South Africa. Access to these sources has long been
problematic due to the distances involved and an unacquaintance with the Dutch language.
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