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ICAS turns 21

Globalisation was the buzz-word in the 1990s. From the first year of its creation in 1993, the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) was a promoter of the internationalisation of Asian studies. Its periodical The Newsletter (initially called the IIAS Newsletter) quickly established itself as the communication channel in the very fragmented field of Asian studies. We took 1500 copies with us to the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual meeting in Washington in 1995. At the end of the meeting everybody was carrying our free tote bag plus the interdisciplinary, cross-regional message it carried. Clearly there was a new kid on the block.

The IIAS delegation learned a lot at the meeting. Amongst other things: we were practically the only non-Americans; the venue of the meeting was an anonymous chain hotel that lacked any connection to Asia; and the exhibition area was dominated by US publishers. However, the scale of the conference with 200 panels and a thousand participants was impressive, and so too were the manifold interactions and smooth organisation of the meeting. In sum, it worked well, but we missed the international aspect.

It was not difficult to convince our European colleagues to join us at the next AAS meeting in Honolulu in 1996. We participated with a strong delegation of European Asia scholars and at a meeting of the AAS board we presented a preliminary copy of the Guide to Asian Studies in Europe. It was hard for them to believe that Western Europe had at least as many Asia scholars and institutions researching Asia as the US did. Then Secretary-Treasurer, John Campbell, concluded our conversation by saying: “For the first time we know whom to call in Europe”.

Since I was tasked to deepen IIAS’ contacts with the US I paid a visit to the AAS Secretariat in Ann Arbor. I pitched the idea of an international conference in Leiden in 1998 to further internationalise Asian studies in a cross-regional and multidisciplinary way. To make a long story short: the AAS, six European Associations for Asian Studies, and the European Science Foundation Asia Committee, collaborated for the first edition of ICAS.