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 History
Berkeley scholars have undertaken research in Southeast Asia since
the beginning of the twentieth century. A number of prominent Berkeley
faculty worked in the Philippines during the initial decades of
American occupation. Robert Gordon Sproul, who was to become a Berkeley
Chancellor, was administrator for the public education system in
the Philippines in the 1920's. Alfred Kroeber, the pioneering American
ethnographer, worked in the Philippines and published a short monograph
on the peoples of the islands. Art historian Lawrence Briggs, who
worked on Cambodia, taught at Berkeley in the 1930's.
The formation of a coherent Southeast Asia studies program at Berkeley
did not take place until World War II. Berkeley was designated as
a special training venue for intelligence officers headed for the
Pacific. In addition to East Asian language and culture studies,
Berkeley faculty and staff were also recruited to focus on Southeast
Asia. During the 1942-45 period, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese
were first taught at Berkeley. Vietnamese would not be taught again
after the war until 1991. But Thai and Indonesian continued to be
presented at Berkeley on an intermittent basis.
In 1959 the Ford Foundation extended institutional grants to several
major American research universities to promote international studies.
These grants facilitated the establishment of a range of international
studies centers encompassing most inhabited areas of the world.
The Center for Southeast Asia Studies was established in 1960. In
1969 the South and Southeast Asia Centers were merged for purposes
of administrative and fiscal expediency. The Center for Southeast
Asia Studies re-established its institutional independence in 1990.
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