The Museum has over 3,000 artefacts demonstrating the diversity of Southeast Asian cultures and everyday life in the region; it covers all the countries of Southeast Asia. It is particularly strong in costume and textiles (batiks and embroidered cloth, appliqué and beadwork), basketry and plaited ware, decorative silver and brassware, material culture related to livelihoods (hunting, fishing, agriculture and crafts, markets and food), weaponry (including keris), lacquerware, musical instruments, wooden sculptures associated with calendrical rituals, marriage and death, and puppets, masks, dolls, toys and games.
The Museum was founded in the Centre for South-East Asian Studies in 1968 by Professor Mervyn Jaspan as an ethnographic teaching aid to illustrate his undergraduate course in the sociology and anthropology of South-East Asia. For this purpose, he used objects and artefacts from his personal collection. In 1970 the collection became The University of Hull Collection of South-East Asian Art and Traditional Craftsmanship. From the 1970s the collection grew rapidly with donations from staff, students and associates of the Centre, bought in markets and retail outlets, acquired as gifts or made specifically for the donors. A substantial financial donation to the Centre from Dr Roy Bruton enabled the Museum to be relocated in 2007 to a new first-floor gallery in the Wilberforce Building. It is now the Southeast Asia Museum at the University of Hull under the auspices of the Brynmor Jones Library.
The Museum and its stored items are in the process of being relocated to the Brynmor Jones Library. We expect the Museum to be open to the public again some time in 2024, though part of it may continue to be located temporarily in the Wilberforce Building. The Curator is Dr Monica Janowski, assisted by Professor Victor T. King as her Deputy. He had been engaged with the Museum from the 1970s.
The Foundation of the Museum
In 1968 Professor Mervyn Aubrey Jaspan, who was appointed to the Chair in South-East Asian Sociology, began offering practical ethnography classes, in academic year 1968-1969, in his course on The Peoples and Cultures of South-East Asia, in the University of Hull’s Centre for South-East Asian Studies, which was founded in the academic year 1962-1963 (see Centre for South-East Asian Studies 2003; see Marrison on the Jaspan archive 1989a, 1989b). Initially he relied on objects, photographs and slides from his own collection. The core of the Museum derives from his early collections in Indonesia from the 1950s and 1960s and those of his wife, Helen Jaspan, and their three sons and other relatives. Subsequently he collected materials in the Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia and Myanmar. The Museum now holds well over 3,000 items (Hill 1973, 1985, 2001). The collection expanded rapidly from the early 1970s and its procedures and policies in storage, conservation, cataloguing and display took advice from specialists at The British Museum and the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. It also received considerable donations from staff, students and friends of the Centre, who had travelled and undertaken research in Southeast Asia. It continued to receive donations from Mervyn Jaspan and his wife Helen, up until his untimely death in 1975.
Mervyn Jaspan [1926-1975] was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, awarded his BA at the University of Natal and then his BSc at Oxford, and was appointed to the Chair of Sociology at Gadjah Mada State University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 1955 and then to the Chair of Sociology at Padjadjaran State University, Bandung in 1959. This followed with a Research Fellowship at the Australian National University (ANU) in 1961 where he received his PhD (1964). In 1964 he was appointed as Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia, Perth and the first Director of its Centre for Asian Studies. He then moved to the University of Hull as Professor and Director of the Centre for South-East Asian Studies in 1968 (Jaspan 1969; and see Nicholson 1997).
The Centre for South-East Asian Studies
The Centre was established in Hull following the Hayter Report, which in turn was a sequel to the Scarbrough Report, chaired by Lawrence Roger Lumley, 11th Earl of Scarbrough [1896-1969] (Scarbrough 1947). Sir William Goodenough Hayter [1906-1995], was appointed by the University Grants Committee (UGC) to chair a Sub-Committee on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies (Hayter 1961, 1981). It accomplished its necessary work between January 1960 and May I961, visiting universities in the UK and in the USA. In recommending a 10-year period of funding to establish area studies centres in British universities, it adopted the American model developed particularly in Cornell, Yale and California, Berkeley to address the UK’s needs for the multidisciplinary development of research and expertise in history, geography, economics, politics, international relations, sociology and anthropology (see for a history of Southeast Asian Studies in the UK and the Centre at Hull, Bassett 1981; Carey 1986; Khng and King 2001; King 1989, 1990, 1992, 2009, 2013; Philips 1967; and see Marrison on the Bassett collection 1992).
Dr David Kenneth Bassett [1931-1989] was appointed to a Fellowship in History in the Centre for South-East Asian Studies at Hull in 1965, He was promoted to a Senior Lectureship in the Department of History in 1969, and, as the successor to Mervyn Jaspan, served as the Director of the Centre from 1976 until 1988. He had served as Mervyn Jaspan’s Deputy Director up to 1975. David Bassett’s early career, after his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), supervised by Dr (later Professor) C.D. Cowan, and subsequently Director of SOAS (Bassett 1955, 2010), taught and undertook research at the University of Malaya in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (1956-1965). He was succeeded by Professor King as Director of the Centre in 1988.
The county of Yorkshire received funding to establish three Asian centres following the Hayter Report: Chinese Studies (University of Leeds); Japanese Studies (University of Sheffield); and South-East Asian Studies (University of Hull). The Asian studies centres eventually came together in 2006: East Asian Studies at Leeds, together with Leeds University Business School, the School of East Asian Studies at Sheffield, and South-East Asian Studies at Hull; they formed a partnership to found the White Rose East Asia Centre (WREAC), with its secretariat in Leeds, which comprised the National Institute of Chinese Studies and the National Institute of Japanese Studies, with Victor King as its Executive Director from Hull (2006-2012). Funding for WREAC continued until 2016, though collaboration between Leeds and Sheffield continues.
The Expansion of the Museum
The Hull Museum collection was developed with the minimum of resources. With the move of the collection into the Social Sciences Building (now the Wilberforce Building) in 1970 the artefacts became the University of Hull Collection of South-East Asian Art and Traditional Craftsmanship and display cases were installed in the corridors of the Centre and in adjacent seminar rooms on the second floor of the building.
In 1972 Lewis Hill, Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of South-East Asia, was appointed as Honorary Curator, and he served in that position, beyond his retirement in 2000, until 2022 (Hill 2001). He had been awarded his BLitt thesis (later MLitt) on the Kuki-Chin minority populations of upland Burma and Assam at Oxford under the supervision of Dr (later Professor) Rodney Needham. Prior to his appointment to the University of Hull he spent six years at the University of Khartoum. Sadly, Lewis Hill died in March 2023 [1935-2023], after many years of service on behalf of the study of South-East Asia at Hull and his curatorship of the Collection and then the Museum.
The position of Curator has since been taken over by Dr Monica Janowski, as Curator, and also currently a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Centre of South East Asian Studies, who was awarded her MPhil at Cambridge and PhD from the London School of Economics under the supervision of the eminent French anthropologist Professor Maurice Émile Félix Bloch (1991, 2003, 2014); she is a specialist in Borneo anthropology and has considerable expertise in material culture and museum studies with a particular interest in the Polish community in the UK.
Professor Victor T. King, who had been supervised for his PhD in social anthropology at Hull by Mervyn Jaspan (1980, 1985), was the Professor of South-East Asian Studies there from 1988 to 2005, but then moved to the University of Leeds, after two years as Visiting Professor, to the Chair of South East Asian Studies from 2005 to 2012 (2023 victortking.org). He has also taken a supporting role in the development of the Hull Museum from 2023, as Deputy Curator. Since his retirement in 2012 he has spent twelve years teaching, lecturing and undertaking research in Brunei Darussalam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Vietnam and Cambodia, but has recently returned to Hull, where he lives, as a member of the University of Hull’s Academic Library Services. He is currently Emeritus Professor at Leeds University and Distinguished Professor in the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD).
Donations and Acquisitions
From the late 1970s under Lewis Hill’s direction, the museum continued to grow with donations of the teaching collections of Indonesian objects from Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon; a bequest of Philippine items from Ifor Ball Powell (who was the mentor of the former Director of the Hull Centre, the historian Dr David K. Bassett [and see Bassett 1981]); the Philla Davis collection of Indonesian and Philippine basketry and textiles (see West 1995, 2000; Andrew West, as a graduate of the Centre, played an important role in the development of the Museum, and see 1993); the Arthur Twaites collection, donated by his widow Marjorie Thwaites, of Sarawak artefacts, including textiles, wooden sculptures, plaited ware and beadwork (Thwaites illustrated important books from Sarawak [see, for example, Wilson, 1969, Dickson, 1971]); a collection of Cambodian textiles from the Victoria and Albert Museum; part of the Andrew Fayle textile collection from the Horniman Museum, with the assistance of Dr Fiona Kerlogue; a substantial acquisition of Burmese items at auction from the collection of the Reverend Mathieson; the purchase of Thai and Buddhist artefacts made possible by funding from the Royal Thai Embassy in London; the Professor Stuart [JSG] Wilson bequest of Southeast Asian and Japanese artefacts and funding for South-East Asian Studies (Professor Wilson chaired the Board of South-East Asian Studies [1963-1967] and then the Academic Committee of the Centre [1967-1968] prior to the appointment of the Director of the Centre in 1968); and more recent donations of paintings by the Sarawak artist, Stephen Baya and artefacts collected by Dr. Clive Christie and his late wife Professor Jan Wisseman Christie, both former staff in the center at Hull.
Current Status, Exhibitions and Staff Contributions
In 2007, Dr Roy Bruton (Dr Royston Aubrey Bruton [1924-1994]) made a substantial financial donation to support the Museum and research on Southeast Asia (Bruton 1981, 1993; see Marrison on the Bruton collection 1995). His research interests in Sarawak and in the sociology of education there established his connection with Hull with its interests in the study of the history, geography and anthropology of Borneo. Roy Bruton had been supervised for his PhD at the Institute of Education and the London School of Economics (LSE) by Dr H. Stephen Morris who had acquired an international reputation for his Colonial Social Science Research Council-sponsored study of the Oya Melanau in Sarawak (1953, 2008). Bruton was a robust supporter of the work of the Centre and the Museum, and his funding enabled the Museum to be relocated to a new first-floor gallery in the Wilberforce Building. It is now the Southeast Asia Museum at the University of Hull under the auspices of the Brynmor Jones Library, Academic Library Services. It is in the process of moving to the Brynmor Jones Library (note the different renderings of the region: South-East Asia, South East Asia, Southeast Asia)
The objects on display, many purchased from local markets, acquired as gifts or made especially for the donors, celebrate the rich cultural diversity of everyday life and culture in Southeast Asia. As such they reflect both the traditions of the region as well as the changing face of contemporary Southeast Asian culture. Its strengths are in textiles and costume, Indonesian and Malay batik especially, as well as embroidery and, musical instruments, weaponry (including Javanese and Malaykeris), basketry, lacquerware, shadow puppets(wayang kulit, wayang golek,wayang wong),sculptures in wood, Thai Buddhist iconography, and the material culture of livelihoods in agriculture, hunting, fishing and strand collecting. It also illustrates a range of cultural expressions: Chinese and Indian influences, Islam, European intervention and Christianity, as well as traditional funerary and calendrical rituals. It also has an especially strong collection on Borneo, in textiles, beadwork and weaponry.
With assistance from the Yorkshire and Humberside Museums Council the Hull University collection arranged a two and a half years tour in the region as Costumes of the Golden Triangle (1987-1989), based on a donation of costumes from Dr Robert G. Cooper, a Hull graduate who spent two years field research (1973-1975) among the Hmong in northern Thailand and Laos (Cooper 1976, 1984, 1997); it then staged two further displays on Textiles and Embroidery of the Ethnic Minorities of South-west China to coincide with the Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Association of South-East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom (ASEASUK) on ‘Tourism in South-East Asia’ in March 1991 at Humberside Polytechnic (Wells and Hill 1991); and Art and Religion in Bali (1993), for the occasion of the Ninth European Colloquium of Indonesian and Malay Studies in July 1993 at Needler Hall, University of Hull. These were public exhibitions in the Brynmor Jones Library.
Dr Fiona Kerlogue, Lecturer in South-East Asian Anthropology (1997-2001), also provided, on long-term loan in the 1990s, part of her collection of fine Sumatran textiles, which were on permanent display in the Brynmor Jones Library (Kerlogue 1996, 1998). The collection was returned to Dr Kerlogue following her departure in September 2001 to take up the post of Deputy Keeper of Anthropology, with special responsibility for the Asian collections, at the Horniman Museum, Forest Hill, London. Subsequently she wrote a wide-ranging book on the arts of Southeast Asia (2004).
Another of the Centre staff with a strong background in museum studies was Michael Hitchcock who contributed much to raising the profile of the Hull collection. He undertook research at the Pitt Rivers Museum and then field research in Sumbawa, eastern Indonesia. He was awarded his doctorate at Oxford on the technology and society of Bima (1983). Prior to his appointment in Hull as Lecturer and then promotion to Senior Lecturer (1989-1995) he had worked at the Liverpool Museum and then as an Assistant Keeper at the Horniman Museum (1984-1989). From Hull he moved on to a Professorship at the University of North London (later London Metropolitan University) and is now Emeritus Professor in Cultural Policy and Tourism at Goldsmiths, University of London. His well-known book on Indonesian textiles made extensive use of the Hull collections, some of which are illustrated in these webpages (1991). Whilst in Hull he also worked on a book with Lucy Norris based on photographic material on Bali held at the Horniman Museum (1995),
In 2009 the Museum was invited to bid for a project as part of the Precious Cargo activities in the Cultural Olympiad leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games. This was successful. The project ran from 2010–2011 and included a number of wayang shadow puppet shows and puppet-related performances and workshops, bringing in schools, drawing on puppets in the collection and involving the Department for Drama and Music at the University of Hull and local puppet companies in East Yorkshire.
