ASAA Publications: History of Southeast Asia Publications Series (SEAPS)

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Historical Background to the ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series
The Beginnings by Anthony Reid
Past Editors of the Southeast Asia Publications Series
Links

Historical Background to the ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series

In 2004 the ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series celebrated its 25th anniversary as Australia’s leading publisher on Southeast Asia. To mark the event, the biennial ASAA conference in Canberra featured a special opening panel Australian Publishing on Southeast Asia, 1979-2004, which involved founding editor Prof. Anthony Reid, former ASAA president Prof. Wang Gungwu, former editor Prof. Virginia Hooker and editorial board member Prof. Andrew Macintyre. The aims of the panel were to remember the origins of the Series, to review its progress, and to discuss its future direction. With commentary also from former editors John Ingleson and Tony Milner, a lively discussion ensued, reflecting the character of the Series as a collegial and collective endeavour of the members of the ASAA. Tony’s revised notes on the formation and early years of the Series are appended below are part of our ‘corporate knowledge’.

The Beginnings

by Anthony Reid, based on his presentation at the ASAA Conference, 30 June 2004, with thanks also to Wang Gungwu and Tony Milner.

When a provisional ASAA was established at the ANZAAS Conference in 1975, I was designated Convenor of the Provisional Working Committee. This meant that I had to produce a Newsletter to widen the constituency and maintain the momentum during the provisional year leading up to the 1976 Melbourne conference, when a proper executive was elected and a constitution agreed. I then thought to have acquitted my responsibilities, but the new Executive came back to ask if I would continue to edit the Newsletter for the duly-constituted ASAA. I was reluctant to continue with that necessary but time-consuming role, but much more interested in trying to get the great work of Australia-based scholars better known in the world. Hence I proposed a deal: I would do the Newsletter if they called me Publications Officer and let me experiment with either a journal or a publications series. I was duly appointed the first Publications Officer with effect from 1977, and modestly transformed the ASAA Newsletter into the ASAA Review, with much help from Robin Jeffrey. Book reviews had already been added to the diet of professional news in mid-1976, but the new format meant we could have some fun with the layout.

Discussions soon began on how to manage what I thought to be the more important task of establishing a Southeast Asia Publications Series in order to get some of the outstanding theses being written in Australia or by Australians into print. Thanks to a welcome period of leave in 1978 I managed to pass the ASAA Review to my ANU colleague John Caiger. However, I continued editing the Publications Series until my next leave in 1987, except when David Marr collegially took it over for the period I was teaching in Indonesia (1980-81). Our key advantage was the luxury the Research School of Pacific Studies [ANU] then afforded of having a position of research assistant for Southeast Asian History. We were lucky enough to be able to recruit Dr Jennifer Brewster, and it was increasingly she who became our editorial asset in bargaining with publishers. Thanks to her we could provide camera-ready copy in good shape for publication, which was the kind of hidden ANU “subsidy” for publications which was difficult to sustain through the cost-cutting 1980s.

In his first enthusiastic years in Australia, Al McCoy frequently asked when we would start the great Aussie journal on Asia or at least Southeast Asia. I was very cautious then about another struggling Australian journal, given the difficulties RIMA had in attaining permanent viability, not to mention those of the Journal of the Australian Orientalists’ and Townsville’s Kabar Seberang. Books then seemed to me both to meet a more substantial need and to involve a less onerous permanent commitment. It seemed a way to deal with growing international complaints about the difficulty of accessing Australian theses, and to make the best Australian work known around the world. The particular focus however was circulation in Australia itself and in Southeast Asia. The view we then took was that the US and Europe could look after themselves, and that their libraries were established enough to be able to buy our books so long as they did circulate in the heartlands.
The first two books we published were the revised theses of two Australians, Heather Sutherland from Yale and John Ingleson from Monash. Both came as a kind of windfall from the decline of the ANU Press, which decided it could not publish Southeast Asian work even though it had established the quality of these volumes. These two fine theses laid a strong foundation on a quality basis, and certainly made it easier to attract later volumes. But of the next five, two were conference volumes, one was Al McCoy’s multi-author set of local Philippine histories, and one was the first set of Wang Gungwu’s articles to be put between covers. Only one, Alfons van der Kraan’s Lombok at no. 5, was another single-author research monograph resulting from a dissertation.

