Preface

Summary

The idea for this reader grew out of the undergraduate programme on South and Southeast Asian studies at Leiden University, which the editors Nira Wickramasinghe and David Henley have chaired in succession since 2016. This unique BA programme was in fact born out of the restructuring of two existing programmes, one on India and Tibet and another on Indonesia, that were in today's parlance seen as ‘non-performing’. The enforced merger that ensued 12 years ago had unintended consequences: it invited scholars from these two geographical areas across various disciplines to collaborate, teach together and look beyond their own region for connections with the other. For a number of years we struggled with the name of the programme, but eventually, giving up on ‘Southern Asian Studies’ and ‘Monsoon Asia Studies’, we settled for the less elegant ‘South and Southeast Asian Studies’. We can be more adventurous with the title of the book! Monsoon Asia is ambitious, as it seeks to answer a real need for a comprehensive volume that addresses the richness and tensions inherent in studying South and Southeast Asia as a connected space. But it is also modest. We cannot lay any claim to true comprehensiveness since our choices of topics and authors were limited by circumstances, including the corona virus pandemic and the availability and willingness on the part of colleagues to participate in this project. We are very grateful to all the contributors to this volume who kept their trust in us in spite of delays and communication problems.

We are also extremely thankful to the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, that provided us with a generous grant to commission the chapters and gave us some time off from teaching to conceive the project, which was initially designed as a volume that would draw on Leiden-based scholars of South and Southeast Asia. As we went along, we decided also to approach colleagues in other universities in order to give the book more cohesion. The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) supported some of the editorial work and we heartfully thank them for this help. In addition, we thank: our anonymous peer reviewers; Leiden University Press managing publisher Saskia Gieling and publishing assistant Romy Uijen; Tsolin Nalbantian, co-editor of the LUP series Critical, Connected Histories; Pouwel van Schooten, for editing and indexing; and Koen Berghuis for the maps.