Recently, the Museum organised an exhibition by Dr Janowski in June 2023 on Heroines, Heroes and Cosmic Power in Southeast Asia, in the Brynmor Jones Library, supported by a grant from the Ferens Education Trust, and featuring some of the work of the Borneo artist, Stephen Baya (and see Janowski 2014).
In sum, the Museum was established as a teaching collection to support and complement undergraduate degree courses in Southeast Asian anthropology and culture in the spirit of Professor Jaspan’s legacy, until the closure of the Centre in 2002 and its transfer to the University of Leeds. Academic staff also relied on the collection in courses in Art, Culture and Society in South-East Asia and Religion and Society in South-East Asia when the University was active in teaching on South-East Asian peoples and cultures.
When the remaining staff in the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies moved to Leeds University in stages from 2003 t0 2005, the collection lost its initial purpose. Yet the University of Hull decided that such an investment needed to be sustained and supported as a unique national resource. It is presided over by the University of Hull’s Ferens Fine Art Committee and draws on the expertise of former members of the Centre who have collected and donated materials for the Museum. It is anticipated that the Museum will be open to the public again in 2024. In the meantime, it remains in the Wilberforce Building.
References
Bassett, David K[enneth]. 1955. The Factory of the English East India Company at Bantam, 1602-1682. PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
________. 1981. Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom. In Tunku Shamsul Bahrin, Chandra Jeshurun and A. Terry Rambo, eds. A Colloquium on Southeast Asian Studies. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 58-71.
________. 2010. The Factory of the English East India Company at Bantam, 1602-1682, edited and introduced by Dianne Lewis, and a Preface by Victor T. King. Pulau Pinang: Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Carey, Peter. 1986. Maritime Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Their Post-War Development and Current Resources. Oxford: JASO, No 6.
Centre for South-East Asian Studies. 2003. Annual Reports 2001-2003, 40th Anniversary Volume 1963-2003. The University of Hull; compiled by Victor T. King.
Bruton, Roy. 1981. A Remote Bidayuh Area in Sarawak and Schooling: A Theoretical Exploration of Socio-cultural Transmissions, with reference to Change, Conflict and Contradiction. PhD thesis, Institute of Education, University of London.
________. 1993. Farewell to Democracy in Sarawak: The Making of a Neocolony. Romford: Merlin Books Ltd.
Cooper, Robert [George.]. 1976. Resource Scarcity and the Hmong Response: A Study of Settlement and Economy in Northern Thailand. PhD thesis, University of Hull.
________. 1984. Resource Scarcity and the Hmong Response: Patterns of Settlement and Economy in Transition. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
________. ed. 1997. The Hmong: A Guide to Traditional Lifestyles. Singapore: Times Academic Press, Vanishing Cultures of the World.
Dickson, Mora. 1971. Longhouse in Sarawak. London: Gollancz.
Hayter, William [Sir]. 1961. Report of the Sub-Committee on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, Hayter Committee.
________. 1981. The Future of Asian Studies after the Hayter Report. Asian Affairs 12(3): 243-253.
Hill, Lewis, 1973. University Collection of South-East Asian Art and Traditional Craftsmanship. A Handbook. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies.
________. 1985. The Centre for South-East Asian Studies and the University of Hull Collection of South-East Asian Art and Traditional Craftsmanship. Newsletter, Museum Ethnographers Group, June, No 18: 2-7.
________. 2001. Guide to the University of Hull South-East Asia Museum. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies, South-East Asia Museum, May.
Hitchcock, Michael. 1983. Technology and Society in Bima, Sumbawa with special reference to house building and textile manufacture. DPhil thesis, Oxford.
________. 1991. Indonesian Textiles. London: British Museum Press in association with The Centre for South-East Asian Studies, University of Hull.
Hitchcock, Michael and Lucy Norris. 1995. Bali: The Imaginary Museum. The Photographs of Walter Spies and Beryl de Zoete. Kuala Lumpur and New York: Oxford University Press, with the Horniman Museum.
Janowski, Monica. 1991. Rice, Work and Community among the Kelabit of Sarawak, East Malaysia. PhD thesis, London School of Economics, University of London.
________. 2003. The Forest Source of Life: The Kelabit of Sarawak. London: The British Museum.
________. 2014. Tuked Rini, Cosmic Traveller: Life and Legend in the Heart of Borneo. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, Monograph Series No 125, and Kuching: Sarawak Museum.
Jaspan, Mervyn Aubrey [M.A.]. 1964. From Patriliny to Matriliny: Structural Change among the Redjang of Southwest Sumatra. PhD thesis, Australian National University.
________. 1969. Traditional Medical Theory in South-East Asia. Hull: Hull University Press, Inaugural Lecture.
Kerlogue, Fiona. 1996. Scattered Flowers. Textiles from Jambi, Sumatra. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies, special issue.
________. 1998. Batik Cloths from Jambi, Sumatra. PhD thesis, University of Hull.
________. 2004. Arts of Southeast Asia. London: Thames and Hudson, World of Art.
Khng, Pauline and Victor T. King. comp. 2001. Register of South-East Asianists in the United Kingdom. University of Hull: Association of South-East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom, under the auspices of the British Academy Committee for South-East Asian Studies.
King, Victor T. 1980. The Maloh of West Kalimantan: Social Inequality and Social Change in an Indonesian Borneo Society. PhD thesis, University of Hull.
________. 1985. The Maloh of West Kalimantan: An Ethnographic Study of Social Inequality and Social Change among an Indonesian Borneo People. Dordrecht-Holland and Cinnaminson-U.S.A.: Foris Publications, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 108.
________. ed. 1989. Research on Southeast Asia in the United Kingdom: A Survey. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies for the Association of South-East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom.
________. 1990. Between West and East: Policy and Practice in South-East Asian Studies in Britain. Hull: Hull University Press, Inaugural Lecture.
________. comp. 1992. A Register of Current United Kingdom Research on Maritime South-East Asia: Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam. University of Hull: The Association of South-East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom.
________. 2009. A History of ASEASUK. On its 40th Anniversary. London: School of Oriental and African Studies with the Association of South-East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom (ASEASUK).
________. ‘2013. British Perspectives on Southeast Asia and Continental European Comparisons: The Making of a Region. In Park Seung Woo and Victor T. King, eds, The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 265-323.
________. 2023. Professor Victor T. King. victortking.org. (itcav. com).
Marrison, Geoffrey, comp. and ed. 1989a. A Catalogue of the South-East Asian Collections of Professor M.A. Jaspan in the Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies, Bibliography and Literature No.6.
_________. [G.E. Marrison]. 1989b. Professor M.A. Jaspan’s Collections in the University of Hull. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 145((1): 151-152.
________. comp. and with Lewis Hill, ed. 1992. A Catalogue of the South-East Asian History Collection of Dr. D.K. Bassett in the Brynmor Jones Library in the University of Hull. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies, Bibliography and Literature No. 9.
________. comp. 1995. A Catalogue of the Collections of Dr Roy Bruton on Sarawak, Malaysia and on the Sociology of Education. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies, Bibliography and Literature No 13.
Morris, H.S. [Harold Stephen]. 1953. Report on a Melanau sago producing community in Sarawak. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, Colonial Research Studies 9.
________. 2008. The Oya Melanau: Traditional Ritual and Belief with Catalogue of Belum Carvings. Kuching: Malaysian Historical Society, Sarawak Branch.
Nicholson, Margaret. 1997. South-East Asian Studies and Special Collections. University of Hull: Brynmor Jones Library.
Philips, C. H. 1967. Modern Asian Studies in the Universities of the United Kingdom. Modern Asian Studies 1(1): 1-14.
Scarbrough, Lord [Lawrence Roger Lumley, 11th Earl]. 1947. The Report of the Interdepartmental Commission of Inquiry on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Wells, Pru and Lewis Hill. 1991. Textiles and Embroidery of the Ethnic Minorities of South-west China. University of Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies.
West, Andrew. 1993. Nagas in the Museum: An Anthropological Study of the Material Culture of the Hill People of the Assam-Burma Border. PhD thesis, University of Hull.
________. 1995. A Travelling Basket Maker – and More: Philla Davis, Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies 34(1): 100-104.
________. 2000. Transformations of the Tourist and Souvenir: The Travels and Collections of Philla Davis. In Michael Hitchcock and Ken Teague, eds, Souvenirs: The Material Culture of Tourism, London: Routledge, and Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, pp. 112-126.
Wilson, John K. 1969. Budu: Or Twenty Years in Sarawak. North Berwick: Tantallon Press Ltd.
