The School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, 1917-1967

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The School of Oriental & African Studies
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
1917-1967


The School from Woburn Square


The School
of Oriental & African
Studies
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
1917-1967
An Introduction
C. H. PHILLIPS


Designed and produced
by Design for Print Ltd, London W2
Printed in England
by Gabare Ltd, Winchester


Contents
1 Beginnings 7
2 Growing Pains 1917-39 15
3 The Years of War 1939-46 31
4 Expansion and Development 1946-67 41


Acknowledgment
In preparing this short account of the School I have been most fortunate in
being able to seek and gain the wise advice of Lord Radcliffe, Chairman of
our Governing Body, of Sir Ralph Turner, whose unique experience reaches
back to the early days of the story, and of Col. Hugh Moyse-Bartlett and Mr
John Bracken, who as Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the School always
know more than appears on paper. 1 am indebted also to Professor Bernard
Lewis, who was a fellow student at the School in the middle 1950s; and to
Miss Doreen Wainwright, who has brought into existence the nucleus of an
archive on the history of the School, which we trust will be kept alive and
up-to-date in the years to come. C.H.P.


1 Beginnings
'Although England has greater interests in the East than any other
European country, yet for some unexplained reason, she is the most
behindhand in encouraging the study of modern Oriental languages.'
Major C. M. Watson to Sir Frederick Abel, 20 September 1887
'If ever the College is really established, it will be mainly owing
to your perseverance and activity.'
Lord Cromer to Philip Hartog, 13 May 1914




This 'round, unvarnished tale' may be said to have a beginning in a masterly
memorandum written by Richard Wellesley shortly after he had assumed
the Governor-Generalship of British India in 1798. In a powerfully stated
case for the creation of a British centre of Oriental studies, the nub of his
argument was that 'The civil servants of the English East India Company...
are in fact the ministers and officers of a powerful sovereign.... Their educa-
tion should be founded in a general knowledge of those branches of literature
and science which form the basis of the education of persons destined to
similar occupations in Europe. To this foundation should be added an inti-
mate acquaintance with the history, languages, customs and manners of
the people of India.... No system of education, study or discipline now
exists, either in Europe or in India, founded on the principles or objects
described.' But his far-sighted although admittedly expensive conception of
Fort William College in Bengal was so whittled down by lesser men, 'the
cheeseparers of Leadenhall', unduly obsessed by policies of economy, and
their own alternative, a training centre for young cadets in their late teens
at Haileybury in England, was from the start conceived in terms so narrow
arid restricted, that it in no way fulfilled Wellesley's purposes; and indeed
justly failed to survive the transfer in 1858 of the government of India from
the Company to the Crown. Not until another half century had passed and
the British Empire had spread across the world, not until Britain 'held the
gorgeous East in fee, And was the safeguard of the West' did the Govern-
ment make a considered return to Wellesley's charge. *
Meanwhile in the development of their studies the universities of north-
ern Europe were beginning to reflect the economic and political expansion of
* In the same period several other modest ventures were started in London to meet
the needs of private individuals intending to travel cto the eastward'. John Gilchrist,
formerly Principal of Fort William College, opened in 1818 a London Oriental
Institution in Leicester Square to teach modern Oriental languages, and a former
missionary, Dr Robert Morrison, set up a similar school in the City, but, lacking
support from Government or the London trading interests, they soon had to close down.
Morrison bequeathed his library of one thousand books to University College, whence
they were transferred in 1916 to the School of Oriental Studies.


10 BEGINNINGS
Europe into Asia. In England Chairs of Arabic had existed at Oxford and
Cambridge since the seventeenth century, and to these were added in the
second half of the nineteenth century Chairs of Sanskrit and Chinese. In their
systematic inquiries into human experience and knowledge, the philosophers
and historians of 'the European Enlightenment' began to extend the range
of scholarly research into the far corners of the world, and when the Ben-
thamites, profoundly interested in what they called 'the ladder of civiliza-
tion', founded University College in London in 1826, among the first
of its professorships were those devoted to Oriental literature, Hindustani
and Chinese; and when a few years later the rival King's College in the
Strand opened its doors, some courses were also offered there in Chinese and
more generally in Oriental languages and literature. In the course of the
next four decades part-time teaching was gradually extended in both places
in Oriental subjects, but students were few and far between, and widely
spread over the available fields of study, and although by 1882 a total sum
of no more than £1,300 annually was being expended on twenty-five
teachers, many of them employed part-time, the two Colleges then agreed
for the purpose of economy to avoid any further overlap in Oriental studies.
From this decision it was but a short step to consider the possibility of more
positive forms of co-operation, and a timely external impulse was provided
by the Imperial Institute which bad just been established (1887) as the
national memorial of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Largely through the
initiative of one of its members, Major C. M. Watson, an engineer who had
served for many years in British India and had become convinced that
Britain had a national responsibility to study its rich and diverse languages,
if only for the purpose of achieving more effective administration, the
Institute persuaded the two Colleges to join forces in forming a 'School of
Modern Oriental Languages', which was formally inaugurated by Professor
Max Muller on 11 January 1890. But, lacking the provision of additional
funds and the creation of a separate building or library, 'the School' re-
mained a paper scheme, and in effect arrangements at the two Colleges
continued in their former vein,


BEGINNINGS 11
Nevertheless, at the turn of the century, when the University of London,
with the two Colleges forming an important part of its nucleus, was formally
reorganized as a teaching university, the fact that 'the School' had already
been adumbrated smoothed the way for the inclusion of the teachers con-
cerned in a newly-created University Board of Studies in Oriental Languages
and Literatures, which at once provided within the new university frame-
work a forum for discussion of the future of these studies. It was a member
of this Board, Professor Rhys Davids, holder of a post in Buddhistic studies,
who in 1905 with a fine scholarly impulse presented a paper jointly to the
British Academy and Royal Asiatic Society urging the formation of a
separate School of Oriental Studies within the University, and it was this
Board of Studies which soon afterwards put forward a similar proposal to the
Academic Council of the University. In November of the same year the
Council set up a committee which reported in favour of the creation of a
School of Oriental Studies as a constituent college within the University,
and the Senate responded by sending a deputation to explore the matter
with the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman.
It was extraordinary that the great age of growth in the British Empire,
the political and administrative reconstruction of India, the penetration of
South East Asia and Africa, the exploration of the Pacific, should have been
allowed to pass without the formation in London of an Imperial training
centre. The British response to these challenges had been to devise a series
of ad hoc arrangements, many of them remarkably effective, including
some training for Indian Civil Service probationers at Oxford and Cam-
bridge and at University College, London, and language courses in Hausa
and Swahili as required for the Colonial Service officers at King's College in
the Strand. But by the close of the century renewed attention had been
drawn to the problem of the best way of preparing British officers for the ad-
ministration of the world-wide empire. Curzon's cult of administrative effici-
* It is not irrelevant to note that in the twentieth century Government moved to set
up an Institute of Development Studies when the great transfer of power from British
Empire into Commonwealth was all but completed.


12 BEGINNINGS
ency in India coincided with a growing awareness in London not only that
existing arrangements in Britain for the training of officials for Imperial ser-
vice were inadequate but that other European countries, Russia, France and
Germany, with relatively much smaller imperial commitments, had gone
ahead in this direction and also in the organization of their scholarly study
of the peoples and cultures of Asia. But the factor which in the first decade
of the twentieth century decisively moved British opinion in Westminster
and in the City was the evidence which was beginning to come to light of
the grand and growing scale of German imperial and trading ambitions in
Asia and Africa. These were facts as hard as cannon-balls and it was high
time for Britain to think again.
When, therefore, the University's deputation sought its meeting with the
Prime Minister and his senior Cabinet colleagues it did so in a favourable
climate of official opinion, and thus found no difficulty in evoking a promise
of an immediate departmental committee of inquiry into the proposal for
the formation of a School of Oriental Studies.
Lord Reay, a former Governor of Bombay, who had subsequently served
as President both of the British Academy and of the Royal Asiatic Society,
was unanimously acceptable as chairman, and the University's Academic
Registrar, Philip Hartog, was drafted as secretary. Without delay the
Committee got to work, seeing seventy-three witnesses in twenty-three days
and reporting to Government in December 1908. The comprehensive
evidence given to it by witnesses was overwhelmingly in favour of the
creation of a School of Oriental Studies as part of the University of London.
The major interested parties, the Government departments, commercial
organizations, missions and scholars, one and all were agreed that their
important needs in training could and should be met in such a School, and
that its creation was a matter of urgency in the imperial and national
interests. In putting forward their view the Committee indicated a modest
scope of studies to cover the major languages of the Near East, India,
Malaya and Burma, China and Japan, and East and West Africa, which
would be appropriate to meet expressed practical needs and the require-


Sir Philip Hartog


Sir Denison Ross, the first Director


BEGINNINGS 15
ments of sound scholarship, and estimated that as a start the annual
recurrent cost would be about £14,000. 'There must have been something
important in it,' Hartog later said, 'else how should so many men agree to
be of one mind?' But it was relatively easy for those with vested interests to
say the right things, and the acid test was whether they would provide the
means to bring about the desired end.
An unaccountably long delay of nine months followed before the Report
was published and before Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India,
publicly announced its acceptance by Government, and the somewhat
leisurely course was then adopted of setting up another committee under
Lord Cromer to formulate a practical scheme to give effect to the Report.
Fortunately for all concerned, Philip Hartog, who had become a passionate
convert in the cause of promoting Oriental studies, agreed to ensure con-
tinuity by carrying on as secretary of the new Committee, and with his
customary skill, energy and persistence soon cleared the first, major obstacle
by discovering a large building in Finsbury Circus in the City, then occupied
by the London Institution,* which would be eminently suitable as a home
for the proposed School. However, it was found necessary first to get passed
an Act of Parliament to close down the London Institution, and to arrange
for the transfer, which was not achieved until the close of 1912, and it took
another eighteen months to negotiate a capital grant from Government of
£25,000 to put the building in suitable order and to obtain the promise of
an annual recurrent grant of £4,000. Deeming it quite impossible for the
new School to make a formal start on such exiguous recurrent funds, the
Committee issued in May 1914 a carefully prepared appeal for an endow-
ment of £100,000, but no sooner had gifts begun to come in when all opera-
tions, constructional and financial, were brought to an abrupt halt by the
outbreak of the first World War.
* Its full title was the London Institution for the Advancement of Literature and the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It was incorporated in January 1807. The majority of
the 940 proprietors of the Institution were satisfied to receive £25 in respect of each
'share' which they held, along with the retention of the right to use the reading and
smoking rooms and the lecture theatre and library.


14 BEGINNINGS
Taking courage as the months passed, by some modest indications from
the War Departments that there was work of national importance waiting
to be done by the new school, Hartog, never one to admit defeat, again
stirred his Committee into action. On 5 June 1916 the School received its
Royal Charter as a College of the University of London, and another appeal
committee was at once formed. For raising large sums of money the
times were out of joint, and the public, sunk in 'the mud, misery and
despair' of the Battle of the Somme, responded so slowly that the appeal had
to be closed at £36,267 10s, although very far short of the target. Although
from the start firm in arguing that the School ought not to begin on a pound
less than the Reay Committee's estimate of £14,000 annually, Hartog had
at last reluctantly come round to the view that if any further delays took
place the School might never come into being, and that it was necessary to
'take the current while it serves, or lose our ventures'. In November the
newly-appointed Governing Body invited Dr Denison Ross, who had
served with distinction in the Indian Education Service, to become the
first Director and got him to take office within ten days of his appointment.*
The first students were admitted on 18 January, and on 23 February 1917,
in the presence of a large and distinguished gathering, at the head of which
stood Lord Curzon and other members of the War Cabinet, and to the
strains of music, both Western and Oriental, the School was formally
opened by the King Emperor, George V.
* It was suggested to Philip Hartog that he should become the first Director, but he
declined on the grounds that the Director should be a scholar.


2 Growing Pains, 1917-39
'It is, I believe, destined to be the first School
of Oriental Studies in the world.'
Sir John Hewett, first Chairman of the Governing Body, 22 June 1916
'... each year on the present financial basis involves a... nearer
approach to ultimate crisis.'
Report of the Senate of the University on the School, 1928
'The School is half-starved.'
H. L. Eason, Principal of the University of London, May 1938




the purposes for which the School had been brought into being were set
out in the second article of the Royal Charter. It was 'to be a School of
Oriental Studies in the University of London to give instruction in the
Languages of Eastern and African peoples, Ancient and Modern, and in the
Literature, History, Religion, and Customs of those peoples, especially with
a view to the needs of persons about to proceed to the East or to Africa for
the pursuit of study and research, commerce or a profession and to do all or
any of such other things as the Governing Body of the School consider con-
ducive or incidental thereto, having regard to the provision for those pur-
poses which already exists elsewhere and in particular to the co-ordination
of the work of the School with that of similar institutions both in this
Country and in Our Eastern and African Dominions and with the work of
the University of London and its other Schools.'*
In the many discussions which had preceded the foundation the
primary emphasis throughout had been placed on the need to provide
practical training for those about to proceed overseas, whether as repre-
sentatives of Government, commerce or missions, so that against this back-
ground it was not surprising that initially the Senate of the University of
London should show a proper academic caution in giving only temporary
university recognition to the School for a period of three years, and that for
the express and sole purpose of registering students for higher degrees.
With the Governing Body and its senior officers in being and a Director in
post, with a building ready to start work in, the first task was to recruit
staff,+ Twenty-six of the teachers already concerned with Oriental and
African studies at University and King's Colleges, that is all but two,
accepted transfer to the School, which was doubly encouraging, for out of
its exiguous, recurrent income far from generous terms could be offered,
representing in fact for the majority no more than part-time employment;
* Parts of this Article were later modified by Orders in Council in 1932 and 1938.
+ The School has been exceedingly fortunate in its senior officers. Between the first
Chairman, Sir John Hewett, and the present Chairman, Lord Radcliffe, there may
be mentioned Sir Harcourt Butler, Lord Harlech, Lord Hailey, Sir John Cumming,
Sir George Tomlinson and Lord Scarbrough.


