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Change and Continuity in Southeast Asian Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Ruth McVey
Ruth McVey
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

Forty-odd years ago, when I became involved in the study of Southeast Asia, it appeared to be a new region, struggling to assert itself in the political world from the lingering ties of colonialism and in the academic world from those who would absorb it in the empires of Further India or the Far East. The centre of this new field of study was indisputably the United States, where in the 1950s and early 1960s Southeast Asia programmes were set up as part of the great expansion of regional studies funded by the US government and foundations. Their guiding assumption was that the interests of America and what would become known as the Third World were compatible and that sympathetic knowledge would aid in bringing about progress towards modernity as envisioned in the American dream.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 26 , 25th Anniversary Special Issue 1: Perspectives on Southeast Asian Studies , March 1995 , pp. 1 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1995

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References

1 I am grateful to Toby Volkman and Heather Sutherland, whose comments have provided this argument with what coherence it has; needless to say, I am responsible for its failings.

2 See Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago/London; University of Chicago Press, 1962).Google Scholar

3 Of course, one of the prewar colonial powers had been the United States itself, but it saw its rule over the Philippines as a confirmation rather than contradiction of this vision. Had not America's stewardship been portrayed (after an initial tawdry concern with coaling stations and a US outpost in the Far East) as educating the Filipinos toward independence? Had it not established many modern democratic institutions? Had not independence been delayed rather than promoted by the war, and was there not a Filipino elite which looked to – nay, insisted on – a close relationship with the US thereafter? Some had thought differently, of course, but they were held to be Japanese collaborators or Communists.

4 An excellent discussion of this may be found in Reynolds, Craig J., Thai Radical Discourse: The Real Face of Thai Feudalism Today (Ithaca: Cornell SEAP, 1987).Google Scholar

5 Smail, John R.W., “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia”, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, 2 (1961): 72–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar