The Editors of the Journal of Contemporary Asia regret to announce the passing of Jan Pluvier, one of the founding Editors of our Journal in 1970. He remained active with the Journal’s editorial board until 1999.
Jan was one of a group of left wing scholars in the Netherlands who combined scholarship with action. A fine historian of Southeast Asia, Jan became Head of the South East Asian History Department of Amsterdam University. He was a pleasant rather quiet person except when it came to matters of importance. Such matters included support for the Vietnamese people in their war time struggles and the exposure of the Soeharto regime in Indonesia for the vicious army dictatorship it was. Both in action and in his scholarly writings his strong feelings were expressed. He was active in the various Vietnam support organisations in writing articles in Dutch and English and in speaking at various meetings and teach-ins in the Netherlands and Germany. Almost simultaneously he was denouncing the military-backed dictatorship in Indonesia. The latter was done principally as an active editor and contributor of the Dutch and British Indonesia Committees’ journal, Indonesia Today.
His first academic writing was his PhD thesis on the Indonesian Nationalist Movement in the 1930s. Then in 1965, after his sabbatical leave in Malaysia, where he met Malcolm Caldwell our leading founding editor, his Confrontations: A Study in Indonesian Politics (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1965) was published. This was a most valuable study of Indonesian politics during the Malaysia–Indonesia conflict. One of the best and most popular of his works was his Historical Atlas of South-East Asia in various editions, with the latest being by Brill in 1995. His major scholarly undertaking was undoubtedly his book South-East Asia from Colonialism to Independence (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975) that appeared in several prints and versions. Oddly, now out of print, this book is easily the finest work on this key episode of the region’s modern history. The title of another of his books of 1999 Zuidoost-Azië : een eeuw van onvervulde verwachtingen (Southeast Asia: a century of unfulfilled expectations, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij De Geus) gives a picture of his vision of the region its politics and its popular aspirations.
Articles by Jan Pluvier in Journal of Contemporary Asia
Pluvier, J. 1970. “Indonesia before the Holocaust.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 1 (2).
Pluvier, J. 1971. “Dutch War Crimes in Indonesia” (Review Article) Journal of Contemporary Asia 2 (2).
Pluvier, J. 1972. “The Vietnamese War of Independence (1945–54) and Historical Objectivity.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 3 (3).
The Journal of Contemporary Asia mourns the passing of Jan Pluvier and accord him our final salute.