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Asian Collections: Library of Congress, An Illustrated Guide

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SOUTHEAST ASIA AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS

PRE-WORLD WAR II

The Library has some fascinating collections of South Pacific and Southeast Asian material that predate World War II. In 1934, the Fahnestock brothers, Bruce and Sheridan, set sail from New York for China and the South Pacific on their ship, Director. The three-year voyage, during which they studied the cultures of the Pacific and uncovered a set of important Fijian petroglyphs, the Ndakunimba Stones, was documented in their book, Stars to Windward (1938). During a second sailing expedition in 1940, the Fahnestocks made extensive recordings of music from American Samoa, Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Australia before their ship hit a reef near Australia and sank.

A third voyage in 1941, as war loomed in the Pacific, resulted in rare recordings of music on the islands of Indonesia, including Bali, Madura, and the Kangean islands. This third expedition also had a covert side. At the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Fahnestocks evaluated Dutch military preparations on Java and carried out several other missions. With the outbreak of war, the Fahnestocks joined the U.S. Army's Small Ships Section in New Guinea, the unit that inspired the 1960s television series entitled The Wackiest Ship in the Army. In 1986, Margaret Fahnestock Lewis, the widow of Sheridan Fahnestock, gave the Library much of the material the brothers had collected on their three expeditions. The Library's Archive of Folk Culture is the home for the Fahnestock South Seas collection, including recorded music of the South Pacific and Indonesia, recordings of Fijian legends, manuscripts, logs, correspondence, and photographs.

Another important collection of material on the cultures of the South Pacific and Indonesia may be found in the Manuscript Division where the papers of the renowned American anthropologist Margaret Mead are kept. Mead's academic career began with the field trip to the South Pacific in 1925 that resulted in the publication of Coming of Age in Samoa, a book that attracted a readership well beyond the academic community. During a career that spanned some fifty years, Mead's fieldwork took her from Fiji to the Admiralty Islands, New Guinea, and Bali. Her fame and her sometimes-controversial views on subjects, such as the rearing of children, stimulated public interest in the field of anthropology. Mead's papers in the Library are a valuable source for research on her work and life.

The Archive of Folk Culture holds other rare Asian material, including the Benjamin Ives Gilman collection of wax cylinder recordings made at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and including Javanese and South Pacific music. The Hornbostel Demonstration collection of 120 pressed cylinder copies from wax field recordings includes Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian, and Indian music recorded in the early years of the twentieth century. In addition, the Archive of Folk Culture holds many more recent recordings of music from Asia and the Pacific.

THE COLLECTIONS EXPAND

World War II was a watershed event for Asia and the Pacific as well as for the United States. With the end of the War came a period of anti-colonial revolution in Southeast Asia and the onset of the Cold War. To meet the expanding need for knowledge of the area, the Library’s acquisitions from Southeast Asia and the Pacific increased dramatically in the post-war period. For example, growing concern about Asian communism can be seen in the increasing number of titles the Library received from Southeast Asia during the late 1940s and 1950s, such as a 1952 report on the Philippine Communist Party published by the Philippine House of Representatives and publications from the Saigon-based Asian People's Anti-Communist League and the Bangkok headquarters of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the following period of adjustment, the region has taken on a new dynamism and the Library's collections have kept up with the greater emphasis on economics, trade, and regional cooperation, as seen in increasingly active Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Nonetheless, old issues in new guises still exist, perhaps the foremost being the rise of political Islam. The Library's Jakarta Field Office, with its sub-offices in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Manila, is in the forefront of acquiring material from the countries of this important and diverse region.

Another important collection of material on the cultures of the South Pacific and Indonesia may be found in the Manuscript Division where the papers of the renowned American anthropologist Margaret Mead are kept. Mead's academic career began with the field trip to the South Pacific in 1925 that resulted in the publication of Coming of Age in Samoa, a book that attracted a readership well beyond the academic community. During a career that spanned some fifty years, Mead's field work took her from Fiji to the Admiralty Islands, New Guinea, and Bali. Her fame and her sometimes controversial views on subjects, such as the rearing of children, stimulated public interest in the field of anthropology. Mead's papers in the Library are a valuable source for research on her work and life.