18 GROWING PAINS
Dr L. D. Barnett, the Lecturer in Sanskrit, for example, being offered the
princely sum of £40 annually and the promise of a share of the fees if his
students should ever exceed six in number. Assuming, not unreasonably,
that on these terms the School was running the risk of not being able to
recruit or keep really good men, the Governors made an urgent appeal for
help to the Treasury, which succeeded only in producing from the Financial
Secretary, the young Stanley Baldwin, the laconic reply that 'the oppor-
tunities of earning an income from the teaching of Oriental languages must
be so limited that it does not appear to me that you ought to have any
difficulty in retaining your existing lecturers or acquiring new ones on
existing terms'. They were, in short, to be like Robert Surtees's gentlemen,
'generally spoken of as having nothing a year, paid quarterly'.
With such restricted financial resources all that could be attempted in the
first decade after the School's foundation was gradually to transform the
numerous part-time into full-time appointments, and simultaneously to
attract a small and if possible distinguished nucleus of senior teachers. As a
beginning the University title of Professor of Persian was conferred on the
new Director, to which were added by 1922 four further professorships and
the same number of readerships. With such names among those appointed
as Thomas Arnold in Arabic, Ralph Turner in Sanskrit, Grahame Bailey in
Urdu, Sutton Page in Bengali, and Henry Dodwell in History, the School
was at once assured of a high academic reputation. Initially, teaching was
offered in twenty subjects, loosely organized into seven groups for con-
venience, steadily increasing in the early years up to a total of seventy-four
courses in 1952-53. But the small size of classes, only two per cent attracting
eleven students or more and ninety-five per cent consisting of fewer than
six, made the School highly expensive to run, and rendered inevitable the
extensive use of temporary assistance paid by the hour.
In the aftermath of war Britain was suffering a painful reaction from the
exertions, fears and losses of the previous five years. The national energies
had run low, and the insidious effects of war-time inflation followed by a
swift descent into post-war deflation were already being widely felt. Along


19 GROWING PAINS
with other major national institutions the universities had suffered, and
every part of the School's work in the early years was bedevilled by lack of
money. The glaring inadequacy of university staff salaries in London in-
duced the London County Council to initiate improvements, but although a
higher, standardized scale was introduced, the School itself was unable to
make the recommended increases.
Adamant though he had been in saying that it would be folly to make a
beginning on an annual sum of less than £14,000, in fact the first tentative
annual estimates of income presented by Hartog were for £8,806 and for
expenditure £14,065, and although the budget was eventually balanced, it
was a continuing cause for anxiety that a large proportion of the income wras
precarious. The only certain elements were the £4,000 annually provided
by the Treasury, plus one-third of that amount promised by the LCC,
along with the dividends on the invested appeal monies. From the start,
too, contrary to all expectations, relatively little use was made of the School
by commercial firms, which kept down the income from students' fees to
less than twenty per cent of the total.
However, a general approach to the Treasury then being made on behalf
of all British universities and the formal emergence of the new university
grants system eased the School's situation, so that its Treasury grant was
soon raised from £4,000 to £7,000 and in 1921-22 to £12,000, and four
years later, when university grants generally were restored to earlier levels,
to £15,250. Even so, from 1924 onwards, the School's annual expenditure
began regularly to exceed income and fresh sources of aid had to be sought.
In 1925 the Governors authorized the Director to pass round the hat to
commercial firms, but entirely without success, and, two years later, the
occasion of the tenth anniversary was used to issue a public appeal for funds,
but, hastily conceived and ill-prepared, it produced only a slight response,
barely enough, it was said, to cover the cost of the splendid lunch at which
the appeal was launched.
For Ross especially, who bore the brunt, it was a dispiriting period, but
he continued with unquenchable zest to seize every chance of raising money,


20 GROWING PAINS
setting up a committee to formulate applications to the charitable trusts, dis-
patching a memorandum to the British Indemnity Delegation at Peking,
sending begging letters to eleven of the princely rulers of the Indian States,
and not least seeking out likely donors at society dinners. But money was hard
to come by, and at the end of it all the School was better off by about a mere
£750 annually, Imperial Chemical Industries having been persuaded to
offer 250 guineas a year for five years, and the Nizam of Hyderabad £500 a
year for three years for the study of Arabic and Persian. No wonder that the
Director was heard singing in his well-known, light baritone (which it
was said had first brought him to Lord Curzon's notice in India) the refrain
from Gilbert and Sullivan,
It's true I've got no shirts to wear;
It's true my butcher's bill is due;
It's true my prospects all look blue
But don't let that unsettle you!
Never you mind!
As Gilbert concluded, the only thing to do in the circumstances was,
Roll on!
On the academic side, too, the prospects seemed thin. Opinion in the
University generally was uneasy on what was thought to be the School's
inexplicable slowness in fulfilling the high expectations of the Reay Report,
and although recognition for the registration of higher degrees had been
renewed periodically, it was generally agreed that the time had arrived for
some stock-taking. In particular, attention was directed to the disproportion
between the relatively large number of students attending the School for
short courses of an elementary and sub-university character and the very
small number actually taking university courses. In 1926-27, for example,
the student body of 528 included no more than 65 working for university
degrees or School examinations; and the only sustained demand for univer-
sity courses had been in History, coming mainly from students from India.
The Senate therefore decided to institute a thorough inquiry, and mean-
while took the apparently ominous step of extending recognition for higher


21 GROWING PAINS
degree purposes for a period of only one year from March 1927. Against the
background of a precarious financial situation, a disappointing response
from commercial and industrial firms, and the slow growth of university
work proper, it seemed that the School's future as a separate institution
hung in the balance.
At an early stage in the inquiry the Senate members came to appreciate
the very real difficulties with which the School had been grappling, and
therefore found no difficulty in agreeing that 'it is inevitable that... the
cost of instruction in the School... must always be disproportionate to the
income derived from students' fees', and that 'until steps have been taken
which will place the School in a position to meet in full its annual liabilities,
each year on the present financial basis involves a lessening of available
resources and a nearer approach to ultimate crisis'. Such modest increases
of expenditure as had already taken place were approved as reasonable and
unavoidable 'if the School is to fulfil its purpose'.
It was recognized, too, that the School had attracted a distinguished
professoriate and with remarkable speed had achieved through the publica-
tion of its Bulletin (the initial volume of which, for instance, included many
of Arthur Waley's elegant, vital and lucid translations of Chinese poems)
an unrivalled reputation in the field of orientalist scholarship, and that its
library was forging a valuable instrument of research for the future. These
considerations led the Inspectors to assert in conclusion that 'the School of
Oriental Studies is rendering great services to the State and to the Empire,
and in doing so it is reflecting credit upon the University of London, and
doing work which the University should be proud to undertake', and since
in their view 'the School's continuance on a sound financial basis was not
only of University but of Imperial concern', they urged the Senate to
approach Government for help on behalf of the School. On its part, the
Senate, fully concurring in these findings and with a gesture of faith in the
future, extended the School's recognition for both first and higher degrees,
and, with a blaze of enthusiasm in the session that followed, approved the
introduction of first degree courses in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Gujarati,


22 GROWING PAINS
History (with reference to India and to the Near and Middle East), Japanese,
Malay, Marathi, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali, Indo-Aryan, Sinhalese, Tamil,
Turkish, Urdu and Hindi.
From this thorough scrutiny the School therefore emerged with great
credit and, with the opening of the doors for entry into full university
status, confidence among the senior members began to rise. A memorandum
urging the need for expansion in both linguistic and cultural studies, in-
cluding anthropology, was submitted on the occasion of a visit by the Univer-
sity Grants Committee, along with a request for a recurrent increase of
£5,000, and university syllabuses for the approved first degree courses in
sixteen subjects were eagerly prepared, even though it was not at all clear
where the students were to be found. When in the same period it was
asked what its own attitude would be towards the development of the newly
acquired University of London site in Bloomsbury, the School without
hesitation indicated that it would welcome the opportunity of moving to
'the University precinct' and coming into closer touch with the central
administration and with other colleges and libraries, thus enabling its staff
and students to create and enjoy 'a larger university life'. Although in some
ways it would be sorry to leave the City, the School felt that it could do
what was required equally well in Bloomsbury, and in any event experience
had shown that the demands of the commercial world had fallen far short
of the expectations of those witnesses who had given evidence to the Reay
Committee. In the light of the Senate's vote of confidence, there was also
some feeling among some of the members at the School, not as yet fully
crystallized or forcefully expressed, that its true future lay not so much in
providing ad hoc training courses as in creating an advanced centre of
university studies.
Thus far, despite the accretion year by year of new subjects, the School's
academic structure and administrative system had remained relatively un-
changed. In theory the final word on academic policy rested with the
Academic Board, but this body was too large and miscellaneous both in its
composition and spread of studies to provide effective discussion, leadership


23 GROWING PAINS
or decision, and therefore in practice the control of affairs, both admini-
strative and academic, had remained to a very considerable extent in the
hands of Ross, the Director. Always genial, bursting with energy, enthusiasm
and good living, a great conversationalist, at heart something of an enfant
terrible, Ross carried lightly his responsibilities and the many troubles that
beset the School, and never failed to radiate confidence. But, lacking the
necessary funds, he had found it impossible to look far ahead. There was
no move to drop the initial emphasis on the provision of practical training,
and no determined attempt was made to define clear lines of academic policy
for the future and to devise the ways and means of following them. It is true
that on occasion he consulted his senior colleagues, but the system was
casual, and in the context of the challenge offered by the Senate's report,
and by the acceptance by the University of a very wide range of new first
degree courses and the urgent need to raise funds, it became evident that
the loose, albeit comfortable administrative and academic arrangements of
the past would have to be replaced.
In 1932, therefore, the decision was taken to reorganize teaching and
research into eight departments, consisting of six devoted to the study of
languages and cultures, and two responsible for Oriental history and law,
and for phonetics and linguistics, the latter incidentally marking the formal
introduction of a new discipline into British university studies. The six
'regional' departments covered respectively Ancient India and Iran, Modern
India and Ceylon, South East Asia and the Islands, the Far East, the Near
East, and Africa. To take charge in each of these a Head of Department
was appointed, and all of the Heads of Departments were brought together
in a committee under the chairmanship of the Director with responsibility
for initiating and guiding academic policy. It was a sensible arrangement
which has lasted down to the present and has served the School well.
For the first time, therefore, systematic academic planning over the whole
range of the School's work became possible, one of the earliest consequences
* In 1936 the number of departments was reduced to six by absorbing Ancient India
and Iran, and South East Asia into other departments.


24 GROWING PAINS
being the emergence of proposals for a purposeful scheme of research into
linguistics and African languages. Thus far, teaching in African languages
had been in the hands of the veteran Werner sisters, Alice and Mary, and
in the discussions on what should be done on their retirement an ambitious
scheme was propounded by the young phonetician Mr (afterwards Pro-
fessor) Arthur Lloyd James for the establishment of an international centre
of linguistic study, research and teaching giving special emphasis to spoken
African languages, and an approach was made to the Rockefeller Founda-
tion for financial support.
University institutions in the United Kingdom, not least the School, are
deeply indebted to the Rockefeller Foundation, not only for the most
generous financial aid, but even more for the wise counsel which when
sought is always helpfully and tactfully proffered by the Foundation's
officers; and this occasion once more illustrated the rule. It was largely
owing to the intervention of James Gunn of the Foundation that the rather
diffuse original proposal finally emerged as a compact programme of African
linguistic research with an annual budget of £5,000 for three years. Through
this work, which was in fact continued with Rockefeller aid down to 1958,
a nucleus of staff was created under the gifted phonetician, Ida Ward,
the Department of Africa was brought into being, and the unique scheme
of research and teaching was started which has continued with gather-
ing weight and momentum down to the present. It was a natural corollary,
first suggested in 1955 by Lord Lugard, one of the Governors, that the
title of the School should be enlarged to include Africa, which was done
three years later.
In this period the pattern of teaching in most departments had gradually
assumed a new shape, with a growing emphasis on university courses, thus
providing some justification for the faith recently expressed by the Senate.
The pattern and content of university education in Britain had been rela-
tively little affected by the growth of the British Empire in Asia and Africa,
and apart from any provision which was sought by Government departments
for the training of civil servants, there was very little academic demand by


25 GROWING PAINS
British students for what the School could offer. To most the studies appeared
exotic, even mysterious, 'gleams of a remoter world', and no one today who
is concerned with extra-European studies and who did not actually grow up
in Britain between the two wars can readily appreciate how restricted were
the opportunities in these studies for British students. Those who have
known only a land flowing with milk, if not honey, cannot easily imagine
the desert. There was an almost total absence of scholarships, of travel and
publication funds, of career opportunities, which deterred all but a tiny
handful of dedicated young British scholars. Although British students taking
university courses were few and far between, the traditional attraction of
the mother country and metropolitan centre on the dependent countries of
the Empire, combined with the presence of a small group of really outstand-
ing scholars (now including, for example, 'the young men', Harold Bailey,
Hamilton Gibb and Walter Henning), began to draw students from abroad,
especially for postgraduate study. It was ironic that it should have been
university students from overseas rather than from Britain who for many
years, and until quite recently, most benefited from the School's existence.
By 1927-28 there were 115 students at the School from overseas, a number
which by 1936-37 had risen to 174, that is to very nearly 40 per cent of
the School's total student population of 428.* Some there may be in British
universities who, in the pungent words of Sir Ifor Evans, 'prefer the age of
Rutherford to that of Franks', but the truth is that for many young British
scholars it was a bitterly cramping period.
Despite this welcome increase in work of university standard the bulk of
the teaching was still being given in short courses, usually of several months'
duration and mainly for members of government, business firms and missions.
The demand from firms for this type of course usually constituted no more
than between ten and fifteen per cent of the whole, and a renewed attempt
to redress this presumed imbalance was made by offering Commercial
* At this period the students taking university courses in Indo-Aryan, Indian History,
Indian Law, Arabic and Persian were almost wholly drawn from the Indian Empire
and Ceylon.


