George Cœdès

George Cœdès (Coedès, pronounced [sedɛs] ; born August 10, 1886 in Paris ; † October 2, 1969 ibid) was a French Southeast Asia researcher and Thaiist .

Cœdès was initially employed at the prestigious École française d'Extrême-Orient in Hanoi . In 1918 he succeeded the German Oskar Frankfurter as senior librarian at the National Library of Thailand in Bangkok , who had been expelled as an opponent of Siam in 1917. In 1929 he returned to the École française d'Extrême-Orient back to work as director. After the situation in Vietnam became very turbulent after the Second World War , Cœdès went to Paris in 1946 to take up the position of professor for the history of Southeast Asia at the École des Langues Orientales . In addition, he was curator at the Ennery Museum in Paris until his death . In 1952 he became a corresponding member of the British Academy .

Cœdès took the view in his books and treatises that Southeast Asian culture developed largely under the influence of India . Today we know that the forms of life there were much more independent and only superficially adopted Indian culture. But he has the merit of having rediscovered the former kingdom of Srivijaya , which he suspected around the current city of Palembang on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and which extended over the Malay Peninsula and Java .

George Cœdès died in Paris on October 2, 1969.

Publications

• Histoire ancienne des États hindouisés d'Extrême-Orient. 1944. English translation of the 1964 French edition: The Indianized States of Southeast Asia . ANU Press, Canberra 1968
• Les États hindouisés d'Indochine et d'Indonésie. Paris 1948 ( Histoire du monde 8.2)
• The Making of Southeast Asia . 1966.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 15, 2020 .