Seni and Kukrit Pramoj. The King of Siam Speaks.
Seni and Kukrit Pramoj, The King of Siam Speaks. Most Thai were shocked by the portrayal of their revered nineteenth-century king, Mongkut, in the musical The King and I. The stage and screen versions were based on Margaret Landon's 1944 book entitled Anna and the King of Siam. To correct the record, well-known Thai intellectuals Seni and Kukrit Pramoj wrote this account in 1948. The Pramoj brothers sent their manuscript to the American politician and diplomat Abbot Low Moffat, who drew on it for his biography entitled Mongkut the King of Siam (1961). Moffat donated the Pramoj manuscript to the Library in 1961. (Southeast Asian Collection, Asian Division)

Thailand: During World War II, the United States supported the anti-Japanese resistance movement in Thailand, the Free Thai Movement. The American largely responsible for bringing about this relationship was Dr. Kenneth Landon, a former Presbyterian minister who had spent ten years in Thailand as a missionary. After his return to the United States in 1937, Landon worked on a Ph.D. and wrote a book on Thai politics. With the outbreak of war, he became Washington's leading expert on Thailand, first with America's wartime intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Services, and then with the Department of State. Dr. Landon later donated hundreds of pages of transcripts of Free Thai radio broadcasts to the Library, along with a small but important collection of post-World War II Thai books on politics as well as Thai political fiction.

Landon's connection with the Library of Congress, however, began before his donation of the Free Thai material, going back to research by his wife, Margaret, for her book entitled Anna and the King of Siam. Published in 1944, the book was an account of the English governess Anna Leonowens's experiences in the court of King Mongkut (Rama IV) and became the inspiration for the Broadway musical The King and I. In her note at the end of the book, Margaret Landon thanks Dr. Horace Poleman of the Library of Congress for making available material for reconstructing some of the historical background in the book. Specifically, she cites her use of a Thai-language book in the Library containing King Mongkut's correspondence.

Thai material has continued to grow apace and with the opening of a sub-office in Bangkok in the late 1990s, the Library's Thai collection has become second only to the collections in the major libraries in Thailand itself. The collection is strong in the areas of politics, economics, and regional Thai publications. Acquisitions have recently focused on material documenting the local cultures of the four Muslim provinces in the south and the growing Burmese community on the Thai border. The Law Library holds probably the most comprehensive collection of Thai legal works outside of Bangkok.

Burma: One of the Asian Division’s unique holdings is a set of World War II documents and records. The documents, most dating between 1941 and 1944, offer insight into Burma during the period of the Japanese occupation. Perhaps the most significant material concerns the Indian Independence League and its military wing, the Indian National Army (INA) headed by Shubas Chandra Bose after 1943. In Burma the INA operated with Japan’s 15th Army and fought British forces during the epic Imphal campaign. The collection also includes Burmese police records from several cities, local government reports (including records of conversations with tribal leaders in the Shan States on self-determination), economic documents from the Burma Corporation, field notes by US Army personnel, arrest warrants written by British officers in early 1945, some Japanese military papers, and newspaper clippings from The Rangoon Times. The Asian Division has prepared a Finding Aid describing the material in detail.

Although the Burmese collection was limited initially, it has now grown considerably larger, with books in English, Burmese and other minority languages dealing with a wide range of subjects, including literatures, history, religion, politics, administration, art and architecture, social life and customs.

Vietnam: The Library stepped up its acquisition of French-language publications from Indochina in the late 1940s and by the early 1950s was receiving four Vietnamese-language newspapers: two from Hanoi and two from Saigon. Signs of growing interest in Vietnamese internal politics were in evidence, such as the Library's acquisition of an intriguing book on Vietnam's Cao Ðài religion, published in 1950 under the auspices of the Commander-in-Chief of the Cao Ðài Army and Saigon's then-Minister of Armed Forces, Maj. Gen. Tran Quang Vinh. The Library holds copies of reports on government and administrative reform in South Vietnam from Michigan State University's "Vietnam Advisory Group."