26 GROWING PAINS
Certificates to those who completed the short courses, but the demand soon
fell away and the scheme was abandoned. On the other hand the longer
and more testing first- and second-year School Certificates and Diplomas,
mainly in language studies, had been from the start serving a small but
steady demand and were therefore maintained. It seemed that in meeting
effective demand the School had already begun to take a turn away from
the provision of short courses of a sub-university character towards the
development of university courses, but the rate of change was so slow that
it seemed almost imperceptible.
Nevertheless, it was consistent with this trend that when the University,
which was actively proceeding to develop the Bloomsbury site, offered the
School a place within the precinct, it should be accepted with alacrity.
Negotiations for the sale of the Finsbury building were started (complicated
somewhat by the need to compensate at a finally agreed cost of £5,000 the
rump of the London Institution members), and in July 1936 completed for
the sum of £219,000, and, pending the erection of the proposed new build-
ing in Bloomsbury, temporary premises for administration and teaching
were rented in Vandon House, a cramped, red-brick building in West-
minster, and for the library in Clarence House, near St James's Park.
The Finsbury building had served its purpose admirably, and no one who
worked there is likely to forget either its cellars, which for long provided
the common rooms for staff and students, or its serene and lovely library
reading room, whose wooden floors and panelling glowed with subdued light;
there within its alcoves could always be found
tranquil solitude
And such society
As is quiet, wise and good.
Had the School been able to foresee that through the vicissitudes of war and
peace it was to be denied for a period of more than thirty years the facility
of a new library building, it might well have hesitated to make the move.
On a calmer note of assessment, the decision to move from the City to
the University precinct forms a critical turning-point in the School's history.


27 GROWING PAINS
Remoteness of place encouraged academic isolation; the School was in the
University but not of it. As Henry Dodwell, on the eve of retirement and
of death, pointed out later, in an unforgettably moving plea for the main-
tenance of high academic standards, it was of immense benefit for a small,
young College, in which by and large there were few long-established
traditions and standards, to move into the heart of the University; symboli-
cally right, too, that its studies should be taking a central place in the world
exchange which is developing in our own time.
Plans for the new building, which was to accommodate an academic staff
of forty, a library of several hundred thousand volumes, a small admini-
strative staff and an undeclared number of students, were quickly prepared
and readily approved by all concerned. So smoothly beguiling was this pro-
gress that the Governors could be forgiven for announcing in a mood of
optimism in 1938 that 'the School would be installed in its Bloomsbury home
by March 1941'. Time and again in the matter of new buildings was hope
to triumph over experience.
The favourable terms of sale of the Finsbury building apparently pro-
vided for the foreseeable capital needs of the School, and therefore threw
renewed emphasis on the continuing inadequacy of the recurrent funds.
From all sources the annual income had crept up to £20,000 by the early
1920s, and slowly to £30,000 through the following decade of economic
depression. Renewed appeals to City firms had elicited no response, and by
this time it was becoming obvious that Britain's industry and commerce
were so preoccupied with the task of extricating themselves from the
economic slump that the School's only hope of aid lay in trying on national
grounds to obtain greater support from Government; and the gathering
political tension between the European powers and the clear signs of German
and Italian and Japanese ambitions in Asia and Africa encouraged this
switch of emphasis.
With some Departments of State the School's association was close. From
the start the India Office had recognized the value of the School's work in
training Indian Civil Service probationers by making an annual grant of


28 GROWING PAINS
£1,250, soon increased to £1,500, and in 1922 raised again to £2,250, but
it was remarkable that, despite the School's substantial contribution to the
training of Sudan and Colonial Service officers, no similar recurring grant
(except for an annual £30 from Hong Kong) had ever been made by the
Colonial Office or by Colonial Governments. When, therefore, a carefully
co-ordinated approach was made with the ready support of the Secretary of
State, Mr Ormsby Gore (later Lord Harlech), to all the Colonial Govern-
ments, it readily evoked from fifteen of them for the session 1938-39 a vote
of £4,380. At the same time the Treasury grant was raised by £1,500 to a
total of £17,433.* By this period, therefore, the annual income and ex-
penditure had climbed to close on £40,000, but with one-third of the total
income still being drawn from acl hoc annual grants and donations, the
School's existing programme of work was far from secure, the rate of
growth of staff was small and long-term planning was impossible.
But these financial worries, although acute, were overlaid by the fears
arising from the quick succession of international crises, apparently and
inexorably leading to another world war, and consequently by anxious
thoughts of what part in that event the School would be called on to play;
and by the gravest doubts about its state of preparedness.
At this critical juncture Ross reached the point of retirement, and was
succeeded by Ralph Turner, who had first joined the School in 1922 as Pro-
fessor of Sanskrit after serving in the Indian Education Service and in
Allenby's army in Palestine. With a distinct flair for publicity and un-
daunted optimism, Ross had managed against heavy odds in a most difficult
and depressing inter-war period of twenty years to keep the School alive.
This was a considerable achievement, but he had not been able to make of it
the imperial and practical training centre envisaged in the Reay Report, or
to define clearly the School's proper function as a College of the University.
It may be that the two functions were not easily reconcilable. In retrospect
* This grant for 1936-57 already included the Treasury grant fixed at £13,250 in
1925-26 and the LCC grant originally fixed at £1,333, both of which had been in-
corporated in 1930-31 into the block grant of £15,933 from the University Court.


The Finsbury Circus school building




29 GROWING PAINS
it seems clear that the move to Bloomsbury was decisive, but time had to
elapse before this could be appreciated. Meanwhile other, more urgent con-
siderations had to be faced. Taking over in a period of national emergency,
Turner naturally saw his primary task as that of preparing the School to
meet any demands which British involvement in a major war in Asia and
Africa would impose on it.
Disquieting news continued to reach London of the great strides in the
Asian and African fields of study being taken by Germany and Italy avowedly
for the purpose of exploiting future political conquests in Asia and Africa.
This threw into high relief the scantiness of the School's resources, the
fragility of its academic structure, and the lack of British national policy. A
case to begin to put the situation right, especially to build up the School's
coverage of strategically important languages, was therefore hurriedly pre-
pared and submitted through the University to the Secretaries of State for
India and the Colonies and to the Financial Secretary of the War Office, as
a result of which an inter-departmental committee was set up to consider in
the national context the cost of the School's urgent needs. This was rapidly
assessed by the committee at £25,000 annually. With such progress hopes ran
high, but bitter disappointment soon followed when the Treasury on the
ground of economy rejected outright the committee's recommendation.
Meanwhile, on the assumption that in the event of war London would be
immediately and heavily bombed, arrangements were made to evacuate the
School to Cambridge, where some accommodation for staff and teaching
was reserved in Christ's College.
Thus, when war finally broke out in September 1939, the School found
itself in temporary quarters in Cambridge, with its financial resources fully
committed to a half-completed building in Bloomsbury, with its staff
scattered, its library in storage and the bitter knowledge that compared even
with the Reay proposals of 1909 its teaching establishment was still deficient
in every department. Founded in the closing stages of the first World War to
meet national needs, financially half-starved in the two decades of peace,
it nervously braced itself to respond to a challenge of a totally new order.




3 The Years of War,
1939-46
'During the war the advice of scholars has again and again been thrust
aside by unimaginative officials, military as 3vell as civil, only
to be taken later, sometimes too late.'
Professor R. L. Turner to the Earl of Scarbrough, 1 October 1945
'The Commission... has unanimously reached the conclusion that the
existing provision for these studies is unworthy of our country and people.'
Report of the Interdepartmental Commission of Enquiry on Oriental,
Slavonic, East European and African Studies, 16 April 1946
'The foresight of the Senate and the Court in urging upon
the Government the need for an expansion of the School was amply proved
by the experience of war.'
Report of the Court of the University of London, 6 January 1947




it was only after the greatest hesitation and on Government's advice that
the School had left the metropolitan centre for Cambridge, and as soon as it
became clear that despite German air raids it was possible to resume work
there, a return was made in July 1940. Only sixty-two students had followed
the School to Cambridge, falling to twenty-six in 1940-41; and there had never
been any question but that in time of war the School's proper place was to
be in close touch with the Service Ministries and Departments of State.
The School's half-completed building in Bloomsbury had become an
early casualty of the bombing, receiving in September 1940 a direct hit,
which incidentally quite demolished the newly-constructed (and fortunately
empty) air raid shelter in the basement, but repairs were at once made and
building continued.
Anticipating an early entry into its new home, the School itself had
found temporary quarters in eleven small and overcrowded rooms in Broad-
way Court, overlooking St James's Park station, and was therefore filled
with consternation to learn that the Ministry of Information, already in-
stalled since the outbreak of war in the Senate House of the University,
wanted to play cuckoo in the School's nest by occupying the whole of the
new building. Immediately a battle of argument was joined for possession,
Sir Philip Hartog, at this period a Governor and as dedicated and selfless as
ever, energetically jumping in to lead what proved to be his last fight on
behalf of the School, but it was not until February 1943, and then only after
final reference to the Cabinet and House of Commons, that a solution was
found by which the shell of the whole building as originally planned was
to be completed, a matter of the greatest subsequent importance, the
School occupying the two upper floors and part of the basement, and the
Ministry the remainder on condition that it would vacate six months after
the end of the war.
It had been taken for granted in the discussions leading to its foundation
towards the close of the first World War that the School would have a signifi-
cant national part to play in any future world conflict, but by the outbreak
of the second World War and despite the long, preceding period of increasing


54 THE YEARS OF WAR
international tension only the most tentative indication had been given by
the War Office that in the event of hostilities it foresaw the need for some
courses for officers in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Japanese and Siamese. But
no steps had been taken to put the School in funds or to make sure that in
the event teachers would be available, and by late 1941 only two of these
courses for a total of twenty officers had in fact been firmly requested.
Meanwhile some work of a voluntary character had been contributed, in-
cluding research by the Phonetics Section into radio-telephone speech for
the Air Ministry, and an ad hoc short, intensive course which had been
organized for officials of the Colonial Office and British Council. This con-
stituted a ludicrously small contribution to the war effort, and the Director
found it alarming that despite the increasing scale of the war in the Middle
East and Africa and the threat of war in the Far East, no far-reaching pro-
gramme of language training for the Services was even being considered,
especially since at that stage of the war there happened to be many students
at universities awaiting delayed call-up into the Services who would have
provided admirable recruits for such training. As a partial gesture the School
itself volunteered to provide a short course in Urdu for officers and cadets
intended for the Indian Army, the cost of fees being met by the War Office,
and, although no maintenance grants were provided, some 565 cadets and
officers took advantage of the offer.
Acutely dissatisfied by this hand-to-mouth treatment of the problem, the
School in the summer of 1941 made formal representations to both the
Foreign Office and War Office, and in view of the threatening posture of
Japan pointed to the critical British shortage of experts in Japanese and to
the long period of training which servicemen would have to undergo to
acquire a knowledge of that language. It was true that at that particular
juncture the Services were stretched to the utmost, already quite unable to
meet the manpower needs of the vast, widely scattered theatres of war, but
the School would have been doing less than its duty if it had not urgently
continued to seek discussion of a problem which sooner or later would have
to be faced and solved. However, the War Office's response, when it came