In the 1980s there was a stronger flow of good Australian theses, which then provided a strong staple a solid research monographs, with conferences only the minority. One thing we can be proud of is that we launched a number of very successful academic careers by getting their first (and often also their best) books out. John Ingleson, Heather Sutherland, Bob Elson and Dick Robison were among those who went on to greatness after being launched in this series.

Some of the multi-authored books too proved a considerable success, despite publishers’ customary wariness of them. I heard Perceptions of the Past referred to in Chicago five years later as a “cult book”, and occasionally after that as a “classic”. Philippine Social History was reprinted and seen as something of a turning point in Philippine historiography. The two early Malaysia volumes were also influential, and their royalties helped establish the ASAA’s Malaysia Society. At the 2004 conference panel Wang Gungwu reminded us that the post-Vietnam blues in the US helped to make a Southeast Asian series both urgent and possible in the 1970s. Americans trained during the Vietnam War era suddenly could not get jobs at home, and found it harder to publish there. Much of the dynamic in Southeast Asian Studies shifted to Australia. This did not apply to other sub-fields of Asian Studies and may explain why the other series were slower to develop.

Because of the eagerness to have our books circulate in the region itself, I chose Southeast Asian publishers, first Heinemann (1977 81), then Oxford University Press (East Asia) (1981 86), as the publishing partners. An arrangement with Penerbit Sinar Harapan enabled all first five books we published on Indonesia to be translated and published in Indonesian within a few years of the original, typically with three or four times as large a print run. I had not thought of Perceptions in this category, since it was pan-Southeast Asian, but another publisher (LP3ES with Grafitipers) requested the Indonesian parts of that book too for translation.

Patrick Gallagher at Allen & Unwin in Sydney had at first become a very helpful Australian distributor of the volumes. Later, when John Ingleson took over responsibility for the series and OUP Kuala Lumpur began to falter as a Southeast Asian academic publisher, Patrick took over world-wide responsibility as part of his success in making Allen & Unwin Australia’s leading publisher on Southeast Asia. With the benefit of a very good distributor in Singapore, a large proportion of sales continued to be in Southeast Asia. During Tony Milner’s term, negotiations with the University of Hawaii Press bore fruit in a co-publishing agreement that improved the Series’ visibility in North America while Virginia Hooker, Writing a New Society (2000) and Dick, Houben, Lindblad & Thee, The Emergence of a National Economy (2002) were also co-published with KITLV in the Netherlands. Virginia Hooker completed the Allen Unwin era with two fine titles on Islam, the second by Azumardi Azra (2004), The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia (2004) being commissioned from the region itself.

This latest phase from 2004 of returning to partnership with a strong Southeast Asian publisher, Singapore University Press in formal co-publishing arrangements with Hawaii, KITLV (Indonesia titles)/NIAS (non-Indonesia titles) is a realistic adjustment to new realities. Increasingly the locus of publishing in English on the region is in the region itself. This is a healthy development.

Past Editors of the Southeast Asia Publications Series

Anthony Reid (1979-87)

John Ingleson (1987-96)

Anthony Milner (1994-02)

Virginia Hooker (2002-03)

On behalf of the ASAA and its authors, I acknowledge Anthony Reid’s vision and dedication in founding and nurturing the Series, as also the commitment and hard work of his successors in consolidating a tradition of excellence in academic publishing.

List of all titles in the Series (1979-2004)
List of current Editorial Board
How to submit a MS to the Series

Published by the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies, the Australian National University.