Despite this increasing attention, Vietnamese-language material continued to grow more slowly than other Southeast Asian-language publications in the 1950s, ranking well behind material published in Indonesia, Thailand, and Burma. Even in the mid-1960s, with American involvement escalating, the Library complained of the irregular flow of published material from South Vietnam and the difficulty of getting publications from North Vietnam. Nonetheless, in spite of the hostilities between North Vietnam and the United States, by the late 1960s the Library had begun to develop a close working relationship with selected institutions in Hanoi. As a result of these exchanges, the Library's collection of works from the northern provinces of Vietnam is stronger than that from the former Saigon government. A recent major acquisition from Dr. Nguyen Van Trung, a former professor now living in Canada, has helped fill the gap in Vietnamese publications. The majority of the more than 200 serials and monographs in the Trung collection were published in the 1950s and 1960s.

America's war in Vietnam is often said to be the first televised war. An extensive record of this coverage can be found in the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. Included are special reports that appeared on ABC, CBS, and NBC; historic footage from Nippon News covering the Japanese occupation during World War II; travelogues on French Indochina produced in the late 1940s; and a French film collection on the colonial period with perspectives from the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh, and some scenes from 1901.

Van Hoa DakLak - Vietnamese Provincial Publication
Van Hoa DakLak - Vietnamese Provincial Publication. (Southeast Asian Collection, Asian Division)

Another interesting source of material on the war is found in the Documents Division, which holds the notes and records of Neil Sheehan, author of A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.

The Library also holds a complete set of Great Britain’s diplomatic reporting on the Vietnam War. Consisting of twenty-nine microfilm reels, the Foreign Office Files: Series Two: Vietnam, 1959-1975 provides a useful non-American perspective on the conflict.

Following the end of the war in 1975 and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Indochina, the Library began to see a large increase in demand for publications in the languages of the region. Today the Asian Division's holdings in Vietnamese include some 200 periodicals, about half published in Vietnam and the rest published by the overseas Vietnamese community. In recent years, the Library has tapped into the growing number of local Vietnamese publications to develop its collection of provincial periodicals, covering subjects such as local politics, socioeconomic issues and cultural development. The Library maintains an excellent exchange relationship with the National Library of Vietnam and has a special project with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Hanoi, collecting unique law and other publications that could not be obtained in the past.

Cambodia: Beginning in the 1970s, the Library began to develop its Khmer collection, including a unique set of publications in Cambodian from refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border. More recently the Library has acquired legal and general reference works, government documents and publications by international agencies and donors assisting the post-Khmer Rouge government. The Library also has reprints of hundreds of earlier works of literature and popular fiction that are now available to the significant Cambodian population in the United States.

Laos: Earlier holdings from Laos are not extensive but include an interesting collection of novels published after 1970 that reflect the development of Lao socialist realism. The Library also holds a small but growing retrospective collection of publications from the Lao Patriotic Front (Neo Lao Hak Sat), which provided the leadership for the post-1975 Lao government. The works of Kaysone Phomvihane (1920-1992), former President and Prime Minister of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, are to be found in the collection. Since the 1990s, the Library has obtained a large collection of serials and government publications, as well as reports from international and non-governmental organizations working on development projects in Laos. Several other divisions of the Library also have Lao material. The Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division has materials on several Lao minority groups, such as the Khammu and Hmong, as part of the Indochina Archives Project of the Social Science Research Council. The diaries of Souvanna Phouma, former Prime Minister of Laos, can be found in the Manuscript Division.

Malaysia and Brunei: Publications from Brunei and Malaysia include literary works and critical studies from Brunei’s Language and Literature Bureau and the Ministry of Religious Affairs as well as Malaysia’s Language and Literature Bureau. Of particular interest is difficult-to-obtain material from Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), in the form of audio and videotapes of leaders’ speeches, usually the best source for understanding the party's policies. The Library also has a collection of classic Malay movies and songs from P. Ramlee, who was instrumental in developing Malaysia’s music and film movement in the 1950s.