54 THE YEARS OF WAR
in August 1941, was discouraging, and expressed in a style which no doubt
would have earned the Prime Minister's censure. 'So far as can be reason-
ably foreseen at present,' it said, 'in spite of the kaleidoscopic changes which
have taken place in the countries which might in the future develop into
theatres of war, we feel we are at present reasonably insured in the matter
of officers knowing Oriental languages.'
Two months later Britain was at war with Japan, and by the end of the
year, Malaya and Singapore had been overrun, and the British Intelligence
Departments were desperately casting around for men able to read and
speak Japanese, only to find that, despite the War Office's recently expressed
optimism, the supply compared with the demand, as they had been informed
by the School, was almost non-existent. When the School renewed the offer
its services were accepted, but some eight months were still to elapse before
any servicemen were actually sent to begin their instruction. Once trained,
the men were eagerly snapped up, and so great was the military need in the
Indian and Far Eastern fields of war that those whose only training was a
ten weeks' course at the School in recognizing and recording Japanese
radio signals, were on arrival in India pressed into translating documents,
pending the arrival of translators proper, who could at the earliest not be
ready before August 1943. However, after this agonisingly slow start, these
basic courses were built up steadily and satisfactorily, and by October 1945
nearly 600 men had qualified.
Large numbers of radio-telephonists with some knowledge of Japanese
were required in the Far Eastern theatre of war, especially by the Royal
Air Force, but the preparation of a short, effective course offered peculiar
difficulties. In the early days of the war, Professor Lloyd James, Head of the
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, had made some useful explorations
of the problems, abruptly cut short by his tragic illness and death, and
his successor, the immensely energetic and ingenious J. R. Firth, went on
to devise a system by which men could be trained in a very short period to
record accurately. The RAF sent its first men for this course in October
1942, and at the same time, on the not unreasonable assumption that the


54 THE YEARS OF WAR
Fleet Air Arm would have like needs, the School gave a similar invitation
to the Admiralty. But the latter showed no immediate interest. Within a
year, however, the Navy was vainly trying to borrow men so trained from
the RAF and by August 1943 had started to send its own men for training
to the School.
As the Japanese pressed home their early military successes in Burma,
and the British sought to consolidate their defensive positions in Assam, it
became obvious that links with China would be of great importance, and
the Director therefore sought to draw the War Office into discussions on the
likely need for men trained in Chinese. But he got little encouragement,
reporting: 'Later, when a Chinese army was coining to our help over the
passes into Burma, I again sought an interview at the War Office to urge the
training of even a small number of officers in Chinese. I received my
answer: educated Chinese spoke English; our liaison officers had no need to
speak Chinese. In what era was this senior officer of the Intelligence Depart-
ment living? I have heard that Chinese soldiers, even if they could speak
English, were not pleased that their own language was so little regarded; and
the imponderable has weight even in war. The story is as before. The advice,
rejected in 1942, begins to be taken in 1945. This year the Services have
already sent 71 for Chinese, and more are to follow.'
As the demands of war mounted and as the Service Ministries became able
to assess their manpower and to project their forward needs more accurately,
the School was called on to undertake a wider range of work. The Postal and
Telegraph Censorship Department enlisted the School's aid in reading
letters in languages which could not be dealt with in the Uncommon
Languages Section of the censorship, more than 52,000 altogether in 192
languages being in this way dealt with during the war, reaching a peak of
more than 1,000 a month in the early part of 1945. The demand by the
Services for intensive courses in a variety of languages continued to grow,
bringing into the School, for example, in the session 1945-44 about 1,000
servicemen, and in the process overwhelming the School's restricted accom-
modation and necessitating the transfer for the remainder of the war of the


The years of war 37
Far Eastern courses under the wise and maternal care of Professor Eve
Edwards to a group of converted houses in Sussex Gardens. Altogether 1,674
servicemen passed through courses at the School between 1942 and 1946.
With the accompanying sharp rise in income from fees, the School's
financial troubles seemed to be over, and modest annual financial surpluses
accrued, reaching £8,140 in 1942-43, £5,910 in 1943-44 and £3,712 in
1944-45. But the School's financial buoyancy was more apparent than real,
its annual recurrent grant from the University being still no more than
£21,000 and, casting a look ahead to the post-war period, it seemed certain
that the School's financial position would be no more secure than in the
pre-war days. 'Wars and rumours of wars' there might be, but this factor
it seemed was to remain constant.
During the long months of preparation to invade Hitler's Europe, thought
in Britain was everywhere leaping ahead to the post-war world, creating a
climate of opinion in favour of development and change. It was to be ex-
pected that in the context of its assumed national role and its somewhat
chastening experiences hi the pre-war and early war years, the School
should wish to re-examine its own position, and the adequacy of the pro-
vision of those studies in Britain for which it carried a major responsibility.
The incidence of war, especially the initial military debacle in the Far East
and the associated failure of British military intelligence, could not but
provoke renewed discussion on national needs, both practical and academic.
The plain fact was that in many respects the School's provision of studies
still fell short of what the Reay Report had proposed in 1909, and the sharp
comparison of reality with what appeared urgently necessary to sustain the
war effort evoked from the School's departments a succession of plans for
development, first for Near and Far Eastern studies, then for Indian studies,
and in February 1944 at the Foreign Office's request another consolidated
statement of need. Some months later a comprehensive summary of all of
these proposals was gathered together and put forward as a plan for the
expansion of the School over a ten-year period from the date of the end
of the war.


54 THE YEARS OF WAR
The School founded its case not so much on the actual military needs of
the nation in wartime, which were only too evident, but on the likelihood
of great changes in Asia and Africa in the immediate post-war period. 'The
tide of nationalism,' it said, 'is running high in every Oriental and African
country, and the peoples of those countries will look forward to great economic
development, industrial, commercial and agricultural. In this they will
welcome the assistance of the West, but not in the bygone spirit of submission
to Western authority.' An expansion of Oriental and African studies in
British universities, it was argued, would assist in preparing and equipping
Britain to take a full and sympathetic part in these changes, and in adjusting
her own outlook and policies accordingly. The School estimated that it
would need an annual recurrent grant of £35,000 rising to £125,000 by the
end of the decade, along with a capital grant of £100,000 to enlarge its
accommodation.
Meanwhile, in interviews with the Minister for War, Richard Law, and
with Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India, the Director had
expressed the conviction that the time was ripe to set up a Government Com-
mission to review the future of Oriental and African studies in Britain, and
Lord Hailey, at this time Chairman of the School, at once added his power-
ful voice. The movement of world affairs, the ebb and flow of British
fortunes, favoured the proposal, and the great changes brought about by
the war in Asia and Africa, and the implications of the wartime alliance with
Russia had made it urgently necessary to make a fresh appraisal of Britain's
position in relation to these major areas.
In June 1944 Mr Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
therefore announced among other measures the Government's intention of
setting up a commission 'to examine the facilities offered by universities
and other educational institutions in Great Britain for the study of Oriental,
Slavonic, East European, and African languages and cultures, to consider
what advantage is being taken of these facilities and to formulate recom-
mendations for their improvement'.
Losing little time, the commission of fourteen members started its


54 THE YEARS OF WAR
inquiries in 1945 under the chairmanship of Lord Scarbrough. Deeply
interested in these studies through his service as Governor of Bombay and
as Minister for India and Burma, and subsequently to become their life-long
patron, no one more eminently fitted could have been chosen for the task, and
with the admirably prompt report of his Commission's findings in April
1946 and their publication in the following year, scholars had good cause to
invoke the poet, Horace, in hailing
Maecenas atavis edite regibus
O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.
The Scarbrough Report formed a milestone in the development of these
studies in Britain. Without beating about the bush, it declared that the
course of war had already given a clear indication of the importance which
increasing contacts between countries would assume after the war and of the
relatively growing significance of the countries of Asia, Africa and the
Slavonic world, and had at the same time revealed Britain's deficiencies in
the number of persons available to provide expert knowledge and teaching
about the governments and peoples of these parts. In its opinion, this kind
of knowledge in a world at peace no less than at war had to find a permanent
and growing place in British culture, starting in the universities, where the
existing scale of research and teaching was quite inadequate to meet
Britain's immediate needs.
The first requirement in the Commission's view was to build strong
university departments, primarily in the study of languages with some
related cultural studies, in place of the few isolated professorial posts which
for centuries had existed in several British universities. As a means to recruit
staff for these new departments, Treasury studentships were proposed, and
provision was also to be made for those so trained to keep up-to-date by
travel abroad. The Commission was not deterred by the expectation that for
some time to come the number of undergraduates in these departments
would be small, and declared that the national importance of these studies
and the evident need for much more research justified exceptional treat-
ment. In this proposed programme of growth it recognized that all fields of


54 THE YEARS OF WAR
study relating to Asia and Africa would be developed in the University of
London, mainly at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and that for
economy, convenience and efficiency the study of the languages of Africa
and South East Asia in particular should be concentrated there. Incisive in
its analysis and practical in its recommendations, the report was given a
warm and unanimous welcome in Britain.
The fulfilment of the recommendations of the Report was envisaged as
requiring a period of ten years, the likely cost at the half-way stage being
assessed at £225,000 annually, with a similar increase to follow over a
second five-year period. Capital expenditure, too, would be required for
new premises to accommodate this expansion.
So far as they affected the universities, the Government promptly
accepted these recommendations and allocated the recurrent sums required
as an earmarked grant for the first five years, and the University Grants
Committee at once invited selected universities, including London and the
School, to submit their proposals for development. Although general
reference had been made in the Report to the need for capital funds for
building, no specific proposals were included, and the post-war priority
rightly given to the repair of bomb damage, associated with a strictly applied
licensing system caused the subject to be deferred, much to the School's
disadvantage later.
In the confidence that its importunate pressure on Government and its
own contribution to the war effort had played no small part in clearing the
way for the commission, the School submitted the scheme of expansion which
it had long since drawn up, being promptly asked by the commission's chair-
man to raise its sights and increase the scale of its proposals.
Thus at the beginning of the post-war period, which happened conveni-
ently to coincide with the start of the first post-war quinquennium for the
universities, the prospect for the development of Oriental and African
studies seemed set fair, and orientalists everywhere rejoiced in 'The inno-
cent brightness of a new-born day'.


4 Expansion and
Development, 1946-67
'Adopted, the Scarbrough Report will be a new charter for Oriental
and African studies in this country...'
Professor R. L. Turner to the East India Association, 19 June 1947
'The School's work should be related to the conditions of the time____
With the rising importance of Asia and Africa in the modern world,
Oriental and African studies should take their proper place as a normal
part of the education of western society.'
The School to the Rockefeller Foundation, 16 October 1957
'The School of Oriental and African Studies has built up
a pre-eminent position, nationally and internationally, in the depth
and range of its activities.'
Statement of the Chairman of the University Grants Committee
to the University of London, 21 October 1965




THE SCARBROUGH EXPANSION
Well in advance of any of the monies which might be forthcoming under
the proposals of the Scarbrough Report, the School had been promised by
the Court of the University of London that its recurrent grant would be
raised to £60,000 annually for the period of the 1947-52 quinquennium.
At the same time the adoption by Government of the Devonshire Report
on training for the Colonial Service had assured the School of a grant for
African language studies, so that for the first time ever, it knew that it
could rely on an ample surplus and therefore could make an immediate start
on its post-war programme and at the same time take long views on future
development. At last there was 'some honey and plenty of money'.
Consistent with the proposals of the Scarbrough Report and with its own
long-standing intention, a period of expansion over ten years was en-
visaged in which the academic establishment starting at 63 posts would rise
at the half-way stage to a total of 218 posts and at the close in 1957 to 256
posts, providing for general growth and spread in the humanities across the
vast expanse of Asian and African studies, with emphasis on the study of
history, language and literature and including a very modest addition in
law and anthropology.
Against a background of three decades of financial stringency and of
academic frustration and of the more recent disturbance and distortion
caused by the war, this was undoubtedly a formidable and far-reaching
programme. Yet in the post-war climate of opinion it was in keeping with
the times, for in Britain policies of expansion were in demand. A new Govern-
ment, pledged to a policy of reform and development, had taken office, the
unexpectedly quick victory and armistice in the Far East had uplifted the
national spirit, and the minds of people everywhere were set on fulfilling
the many ambitious plans which had been formulated to keep hope alive in
the dark days of war.
Death met I too,
And saw the dawn glow through.
In this context there was no reason why those who for many years had


44 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
called for the expansion of the School should question the correctness of this
policy or the School's ability to carry through such a massive enterprise.
But there was one factor of supreme importance. Before the war the School
had been fortunate in getting teachers of distinction from the missionary
societies and the overseas services, not least the civil and education services
in India, but with the winding down of these Services it was obvious that
everything depended on the School's ability to attract young British scholars
into these new fields of study. In justification of their own optimism they
were able to point to the existence of a score of temporary teachers,
especially in Chinese and Japanese, recruited from among young service-
men to run the wartime courses, who already provided a reserve, and to
the large numbers of demobilized servicemen about to return from the
Asian and African theatres of war, many of whom it was assumed wrould
have gained an enduring interest in those areas. From these sources alone
the School thought that it could fill as many as one hundred Scarbrough
training studentships.
Bearing in mind the advice of the Scarbrough Commission that it was
important to build strong departments, the School sensibly proposed to ex-
pand on the one side around the existing four nuclei formed by the teachers of
the principal languages and literatures of Asia and Africa, whose work had
long been organized on a regional basis, that is, for Africa, the Near and
Middle East, India, Pakistan and Ceylon, and the Far East, and on the other
side around the long-established although still small units of phonetics and
linguistics and of history and law. However, these existing structures were
partial in extent and variable in character, so that although all six depart-
ments at once set to with a will to recruit and train staff, some made quicker
progress than others. Under the stimulating, not to say provocative sway of
Professor Firth, an outspoken and shrewd Yorkshireman, the Department
of Phonetics and Linguistics expanded in numbers and maintained its
role of leadership in these fields. In History, the whole of the proposed
quinquennial programme of filling twenty new posts was completed, so that
the nucleus of teaching staff was trained for all the major Asian areas in the


