Barend Jan Terwiel

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Barend Jan Terwiel (born November 24, 1941 in Ginneken, Netherlands ) is a Dutch - Australian anthropologist , historian and Thaiist . His publications focus on the ethnology of the Tai peoples and the Ahom , the history and culture of Thailand as well as historical travel reports by Europeans about the Southeast Asian mainland.

life and work

As a military service provider, Terwiel was deployed in West Papua (now part of Indonesia ) in the early 1960s , which was then still held by Dutch troops. When they left, he had to wait a few days in Bangkok for the onward journey due to a lack of transport capacity. During this first, accidental stay, his interest in Thailand was aroused. After returning to the Netherlands, he studied cultural anthropology at the University of Utrecht (graduated with the Candidatus title in 1965 ), as well as postgraduate studies in anthropology , Pali and the history of Buddhism , which he completed in 1967 as a doctoral student . He then received a doctoral scholarship for the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.

For his dissertation he was ordained a Buddhist monk and lived for a year in a village monastery in central Thailand in order to be able to research the ceremonies and religious practice of Thai Buddhism from an inside perspective. In 1972 he was awarded a Ph.D. PhD. He revised his dissertation on the book Monks and Magic, which has since appeared in several editions (1st edition 1976).

From 1972 to 1974 Terwiel worked as a coordinator for the Royal Tropical Institute of the Netherlands in the field of volunteer training and at the same time as a lecturer in ethnology at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium. Then he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Asian Studies at the ANU until 1991 before he was appointed professor at the Institute for Ethnology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where he taught until 1992.

In the 1980s he researched the language and culture of the Ahom , an ethnic group in the northeast Indian state of Assam , which comes from the family of the Tai peoples , but largely abandoned their original language as a result of assimilation and the Assamese language, which is one of the Indo-European languages has accepted. Terwiel succeeded in deciphering old Ahom scripts, with which he laid the basis for further research into the lost language.

From 1992 until his retirement in 2007, Terwiel held the chair for the languages ​​and cultures of Thailand and Laos at the Asia-Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg . Between 1999 and 2004 he was also Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Leiden University . From 1992 to 2006 he was co-editor of the journal Oriens Extremus . Since 2004 he has been a member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen , where he lived during his work in Hamburg until the end of 2010.

Terwiel has lived in Berlin since 2011.

Publications (selection)

  • Monks and Magic. An Analysis of Religious Ceremonies in Central Thailand. Curzon Press, London, 1976 (1st edition), 1979 (2nd edition), 1994 (3rd edition); Reprint: White Lotus, Bangkok 2001, ISBN 974-8495-91-4 .
  • Field Marshal Plaek Phibun Songkhram. University of Queensland Press, 1980.
  • A Window on Thai History . 2nd edition, Editions Duang Kamol, Bangkok 1989.
  • Through Travelers' Eyes. An approach to early nineteenth-century Thai history . Editions Duang Kamol, Bangkok 1989.
  • with Ranoo Wichasin: Tai Ahoms and the Stars. Three ritual texts to ward off danger . Cornell Univ., Ithaca 1992
  • Shan manuscripts. Pt. 1 . (Directory of Oriental Manuscripts in Germany, Volume 39.1). Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2003.
  • Engelbert Kaempfer in Siam . (Engelbert Kaempfer Werke, Volume 4). Iudicium Verlag, Munich 2004.
  • Thailand's Political History, From the Fall of Ayuthaya to Recent Times . River Books, Bangkok, 2005. ISBN 974-9863-08-9 .
  • Who Destroyed Ayutthaya? In: Indian Journal of Tai Studies , Volume 9, 2009, pp. 105-110.
  • The Ram Khamhaeng Inscription. The fake that did not come true. East Asia Publishing House, Gossenberg 2010.
  • Thailand's Political History. From the 13th Century to Recent Times. River Books, Bangkok 2011.
  • "Siam". Ten ways to look at Thailand's past. East Asia Publishing House, Gossenberg 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Music and questions about the person - The Thaiist Barend Jan Terwiel in conversation with Joachim Scholl , Deutschlandfunk broadcasting intermediate tones , August 9, 2015.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Terwiel, Barend Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch-Australian anthropologist, historian and Thaiist
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Ginneken, Netherlands