Jajak MD, Biografi Presiden dan Vakil, Presiden Republik Indonesia: 1945-Sekarang.
Jajak MD, Biografi. Presiden dan Vakil, Presiden Republik Indonesia: 1945-Sekarang.
Containing the biographies of the presidents and vice-presidents of Indonesia since independence, this book is an example of a recent publication in modern Indonesian. During the colonial period, the Dutch helped popularize the use of the Malay language throughout Indonesia's over three thousand islands. This language later evolved into "Bahasa Indonesia," and the roman script became the official writing system. Indonesia's first two presidents, Sukarno and Suharto, appear on the cover. (Southeast Asian Collection, Asian Division)

Indonesia: Since the end of the Suharto era in 1998, the Library has concentrated on acquiring material on terrorism, local and ethnic conflicts, radical Islamic and Christian groups, interfaith relations, civil society and election materials. Another focus of collection is the transitional role of the Indonesian military and police, as they have moved away from the old dwifunsi system (dual military/civil role) to a more modern defense and security system. An important part of the Indonesian holdings is the serial collection, consisting of over 900 titles, the second largest in the world. Of particular interest is a project being carried out by the Library’s Jakarta Office to microformat the writings and papers of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, probably Indonesia’s foremost novelist and winner of numerous literary prizes including the Magsaysay Award.

East Timor: Southeast Asia’s newest nation is represented in the Asian collections by material on the debate over independence from the late Suharto era. Nine active serial titles are available, including the newspaper Suara Timor (The Voice of Timor), which documented the road to independence.

The Philippines: Through the Jakarta Field Office and its sub-office in Manila, the Library has continued to expand its Philippine collection. Currently the Library has over 200 active serial titles, including unique government and non-governmental organization reports as well as small university press titles. Of the 171 living languages of the Philippines, the Library has acquired material in about 80 and is continuing to acquire publications in new languages.

A recent addition to the Philippines collection reflects the Library’s increasing emphasis on material concerning Asian-Americans. The Carlos Bulosan Archive, acquired in 2006, documents the experiences of Filipino immigrants in the United States through poems, short stories and books. Included in the Archive are documents dealing with Bulosan’s attempts to organize Filipino workers in the Pacific Northwest, serial clippings about the author, a facsimile of one of Bulosan’s original manuscripts, and various ephemera.

Singapore: As an important center for international publishing and research, Singapore is fertile ground for the Library's acquisition efforts in Southeast Asia. The Library has a large collection of Singapore government documents, works on the economy, and regional social science publications. Recent collection efforts have included works in Malay and Tamil, reflecting the importance of these communities and adding to the large number of English-language publications. .

Southeast Asia’s Overseas Chinese Community: Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia have played a vital role in the region, especially in its economy. The Library has a growing collection of Chinese-language publications from many countries in the region. In Indonesia, where the use of Chinese had been banned, the end of the Suharto era resulted in an explosion of Chinese-language monographs, newspapers and journals. The Library has a large collection of these works. In Malaysia, the Library has worked with local cultural, self-help and clan organizations to acquire hundreds of non-commercial titles as well as Chinese-language newspapers. In the Philippines, the Jakarta Field Office is microfilming the Kaisa Library collection of Chinese-Filipino genealogies.

South Pacific: The Library has a strong collection of contemporary government publications from the nations of the Pacific. Another strength in the Library's holdings is its collection of 19th century missionary publications from the Pacific.

Electronic Resources: The Jakarta Field Office has digitized a number of its Balinese palm leaf manuscripts.

 


HOME  Preface  Introduction  The World of Asian Books  Chinese Beginnings  Tales from the Yunnan Woods  The Diplomat and the Dalai Lama  From the Steppes of Central Asia  The Japanese World  Korean Classics  Homer on the Ganges  White Whales and Bugis Book  Barangays, Friars, and "The Mild Sway of Justice"  The Theravada Tradition  The Southern Mandarins  Modern Asia  East Asia  Inner Asia  South Asia  Southeast Asia and the Pacific  Epilog  Publications on the Asian Collections


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( November 15, 2010 )
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