Some senior members of the staff, 1956
Left to right Professor (later Sir) Hamilton Gibb, Professor H. H. Dodwell,
Professor Sir E. Denison Ross, Professor (later Sir) Ralph Turner
and Dr T. Grahame Bailey


The Common Rooms Finsbury Circus


45 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
study of ancient and modern times, and a start was even made in opening up
the relatively unexplored pre-European history of Africa, which in fact had not
been envisaged in the Scarbrough programme. Attracting students through-
out the world, especially from South Asia, the History Department grew
within a decade into the largest research department in history in a British
university. In the regional departments the principal increases were made
by India, Pakistan and Ceylon (twenty-nine established posts), by the Near
and Middle East (twenty-six established posts) and the Far East (twenty-
six established posts), with roughly half disposed on the language side,
chiefly on the modern spoken tongues, and half on related studies in philo-
sophy, religion, the history of art and archaeology. The Africa Department
reached an establishment of twenty posts in language studies, but progress
in the South East Asian field generally was slow, for the Department itself,
which had been dissolved in 1936, had first to be recreated under Professor
J. A. Stewart before the difficult task of recruitment and training could be
started in earnest. *
On the advice of the University Grants Committee the very small number
of teachers in the subjects of law and of anthropology, who were already
attached to other departments, were grouped together in 1947 and 1949
respectively to form Departments of Law and of Anthropology, under Pro-
fessors Vesey FitzGerald and Furer-Haimendorf, but not without an expression
of doubt by substantial groups of teachers in some of the regional depart-
ments who, fearful that the process of sub-division once started might be
taken to extremes, preferred the policy of bringing or holding together all
disciplines of study within the existing departments.+ But this would un-
doubtedly have produced overlarge and administratively cumbrous, regional
departments, cutting across, moreover, the established lines of development
* Five members for the Department of South East Asia and the Islands were trained
in the principal languages of this area by the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics,
creating an intimate relationship between the two departments.
+ Around a nucleus of study of language and literature, the regional departments
included and still include the study of philosophy, religion, archaeology, art history
and music.


46 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
in other major colleges of the University in which the tradition of closely-
linked undergraduate and postgraduate programmes through single-subject
disciplines was strongly maintained. Desirable though in some ways it may
have been to promote regional or 'area studies', the regional departments in
the School had not yet turned their attention to this problem of organizing
area studies within their existing framework of teaching either at the under-
graduate or postgraduate stages. Moreover, the creation of new departments
by discipline of study on the same lines as the existing Departments of
History and of Phonetics and Linguistics not only facilitated their rapid
growth by evoking both understanding and a ready acceptance throughout
the University, but also ensured the maintenance of high standards by
establishing them as integral members of the relevant University schools
and boards in these studies. These were critical decisions, for once taken
it became virtually impossible, even if desirable, to accept 'area studies' as
the sole conceptual framework within which to foster the whole of the
School's work.
As part of the general scheme of academic growth in this first post-war
quinquennium, several related, important policies were tested by the School
and incorporated into its working routine. A cadre of language assis-
tants was created consisting of research informants annually recruited
from the field areas, and a system of overseas research leave was carefully
worked out by which a dozen or so members of the permanent academic
staff annually proceeded to countries in Asia and Africa for research. The
School, too, took the responsibility for setting up and administering a new
Foundation of Chinese Art, containing a unique and priceless collection of
Chinese ceramics, which had generously been donated to the University by
Sir Percival David.
In defining and applying these plans, especially in recruiting and training
young scholars to open up fresh fields of study whilst simultaneously main-
taining the normal routine of university teaching and administration, the
whole attention and energy of the senior members of staff was absorbed
often at the expense of their own research, and in several instances of


47 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
their health. The School's debt to a small circle of dedicated heads of departments, not least to Professor Eve Edwards, Professor John Firth, Professor
Walter Simon and Professor Ida Ward, who, along with the Director,
carried the burden of the day, was immeasurable.
On the foundation laid by them a whole new generation of young British
scholars entered and transformed the Asian and African fields of study.
Nevertheless, despite high hopes and great endeavours, many of the
quinquennial objectives were not achieved. It was found possible to award
no more than twenty-four of the Treasury studentships, compared with the
figure of one hundred which had been aimed at; and by the close of the quin-
quennium the net increase in the School's academic staff amounted to about
one hundred, which constituted only two-thirds of the programme as
originally proposed. However, all initial plans had been made on the
assumption that there would immediately follow a second period of five years
with earmarked financial support, and that the presence of a large and
vigorous body of young scholars, already introduced into its fields of studies,
was bound in this second quinquennium to have cumulative effects of the
greatest academic importance.
In the light of its achievements in these first years, the School felt con-
fident that in the second quinquennium the whole of its Scarbrough pro-
gramme could be fulfilled, and therefore looked forward in the period
1952-57 to adding another ninety-six academic posts to its establishment,
roughly as large an increase as had been achieved in the first post-war
quinquennium. No new major disciplines or departments were envisaged,
and the expressed aim was to extend and consolidate existing studies in the
humanities, along with modest growth in law and anthropology, and to
continue to advance along the broad regional front, great reliance being
once more placed on the possibility of attracting and training recruits to the
staff by means of the award of Treasury studentships. In anticipation of an
expansion of staff on this scale, some attention was paid to the pressures
which would fall on the School's already inadequate buildings, and to the
need for new accommodation for the library, which was rapidly growing in


48 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
size; but, possibly because the minds of the senior members were still con-
centrated on the vexed question of how best to recruit and train staff,
unfortunately no more than a general reference of need was made at this
stage. Many and severe were the obstacles the unfinished state of the
existing building, the lack of a new site, of decanting space and of capital
funds but failure in this matter of new accommodation to make more
decisive progress in this period was later to create grave difficulties and a
bottleneck to further growth.
the end of scarbrough expansion
But the sky which had seemed to be set fair suddenly clouded over. The
start of the second quinquennium in 1952 unfortunately coincided with one
of Britain's recurring post-war financial crises, and the universities at once
felt the cold wind of economy. In the sharply increased competition for
funds within each university the Oriental departments with a relatively
small proportion of undergraduate students were ill-placed to assert their
priority. Thus far they had been protected by the earmarking of their
grants, but this policy was generally suspect in the universities, and the
Scarbrough Commission itself, while clearly intending to provide for a ten-
year period of expansion, had committed itself to the view that it did 'not
think it necessary or even desirable that this arrangement should be a
permanent one'. With these considerations in mind, the University Grants
Committee decided to discontinue the earmarked grants in the quinquen-
nium just about to begin and 'in the best interests of the Oriental and African
departments' to leave them to compete for funds with other University
departments.
With a poor competitive position, especially in the face of the demands of
the scientists, the Oriental faculties and departments fared very badly
indeed, and in most universities their growth came to an abrupt halt. By
virtue of its separate existence as a grant-receiving college of the University
of London, the School continued in its own right as a college to enjoy the
steadfast support from the University Court, and therefore suffered less than


49 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
most. But all Colleges in London were suffering cuts and here, too, the setback
was severe, the School's rate of increase in its annual recurrent grant, which
had varied in the first quinquennium between £15,000 and £50,000,
dropping sharply in the second quinquennium to an average of £8,000, a
sum which, moreover, was increasingly subject to erosion by the prevail-
ing financial inflation. However, out of these additional monies it was still
possible to maintain some momentum, and in the following five years
twenty-six new academic posts were added to existing departments, which
represented in effect one-eighth of the programme which had been put
forward.* But overall the School had entered a phase in which the only
rule which seemed to apply was 'jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday, but
never jam today'.
Disappointed in their ambition of reaching the Scarbrough targets, it
was understandable that, when the time arrived in 1955 to prepare plans for
the following quinquennium, 1957-62, the departments of the School should
reaffirm their intention of completing their original proposals by seeking to
add another fifty-three posts. Like the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo they
thought that the right policy was 'Hard pounding, gentlemen; let's see
who will pound longest'. But by this time the realization was beginning to
grow in some quarters that the School was likely to command neither the
money nor the space to do this, and that the wiser course might well be to
review the whole situation afresh.
By this stage the regional departments had reached a considerable size, India,
Pakistan and Ceylon comprising twenty-six posts, the Near and Middle East
thirty-one posts, the Far East twenty-eight posts and Africa twenty-one
posts, so that a reasonable scale of teaching had already been provided for
all the major and many minor languages, and also for a number of associated
studies. One adverse consequence of the general preoccupation with the
policy of expanding the teaching staff in the face of continuing difficulties in
recruitment was that inadequate attention was given to the existence of
* The net staff increase was only twelve because a number of existing posts were for
various reasons allowed to lapse.


50 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
potentially disturbing, underlying trends. First among these in a period in
which there had been a general expansion in the numbers of students at
British universities was that the Oriental faculties and departments,
including the departments at the School, had been failing to attract British
undergraduates to their courses. Despite the very large increase of the
academic staff, the number of undergraduates at the School actually fell
from sixty-two in 1952-53 to fifty-six in 1956-57, so that the question which
sooner or later had to be answered was how far the Scarbrough policy of
building strong departments, independent of undergraduate demand, was
to be taken, and in particular how far young scholars were to be recruited and
trained for posts which by their nature would inevitably be largely devoted
to research.
It had rightly been taken for granted that the total number of students
at the School would decline from the very large figure at the close of the
war, especially because of the termination of the courses for servicemen and
the running down of the training courses for the Indian Civil Service and
the Sudan and the Colonial Office probationers consequent on the transfer of
power from British Empire into Commonwealth. Some decline, too, in the
demand for short courses for representatives of commercial and industrial
firms was to be expected as the bigger firms instituted their own
post-war training schemes. Moreover, the Scarbrough Commission had
recognized that 'the number of undergraduate students in most of these
studies is likely to be relatively small' and that 'any increase can only be
gradual', and the conclusion had been drawn that in any event the right
policy was to create strong departments 'independent of undergraduate
demand'. At the same time there was doubtless an expectation that some
growth in the number of students taking full-time university courses would
follow the large increases in staff. Yet in 1956-57, ten years after the adop-
tion of the Scarbrough Report, there was no sign of an increasing under-
graduate demand in Oriental and African studies, and in particular the
failure to attract British students both at the undergraduate and post-
graduate stages appeared likely to undermine the future of these studies in


51 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
the United Kingdom. Between 1947 and 1957 the number of British under-
graduates at the School had fallen from fifty-five in 1947-48 to twenty-
seven in 1952-53 and to twenty-two in 1956-57, a situation which was even
more disturbing because British graduate students already constituted such a
small minority, in 1960-61, for example, providing only twenty out of 217
from all countries. While this situation obtained it was clearly impossible to
provide a solution for the difficulties of staff recruitment. To make matters
worse at this juncture, a Treasury decision to promote economy by restrict-
ing the award of Scarbrough studentships to persons who were already
assured of eventual appointment to a university post, had the effect of
sharply cutting back the programme itself, and, because the universities
simply did not possess an adequate financial surplus to make the new
system work, the studentship scheme itself slowly withered away. In a situ-
ation in which very few British graduates were coming forward to study
Oriental and African subjects this was a disastrous loss.
problems of accommodation
These trends, which were evident in all Oriental faculties and depart-
ments in British universities, raised questions of great importance for the fu ture
of Asian and African studies and of the School itself, including the place of
these studies in British education; but such questions were not susceptible
of easy or quick answer, and thorough consideration of them at the School
had unfortunately been deferred so that by this period they were rather
overshadowed by the even more pressing problem of how to accommodate
in the pre-war building the already enlarged number of staff and the rapidly
growing book collections in the library.
The School's buildings as originally planned in the mid-1930s were meant
to provide for a staff of about one-third the number that had been reached
by 1957 and for a library collection of about one-quarter the size; of those
buildings, one wing and a fourth floor over the whole block remained
unbuilt, while the east wing was still a shell divided into rooms by temporary
partitions. In the library, expedients, such as reducing to a minimum


52 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
the width of gangways and raising the height of stacks, storing books in a
number of widely scattered, often unsuitable store-rooms, putting stacks in
corridors and on landings throughout the School in short, every con-
ceivable expedient were adopted, including the deposit of many thousands
of books at Englefield Green, some thirty miles away from the School. Five
houses in the adjoining Woburn Square and some rooms in Tavistock
Square, helpfully made available by the University, provided sub-standard
accommodation for some fifty to sixty members of staff, but there was a
complete absence of primary facilities such as large classrooms, and through-
out the School, accommodation was put to uses for which it was not
designed. Intended to be used for public lectures, the assembly hall was set
aside as a library reading room and the pathetically small and unsuitable
provision for social and athletic amenities for the students was lamentable.
If its work was to be done in an efficient and civilized manner, enlarged
and suitable accommodation had become the over-riding need of the School.
The University was persuaded to allocate a site for development adjacent
to the School, but among the large number of colleges of the University
which were still suffering from the devastation of war and obsoles-
cence, the School's priority for capital funds for building was low. In this
situation, to press on with an expansion of staff or student numbers was to
run the risk of turning the School into an academic workhouse.
In 1957 Sir Ralph Turner retired from the directorship, being succeeded
by Professor Cyril Philips, who had been Head of the Department of
History since 1947. In Turner's twenty years as Director, the School had
been transformed and given a heightened sense of national significance and
purpose. Although the Scarbrough programme in its entirety had not been
completed, nevertheless something like two-thirds of the intended increase
of staff had been achieved. A substantial number of young British scholars
had been attracted to the study of Asia and Africa, and strong departments
had been created with a fresh outlook and great vitality and a broad and
sound foundation of scholarship had been laid, particularly in the study of
languages and history in both their modern and classical aspects.


53 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
problems of policy and development
Relative success ever brings in its train a host of problems. Important
questions and choices of policy could no longer be deferred. It was high
time to look well ahead, to make guesses about the future, to take the Duke
of Wellington's sober, sound advice when he said, 'All the business of war,
and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you
don't know by what you do; that's what I called "guessing what was at the
other side of the hill".' The School's proposals to the Scarbrough Com-
mission had constituted a programme of expansion, based on the general
purpose of creating a centre in Britain where sooner or later all significant
knowledge about Asia, Oceania and Africa would be available; but, like
water finding its own level, expansion had naturally proceeded fastest where
recruitment permitted, and it was by no means clear in what particular
directions of development the School was headed. It was already plain that
the recently announced grant for the new quinquennium 1957-62, which
yielded an annual recurrent increase of £9,000, would neither enable the
School's departments to complete what they still regarded as the phase of
their Scarbrough expansion nor permit any considerable redeployment of
academic resources. There was some realization, but by no means general,
that in the face of the School's failure to attract undergraduates it would be
a mistake at that stage to add even more academic posts which by their
nature could have little relevance to undergraduate studies and to an in-
crease in student numbers; and that the time had arrived to broaden the
School's range of teaching, and in particular to emphasize its interest in the
study of the modern and contemporary societies of Asia and Africa, by further
expanding its work in history, law and anthropology and by including
within its scope the major social sciences of economics, politics and sociology,
and also the subject of geography, which as an established study in the
curriculum of schools could exert an important influence in attracting
British students.
But the majority of departments had a prior and legitimate interest in
wishing to complete the original Scarbrough programme, and a critical


54 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
internal discussion therefore arose on how to reconcile these desirable pro-
posals, which in a period of financial stringency were apt to be seen as
competitive.
In any event the policy of attempting to build up the social sciences
rested upon a host of uncertainties; whether any money for the purpose
could be obtained from sources outside the UGC grant; whether both senior
and junior scholars could be attracted in subjects such as economics, politics
and sociology in which there was a known national scarcity and in which
the period of training was bound to be arduous, expensive and long; whether
the co-operation of established departments in the western aspects of these
subjects, particularly at the London School of Economics and University
College, could be gained, and lastly upon the very big question whether, if
and when scholars were duly recruited and trained, the money would be
forthcoming at the right time from the UGC to enable the School to in-
corporate their posts in the permanent structure of the School. What was
required was, in Charles Dickens's words, 'a kind of universal dovetailed-
ness with regard to place and time'.
Nothing at all, however, could be attempted without additional funds,
and it was therefore the evident readiness of the Ford, Leverhulme, Nuffield
and Rockefeller Foundations to support new academic enterprises at the
School to the extent of several hundreds of thousands of pounds, to provide,
as it were, T. S. Eliot's 'little dish of cream', which tipped the internal
balance of decision, and enabled the School to embark on the long and costly
operation of training small but coherent cadres of economists, economic his-
torians, sociologists, political scientists, geographers and lawyers with reference
to the major areas of Asia and Africa, equipped with a knowledge not only of
their own disciplines but also of the languages, history and cultures of these
areas, reinforced by first-hand experience in the field. This undertaking
was a difficult pioneer effort of the first importance because no such develop-
ment on this scale for the major regions of Asia and Africa had been en-
visaged or attempted previously in the United Kingdom, and success, if
achieved, would be bound in the long run not only to enhance the scholarly


55 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
and practical contribution of the School but also to exert a revolutionary
influence upon British studies in these fields.
Meanwhile the basic question of how to attract students, especially under-
graduates, for the already established departments had come under close
study. This matter had assumed a fresh urgency because of a growing
awareness in these departments that the concentration of a large body of
young university lecturers in the School without offering at a reasonably
early stage some scope and challenge in teaching, preferably for both first
and higher degrees, was already beginning to create a situation in which
the maintenance of high academic morale was difficult. In History, where a
rich choice of courses was already offered, combining the study of Europe
with that of Asia or Africa, the general educational position was academically
satisfactory, attractive to would-be students, and capable of substantial
development. But the majority of courses for honours degrees offered at the
School were in the study of Asian and African languages and literatures,
many of which, for instance, in subjects such as Marathi, Gujarati or Burmese,
were never likely to be in steady demand. By comparison, courses for first
degrees in Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese had attracted substantial numbers
of students, but were in need of review. Based on a three-year period of
study, their adequacy and suitability as university courses for British
students in particular, who had to begin these studies from scratch, had to
be reconsidered. Almost all the teachers concerned supported the view,
especially in relation to British students, that the educational case for a four-
year undergraduate course was very strong; so that gradually this change
was brought about in the majority of courses in the study of language.
Some teachers, however, were convinced that a good, general education for
undergraduates in Asian or African studies could be best provided through
a twin-subject syllabus with a specific area reference, extending over four
years of study, combining the study of language with an equal emphasis
on a related discipline, or combining any two of the disciplines with refer-
ence to a major area or civilization within the School's purview. An experi-
ment of this kind, including study in both language and anthropology with


56 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
specific reference to Africa, had been started as early as 1955, but relatively
few students had been attracted, and the other regional departments of
the School were cautious about extending this kind of course to Asia, pre-
ferring the conservative choice of gradually diversifying their essentially
single-subject syllabuses by adding optional and special subjects, and simul-
taneously introducing some much-needed tutorial teaching. At the same
time an ancillary programme of producing sets of teaching materials and
aids for the study of languages along with a general scrutiny of the useful-
ness of language laboratories did much to bring new vitality and effective-
ness into long-established courses.
While some of the existing degree syllabuses were being revised and
made more attractive to British students, the related questions of how to
make direct contact with prospective students and how to enlarge the
catchment area of students in Britain were examined. Some sporadic con-
tacts with schools had already been made through a modest programme of
lectures, but if an assumption made by the Director was correct, that 'with
the rising importance of Asia and Africa in the modern world, studies
relating to these areas should take their proper place as a normal part of
the education of western society', and if British boys and girls of the right
quality and aptitude were to be attracted session by session, then it was
essential for the School itself not only to devise the appropriate university
courses but also to create a direct, close and cumulative association with a
large number of schools. Such a programme with this aim and on this
scale could best be achieved by forming an extramural division to make
personal contact in the first instance with headmasters and headmistresses
and with their staffs. As a beginning, therefore, an education officer,
supported by a committee, including representatives of the Ministry of Edu-
cation and Science, the Ministry of Overseas Development, local education
authorities and schools, was appointed to do this. Meetings between schools and
small teams of teachers from the College were held in selected centres through-
out the United Kingdom, and a regular programme of lectures and of one-day
courses for schoolteachers and sixth-formers was devised, and, with the aid


57 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
of the Leverhulme Trust, a promising scheme of schoolteacher fellowships
was later instituted. What was in process of creation was a national network
of extramural relationships, rich in potential growth in the general field of
education, with the result that the School, or SOAS, as it is often famil-
iarly called, not only became well-known throughout the educational
system, but also began to be accepted as the national headquarters for this
kind of work. Assisted no doubt, too, by the national rise in the demand for
university places, the declining trend in the undergraduate intake was by
this policy quickly reversed and the number of British undergraduates at
the School rose from thirty-one in 1957-58 to 137 in 1961-62, the sum total
of undergraduates in that session being 199. Thereafter the undergraduate
intake, while steadily rising in quality, was maintained at about this level,
which was as much as the School's extremely restricted accommodation
would allow.
As this juncture these new directions of policy at the School received a
blessing and powerful impetus from a report published in the summer of
1961 by a committee of the UGC which had been set up under the chair-
manship of Sir William Hayter to review the progress made under the
Scarbrough Report and to advise on future developments. After drawing
pointed attention to the severe blow suffered in 1952 by the Oriental depart-
ments of British universities through the premature removal of their ear-
marked grants, and after analysing such progress as had subsequently been
made, mainly at the School, the Hayter Report concluded that in terms of
national need and of attracting more British students, the over-riding con-
sideration was not so much the completion of the Scarbrough expansion as
the reinforcement of the study of the modern societies of Asia and Africa
in all their aspects, and especially from the point of view of the social sciences.
This should be done, the Report said, with earmarked grants extending over
a ten-year period. So similar was the Committee's general analysis of past
progress and prescription for the future to the conclusions already drawn
and acted upon in the School that some said that the Report must have been
drafted there. But immediate reactions among the academic staff of the


58 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
School on its merits were mixed, despite its very high commendation of the
School's achievements since 1947, of its actual and potential national and
international role and of its plans for the future.
Government duly accepted the Hayter programme, upon which the UGC
established a special sub-committee to supervise the allocation of earmarked
funds in the first five years, 1962-67, and to provide a 'pool' of lecture-
ships, and some concentration and extension of effort in six selected univer-
sity centres of Asian and three university centres of African studies, also in-
cluding the School within each group. These proposals, which immediately
assured to the School a relatively modest allocation of ten posts out of the
'pool' of lectureships, came at the right moment with just enough support
to enable the social scientists already in training under Foundation funds
to be absorbed into the permanent staff, and to facilitate the creation of a
Department of Economic and Political Studies under Dr (later Professor)
Edith Penrose (1962), a new section in sociology under Professor Ronald
Dore and a new Department of Geography under Professor Charles Fisher,
besides permitting the School out of general funds to add to strength in the
regional departments and in anthropology, history and law. The fact that
on such modest increases it was possible to do so much strikingly illustrated
the opportunity that can be afforded for academic redeployment by a
relatively small financial reserve. Without this reserve, stagnation might well
have occurred. With these additions, the School's broad framework of studies
in the humanities and the social sciences with reference to the major areas
of Asia and Africa was erected and given a new orientation, so that fresh
thought was stimulated on the provision of courses for undergraduates and
postgraduates, and on the magnificent opportunities which were being
opened for advanced work and research.*
In the changed climate of opinion brought about in British universities,
not least in the University of London, by the publication of the Robbins
* The growth of the study of art history, archaeology and musicology also provides
some base for future development; and no doubt other fields such as psychology and
demography require early investigation.


59 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
Report (1963), earlier hesitations and reservations at the School about the
desirability of introducing undergraduate courses in combined and area
studies were swept away, and additional degree courses in history and lan-
guage, and in languages and anthropology with reference to the major
areas of Asia and Africa, were devised as likely to attract students and serve
a national need. Simultaneously, the introduction by the University of a
one-year course for the Master's degree provided the opportunity to organize
in London a comprehensive postgraduate programme of combined studies
by courses of instruction for each of the major extra-European areas of the
world, including the areas covered by the School. The scale and quality of
applications by British students for places in the first courses for the Asian
and African regions indicated that a quite new source of recruitment had
been uncovered. These developments in turn opened the way for dis-
cussions on the formation of a London graduate school in international
studies which would be unique of its kind and size in the world. To this
the School could obviously make a big and original contribution, radically
affecting not only its own character but also that of the University as a
whole.
Within the School the introduction of postgraduate courses on this scale
and complexity precipitated the long-discussed formation of five Area Centres
for African, Near and Middle Eastern, South Asian, South East Asian and
Far Eastern studies respectively, through which postgraduate teaching, and
particularly inter-disciplinary and research studies, could be fostered and
extended. These Area Centres, each of which included all of the members
of staff relevant to the study of the area, were intended to reinforce and
complement, not to replace the departmental system, to create an organic
scheme of area study and to encourage the initiation of programmes of
work of national and international relevance.
Thus by the start of the session 1966-67 the School had put itself into a
position to offer a comprehensive, attractive and relevant range of courses
to students from Britain and overseas and to enlarge and intensify its al-
ready formidable scale of research. The interaction between its many


60 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
disciplines and studies, between its undergraduate and postgraduate pro-
grammes and between its own programmes and those of other universities
at home and abroad had become cumulative, and therefore pregnant with
immense possibilities of growth for the future, so that in all discussion of
forward plans a prospective student population of from 1,200 to 1,500 stu-
dents, a high proportion of whom would doubtless be graduates, had to be
reckoned with.
a policy of self-help
More than ever before, with an academic staff some 200 strong, rising
prospectively to 250, with an enlarged student body and the prospect of a
sharp increase in the number of graduate students, with a big and fast grow-
ing library, attention was concentrated on the vexed problem of accommoda-
tion. Shocked by the School's lack of amenities, the Hayter Committee had
declared: £A bottleneck to further expansion of studies and students is caused
by the lack of elementary facilities such as classrooms and seminar rooms
and most serious of all, of a library building. The School has received no
money for building since the war.... The Committee regards the congestion
in the School as a serious barrier to progress and a discouragement to the staff.'
Certainly, no surer method of slow strangulation could have been devised
than to provide on the advice of two Government Reports and as a matter
of Government policy, handsome and earmarked recurrent monies for
development without any associated capital grants for building. There
could be no clearer example of not letting 'thy left hand know what thy
right hand doeth'.
In the absence of a direct grant from Government and of top priority on
the University of London's long building list, it was plain that the School
would have to set about helping itself. Funds were scraped together from the
remnants of the pre-war sale of the Finsbury building and from accumulated
surpluses in order to extend accommodation in Tavistock Square and to add
a fourth, top floor over the whole of the main building. Intended ultimately
for use as refectories, this provided space for classrooms and for thirty


Sir Ralph Turner, Director 1927-57 (photo: Lafayette)


The Director and students on the site
of the proposed new building


61 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
members of staff, and prospectively, in the hope of future extensions, a
useful 'decanting' area.
For the new library a private appeal was directed by Sir Neville Gass,
the Treasurer, a man of vision, charm and unsparing endeavour. Whenever
there were difficult, embarrassing jobs to be done, he was willing to do them,
caring little about the credit. Nearly a quarter of a million pounds was
quickly raised which enabled the School to claim a characteristically generous
offer from the staunchest of the School's benefactors, the Rockefeller
Foundation. Plans for the new building were put in hand under the archi-
tect Mr Denys Lasdun, but it was apparent that the costs would be high,
probably well over £1 million, and until the School should find itself at the
top of the University Court's priority list, there was nothing for it but to
show a brave face, to go on bursting at the seams and by 'patching, darning
and letting down' to do everything possible to avoid the direst effects of
indecent exposure.
cumulative growth
By this period, despite the cramping effect of inadequate accommodation,
the cumulative effects of the School's growth since 1947 had become very
evident in every aspect of its work, especially in its research and advanced
studies.
Co-operative and inter-disciplinary research by groups of staff members
regularly found expression in the organization of study conferences, attended
by the leading authorities in the world on the subject under investigation.
Meetings on 'Historical Writing on the Peoples of Asia' (1956 and 1958),
'African History and Archaeology' (1953, 1957, 1961), and on 'Linguistic
Comparison in South East Asia and the Pacific' (1961 and 1965) not only
produced important advances in knowledge but created a foundation and
framework of reference within which the subject was to grow in future.
Advanced study groups, some short- and some long-term, the work of most
of which was designed to lead to publication, as, for example, on agricultural
reform in contemporary China, or revolution in Asia and Africa, or the


62 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
partition of India, or the economic history of the Middle East, have become
a normal activity of the School. One mark of a university's standing is the
readiness of the great foundations to contribute to its research funds, and in
these years Ford, Leverhulme, Nuffield, Gulbenkian, Rockefeller and
Wenner Gren between them have made grants to the School amounting to
many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The School's contribution by research is remarkable. Its Bulletin, long
since accepted as one of the outstanding journals of orientalist scholarship
in the world, does much to maintain its international reputation; and from
the School as an institution and from members of its staff as individuals there
has flowed an impressive and varied stream of publications. New journals
have been introduced to blaze trails along and across the frontiers of know-
ledge, Asia Major, a joint venture with Oxford and Cambridge, and in the
last few years, the Journal of African History, the Journal of African Law,
the Journal of African Languages, the Journal of Development Studies;
and in 1966-67 in co-operation with the new Asian Centres at Cambridge,
Hull, Leeds and Sheffield, a journal, Modern Asian Studies, devoted to
the study of modern societies. In addition the School itself, through its
active Publications Committee, maintains three series of publications: an
Oriental Series of monographs, a series of African Language Studies, and,
as a reflection of the increasing attention being paid to the contemporary
scene, a series of Studies on Modern Asia and Africa. It sustains, too, a
comprehensive revision of the Encyclopaedia of Islam and supports a large
and important lexicographical and bibliographical programme. Wisely
expending its originally modest grant of funds in order to sponsor work of
quality which was unlikely to find a place on the commercial market, the
Publications Committee has been so successful that from 1965-66 it has
actually earned some £15,000 annually on income from sales!
a national and international role
The scope of the School's overseas research leave programme continued
to grow and was by this period fully matched by the scale of secondment of


63 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
its staff to Commonwealth and foreign universities and to governments
overseas for specialist work. Invitations to members of staff to teach in the
universities of the United States were embarrassingly frequent; and requests
from the Soviet Academy of Sciences and similar bodies in Czechoslovakia
and Hungary for a regular interchange of staff were welcomed and in-
corporated as part of the School's routine. Academic honours are frequently
bestowed on members of the staff. Attracting professors from other univer-
sities both at home and abroad to its chairs and senior appointments, the
School in turn sends out a steady flow of trained men and women to play a
part in the political, administrative and educational life of their own
countries. At the same time generous schemes have been devised to enable
overseas students to pursue advanced studies at the School and, along with
the increase in the intake of undergraduates, to give selected British
students the opportunity of spending short periods in their areas of study in
Asia and Africa; and similar advantages are offered to postgraduate students.
As natural as leaves to a tree, this ever-increasing nexus of firm and cordial
relationships with governments, universities and peoples overseas is an
organic and spontaneous growth, inspired and constantly nourished by the
School's dedication to the study of Asian and African civilizations and
cultures.
Advanced research in the humanities and social sciences depends on the
support of well-endowed and well-equipped libraries; and in these respects
the School has been doubly fortunate in its own library collection, steadily
built up over the years, and in its easy access to the great libraries and
museums of London, which enjoy the fruits of Britain's commercial,
imperial and Commonwealth roles. Yet, bearing in mind the need of
Britain in a rapidly changing world order to maintain her position in the
Asian and African fields of study, it must be noted with disquiet that the
most serious under-provision in British universities in the years since the
war has been in the realm of libraries. To provide for the routine needs
of undergraduates and to enable British scholars to reach and maintain the
highest level and quality of research it is necessary to mobilize much larger


64 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
financial resources for libraries than are at present available, and, if and
when obtained, to use them in the most economically efficient ways.
Fortunately, in a small, compact country like Britain, much which would
otherwise be impossible can be achieved, and money can be made to spin out
and do more through the adoption of co-operative library policies by univer-
sities and other national libraries. From the beginning, and on an increasing
scale in the past couple of decades, the School has allocated a good proportion
of its income in order to build up its library into what is today recognized as
a major national and international resource, with a current total size of
some 290,000 volumes, and to make it generally available to all serious
students in the United Kingdom through a generous policy of lending, all
the more valuable because such facilities are not afforded by the British
Museum or by Oxford and Cambridge. It has also come to appreciate that Asian
and African studies offer a splendid field nationally in which to devise and
test a variety of co-operative library enterprises and to examine the feasibility
of using computerized systems; and that, if rightly conducted, such a policy
might play a role as a pioneer national venture.
Recognizing the force of these arguments, and emphasizing the central
and formative role which the School can play within the British educational
system, the Hayter Committee put forward and the University Grants
Committee accepted the proposal that the School's library should be given
financial support 'to operate fully as a national library'. From this decision
two lines of policy stemmed, on the one hand that the School should take
the initiative in promoting the closest co-operation between interested
university libraries, including the newly established Asian and African
Centres, and on the other hand, with a view to creating in these fields a
national lending library, that the School should prepare a union catalogue of
all works on Asia and ascertain the annual cost of acquiring all new and
significant publications relating to Asia and Africa. At prices ruling in the
summer of 1965 this was found to be £35,000 annually, and with the help of
the University Grants Committee, the School at once set itself to reach this
scale of book collection, which meant doubling its existing outlay, and to


65 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
increase accordingly the size of its staff of specialized librarians. Within a
short period agreements between the relevant libraries were reached,
providing for a division of responsibility in acquiring materials relating to
African countries, and a start was made in the same direction for India, and
also in exploring the possibility of co-operation among librarians in making
field visits for book purchases, and in book selection and cataloguing. If centres
of academic excellence are to continue to exist in Britain, it is through
national policies of this kind that they can best be cherished and nourished;
and for the example they are setting the librarians deserve praise.
The School has obligations and privileges which extend beyond the national
context, for it has become an established international centre, now attract-
ing scholars and students, many of the highest quality, from some seventy
countries spread throughout the world. They come to enjoy and share in
teaching and research of distinction. In turn the School scatters its scholars
about the world, their knowledge bringing forth racial sympathy and under-
standing, which are among the greatest of mankind's needs. Without them,
our statesmen and scientists cultivate 'a barren and dry land where no
water is'.
While maintaining a dynamic equilibrium, the School must continue
to grow and change because its Asian and African interests daily become
more significant and central in the contemporary dialogue between the
developed and developing countries, encompassing the civilizations of the Far
East now in search of a new role on the world stage, the cultural and relatively
unexplored kaleidoscope of South East Asia, the great Indian sub-continent
where Asian democracy has taken root, the ferment of the Islamic countries
of Asia and the Mediterranean, the peoples of Africa stirring at last from
their long slumber.
Each change of many-coloured life we drew,
Exhausted worlds and then imagined new.
And within Britain the ways and means have still to be found and explored
to make these studies a meaningful and permanent part of the changing
pattern of education throughout our national system.


66 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT
With its considerable size and comprehensive spread of studies, with its
ready access to the unrivalled resources of London, with its record of achieve-
ment and tradition of fine scholarship, and established capacity for leader-
ship, the School in its own fields has a unique potential for cumulative growth.
It possesses the power and experience along with the duty and privilege to
maintain itself nationally and internationally as a centre of excellence, and
thus to make a nobler, richer and more profound contribution to the welfare
of mankind. But one lesson for the School, perhaps the outstanding lesson
of the first fifty years of its history, is that institutions, like men, must
continue to make their opportunities, as oft as find them.


Appendix: Organization
of Departments, 1966-67
key
P = Professor
R = Reader
SL = Senior Lecturer
L = Lecturer
AL = Assistant Lecturer
F = Fellow


Department of the Languages and Cultures of India, Pakistan and Ceylon
Indo-Aryan Languages 2 P of Sanskrit R in Sanskrit L in Sanskrit
- R in Bengali L in Bengali
- R in Pali & Buddhist Sanskrit L in Bengali & Oriya
L in Sinhalese
R in Urdu
__ 2L in Hindi L in Urdu 2F in Indian Studies
L in Marathi & Gujarati
Dravidian Languages L in Tamil
Indian Music L in Indian Music
Philosophy & Religions R in Indian Philosophy L in Indian Religions


Department of the Languages and Cultures of South East Asia and the Islands
P of Burmese 2 L in Burmese
Tai R in Tai Languages & Literatures L in Tai
Vietnamese R in Vietnamese Studies
Mon-Khmer R in Languages & Literatures of SE Asia L in Cambodian
Rin Old Javanese F in SE Asian Studies
R in Oceanic Languages
Art & Archaeology L in Art & Archaeology of SE Asia


Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Far East
Chinese P of Chinese R in Classical Chinese L in Modern Chinese
R in Chinese 4L in Chinese
R in Chinese Philosophy
Japanese P of Japanese R in Japanese SL in Japanese
2L in Japanese
Korean L in Korean
Mongolian R in Mongolian
Tibetan R in Tibetan F in Tibetan Studies
Buddhist Studies Eastern Buddhism


Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East
Arabic P of Islamic Studies 2R in Arabic - SL in Arabic
6 L in Arabic
L in Islamic Art & Archaeology
L in Berber (jointly with Department of Africa)
Persian L in Persian
Turkish L in Turkish -- F in Turkish
Iranian & Caucasian Studies P of Iranian -- Studies P of Caucasian Studies R in Iranian Languages - L in Iranian Studies L in Central Asian Art b Archaeology
Semitic Languages P of Semitic Languages R in Modern Hebrew L in Semitic Languages
- AL in Modern Hebrew
P of Assyriology - F in Hittite
P of Ethiopian Studies (jointly with Department of Afi 'ica)


Department of Phonetics and Linguistics
Phonetics P of Phonetics
(SE Asian
Languages)
Linguistics 2 P of General
Linguistics
(Indo-European,
Amerindian)
Department of History
Africa
P of History
of Africa
R in Phonetics
(W African
Languages)
SL in Phonetics
(Indian Languages)
- 4 L in Phonetics
(Chinese, Turkic Languages,
African Languages,
Tibeto-Burman Languages)
- L in Linguistics
(Oceanic Languages)
L in Comparative
Linguistics
(Indo-European)
R in History
of Africa
2L in History
of Africa
L in History
of S Africa
Lin History
of W Africa


Near & Middle
East
P of History
of N & M East
P of Arab
History
Far East
P of History
of Far East
South Asia
P of History
of S Asia
Part-time P of
History of
S Asia
R in History
of Islam
in Asia
R in History
of India
South East
Asia
P of History
of SE Asia
R in History
of S &SE Asia
R in History
of SE Asia
L in Economic
History of
M East
3L in History
of N & M East
2 L in History
of Far East
F in History
of Far East
F in Modern
Chinese History
L in History
of S Asia
L in History
of Islam in India
3L in History
of Modern India
L in Economic
History of
Asia
Research
Officer
L in Economic
History of SE Asia
2L in History
of SE Asia


Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa
Bantu
Languages
2 P of Bantu
Languages
West African
Languages
P of West
African
Languages
R in Hausa
North East
African
Languages
- R in Cushitic
P of East
African
Languages
P of Ethiopian
Studies
(jointly with Department of N & M East)
Berber
Music
5 L in Bantu
Languages
F in Southern
Bantu Languages
L 2 L in Swahili
SL in West
African
Languages
p- 5L in West
African
Languages
L in Hausa
Studies
L in Berber
(jointly with Department
of N & M East)
L in African
Musical Studies


Department of Law
Law
P of African
Law
R in African
Law
2 P of Oriental
Laws (Islamic,
Indian)
R in Oriental
Laws (Chinese)
R in Islamic
Law
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
Anthropology
P of Asian
Anthropology
P of Indian
Anthropology
R in African
Anthropology
Sociology
P of Sociology
with special
reference to
Far East
3 L in African
Law
2 Research Officers
in African Law
L in Indian & F in Hindu
Pakistan Law Law
L in Islamic
Law
2 L in Asian F in N & M
Anthropology Eastern
Anthropology
L in Anthropology
with reference
to Africa
L in Indian
Anthropology
L in Sociology
with reference
to Africa


Department of Economic and Political Studies
Economics
P of Economics
with reference
to Asia
R in Economics
(China)
Politics
P of Government
& Politics with
reference to Asia
P of Politics
with reference
to the N & M East
Department of Geography
Geography P of Geography R in Geography
with reference (Africa & the
to Asia M East)
L in Economics
(China)
L in Land
Economics
(M East)
(jointly with
Department of Geography)
2F in Economics
with reference to
Africa S of Sahara
F in Economics
with reference
to SE Asia
L in Economics
with reference to M East
L in Economics
with reference to S Asia
2L in Politics
with reference
to S Asia
- F in Politics
with reference
to Far East
Fin Politics
with reference
to Africa
2F in Geography
(Far East, S Asia)
L in Geography
(Far East)
L in Land Economics
(M East)
(jointly with Department of Economic & Political Studies*

PAGE 2

The clwol f rom 11/oburn Square

PAGE 3

The School of Oriental &African Studies UNI,TERSITY OF LONDON 1917-1967 An Introduction C. JI. PHJLLTP S

PAGE 4

Designed and produced by Design for Print Ltd, London W2 Printe d in England by Gabare Ltd, Ff7inchester

PAGE 5

Contents 1 Beginnings 7 2 Growing Pains 15 1917-39 3 The Years of War 31 1939-46 4 Expansion and Development 4<1 194 6-67

PAGE 6

Acknowledgn1ent IN preparing this short account of tl1e Scltooll have been most fortunate iu b eing able to s ee k aucl gain the wise advice of Lord Radcliffe Chairman of our Governing Body of Sir llalph Turne r hos e unique experi ence r eac hes back to the early clays of the story, and of Col. 1 Iugh Moyse-Bartlett and Mr John Bracken, who as S ec r etary and Deputy Sec r etary of the Sc hool always know more than appears on paper. I am inclcbL e d also to Professor B ernard Lcwis, who was a fellow student at the Schoo l in the middle 1930s; and to Niiss Doreen Wainwright, who has brought iuto existence tl1e nucleus of an archive on t h e history of the School whic h ,,-c trust will b e k ept a l i\ e and ttp-to-clate in the year s to com e. C.lf.P.

PAGE 7

1 Beginnings 'Although England h a s greate r inte rests in the East than any other G:uropean country, yet fo r some unexpl aine d reason, s h e is the most b ehindhaud in e ncouraging t h e study of modern Oriental languages. Nlajor C 11'1. PVatson t o Sir Fre d eric k Abe l, 20 S eptembe r 1887 'If ever the Co llege is really establishe d it w ill be mainl y owing to your perseverance and a ctivity Lord Cromer to Pltilip Hartog, 13 Nlay 1914

PAGE 9

THIS 'round, unva:rn ished tale' may b e said to have a beginning in a masterly memorandum written by Richard Wellesley shortly after he had assum e d the Governor-Generalship of British India in 1798. In a powerfully stated case for the creation of a British centre of Oriental studies, the nub of his argument was that 'The civil servants of the English East India Company ... are in fact the ministers and officers of a powerful sovereign .... Their education should be founded in a general knowledge of those branches of literature and science which form the basis of the education of persons d estined to similar occupations in Europe. To this foundation should b e added an intimate acquaintance with the history, languages, customs and manners of the people of India .... No system of education, study or discipline now exists, either in Europe or in India, founded on the principles or objects d escr ibed. But his far-sighted although admittedly expens ive conception of Fort Willia:m College in Bengal was so whittled down by l esser men, 'the c h eeseparers of Leadenhall', unduly obsessed by policies of economy, and thei r own alternative, a training centre for young cadets in their late t ee ns at I I ai l eybury in England, was from the start conceived in terms so narrow and restricted, that it in no way fulfilled Wellesley's purposes; and indeed justly fai led to survive the transfer in 185 8 of the government of India from the Company to the Crown. Not until another half century had passed and the British Empire had spread across the worl d, not until Britain 'held the gorgeous East in fee, And was the safeguard of the West' did the Government a considered return to Wellesley's charge.* Meanwhile in the development of their studies the universities of northern Europe were beginning to reflect the economic and political expans ion of In the same period several other modest ventUl'es were st.a.1ted in London to meet the n eeds of private individual s intending to travel 'to the eastwa.1d'. John Gilchrist, formerly Principal of Fort VVilliam College, opened in 1818 a London Oriental Institntion in Leicester Square to teach modern Oriental languages, and a former missionary, Dr Robert lVIorrison, set up a simila.1 school in the City, but, lacking support from Government or the London trading interests, they soon had to close d own. lVIorrison bequeathed his libra.lJ' of one thousand books to University College, w hence they were transferred in 1916 to the School of Oriental Studies.

PAGE 10

10 RF.GINNTNGS Europe into Asia. In England Chairs of Arabic had existed at Oxford and Cambridge sinc e the seventeenth century, and to these were added in the second half of the nineteenth century Chairs of Sanskrit and Chinese. In their systematic inquiries into human experience and knowledge the philosophers and historians of 'the European Enlightenment' began to extend the range of scholarly r esearch into the far corners of the world, and when the Ben thamites, profoundly interested in what they called 'the ladder of civilization', founded University College in London in 1826, among the first of its professorships were those devoted to Oriental literature, Hindustani and Chinese; and when a few years later the rival King' s College in the Strand opened its do ors, some courses were also offered there in Chinese and more generally in Oriental languages an d literature. In the course of the next four d eca d es part-time teaching was gradually extended in both places in Oriental subjects, but students were few and far betvveen, and widely spread over the available fields of study, and although by 1 882 a total sum of no more than ,300 annually was being expended on twenty-five teachers, many of them employed part-time, the two Colleges then agreed for the purpose of economy to avoid any further overlap in Oriental studies. From this decision it was but a short step to consider the possibility of more positive forms of co-operation, and a timely external impulse was provid e d by the Imperial Institute which had just been establis h e d ( 1 887) as t h e national memorial of Queen Victoria 's Gol den Jubilee. Largely through the initiative of one of its members, Major C. M Watson, an engineer who had serve d for many years in British India and had become conv in ced that Britain had a national responsibility to study its ric h and diverse languages, if only for the purpose of achieving more effective administration, the Institute persuaded the two Co ll eges to join forces in forming a 'School of Modern Oriental Languages' which was formally inaugurated b y Professor Max Muller on 11 January 1890. But, lackin g the provision of additional funds and the creation of a separate building or library, 'the Sc hool' re mained a paper scheme, and in e ffect arrangements at the two Co ll eges continued in their former vein.

PAGE 11

BEGINNINGS 11 Neverthel ess, at the turn of the century, when the University of London, with the two Colleges forming an important part of its nucleus, was formally reorganized as a teaching university, the fact that 'the School' had already been adumbrated smoothed the way for the inclusion of the teachers concerned in a newly-created University Board of Studies in Oriental Languages and Literatures, which at once provided within the new university framework a forum for discussion of the future of these studies. It was a member of this Board, Professor Rhys Davids, holder of a post in Buddhistic studies who in 1905 with a fine scholarly impulse presented a paper jointly to the British Academy and Royal Asiatic Society urging the formation of a separate School of Oriental Studies within the Uni versity, and it was this Board of Studies which soon afterwards put forward a similar proposal to t h e Academic Council of the University. In November of t h e same year the Counci l set up a committee which reported in favour of the creation of a School of Oriental Studies as a constituent college within the University, and the Senate responded by sending a deputation t o expl ore the matter with the Prime Minister, Sir H enry Campbell Bannerman. It was extraordinary that the great age of grovvth in the British Empire, the political and admi:uistrative reconstruction of India, the penetration of South East Asia and Africa, the exploration of the Pacific, should have been allowed to pass without the formation in London of an Imperial training centre.* The British response to these challe nges had been to devise a series of ad hoc arrangements, many of them remarkably effective, including some training for Indian Civil Servi ce probationers at Oxford and Cam bridge and at University College, London, and language courses in Hausa and Swal1ili as required for the Colonial Service offic e rs at King's College in the Strand. But by the close of the century renewed attention had been drawn to the problem of the best way of preparing British officers for the administration of the world-wide empire. Curzon's cult of administrative effici It is not irrele\'ant to note that in the twentieth century Government moved to set up an Institute of Development Studies when the great transfer of power from British Empire into Commonwealth wn.s all but completed.

PAGE 12

12 BEGINNINGS ency in India coincided with a growing awareness in London not only that exist ing arrangements in Britain for the training of officia l s for Imperial ser vice were inadequate but t hat other European countries, Russia, F rance and Germany, with r e lative l y m uch smaller imperial commitments, had gone a head in this directio n and also in the organization of their scholarly study of the peoples and cultures of Asia. But the factor whi c h in the first d ecade of the twentieth centur y decisively moved British opinion in Westminster and i n the City was the evidence which was beginning to come to light of the grand and growing scale of German imperial and trading ambitions in Asia and Africa. The se were facts as hard as cannon-balls and it was high time for Britain to think again. W hen, therefore, the University's d eputation sought its meeting with the Prime Minister and his senior Cabinet colleagues it did so in a favourable climate of of f i cial opinion, and thus found no difficulty in evoking a promis e o f an i=ediate departmental committee of inquiry into the proposal for the formation o f a Schoo l of Oriental Studies. Lord Reay, a former Governor of Bombay, who had subsequently served as President both of the British Academy and of the Royal Asiatic Society, was unanimous l y acceptable as chairman, and the University's Academic Registrar, Philip Hartog, was drafte d as s ec retary Without delay the Committee got to work, seeing seventy-three witnesses in twenty-three days and reporting to Government in December 1908 The comprehensive evidence given to it b y witnesses was overwhelmingly in favour of the c reation of a Sc hool of Oriental Studies as part of the University of London. The m a jor inte r ested parties, the Government departments, commercial organizations, missions and scholars, one and all were agree d tha t their important n eeds in training could and should be met in su c h a School, and that its creation was a matter of urgency in the imperial and national inte r e sts In putting forward their view the Committee indicated a modest s cope of studies to cove r the major languages of the Near East, India, Malaya and Burma, China and Japan, and East and West Africa, which woul d be appropriate to meet expressed practical nee ds and the require-

PAGE 13

Sir Philip Harlog

PAGE 14

Sir D en i son R oss, t h e first Direc tor

PAGE 15

BEGINNINGS 13 ments of sound scholarship, and estimated that as a start the annual recurrent cost would be about ,000. 'There must have been something important in it,' Hartog later said, 'else how should so many m e n agree to be of one mind?' But it was relatively easy for thos e with vested interests to say the right things, and the acid test was whether they would provide the means to bring about the desired end. An unaccountably long delay of nine months followed before the Report was published and b efore Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India, publicly announced its acceptance by Government, and the somewhat leisurely course was then adopted of setting up another committee under Lord Cromer to formulate a practical scheme to give effect to the Report. Fortunately for all concerned, Philip Hartog, who had become a passionate convert in the cause of promoting Oriental studies, agreed to ensure c ontinuity by carrying on as secretary of the new Committee, and with h i s customary skill, energy and p e rsistence soon cleared the first, major obstacle by dis covering a large building in Fins bury Circ us in the City, the n o ccupied by the London Institution,* which would be eminentl y suitable as a home for the proposed S c hool. However, it was found nec essary first to get passed an Act of Parliament to close down the London Institution, and to arrange for the transfer, which was not achieved until the close of 1912, and it too k another eighteen months to n egotiate a capita l grant from Government of ,000 to put the building in suitable order and to obtain the promise of an annual recurrent grant of ,000. Deeming it quite impossible for the new School to make a formal start on such exiguous recurrent funds, the Committee issued in May 1914 a carefully prepare d appeal for an endowment of ,000, but no sooner had gifts begun to come in when all opera tions, constructional and financial, were brought to an abrupt h alt b y t h e outbreak of the first Worl d VVar. Its f ull titl e was the London Institution for the Advancement of Literature and the Diffusion of Usefnl Knowl edge. It was i ncorporated in January 1 8 07. The majority of t h e 940 proprietors of the Institution were satisfied to receive in respect of each 'share' which they h eld, along with the r etention of the right to use the reading and smoking rooms nnd the lecture theatre and library.

PAGE 16

14 BEGINNINGS Taking courage as the months passed, by some modest indications from the War Departments that there was work of national importance waiting to be done by the new school, Hartog, never one to admit defeat, again stirred his Committee into action. On 5 June 1916 the School received its Royal Charter as a College of the University of London, and another appeal committee was at once formed. For raising large sums of money the times were out of joint, and the public, sunk in 'the mud, misery and despair' of the Rattle of the Somme, responded so slowly that the appeal had to be closed at ,267 10s, although very far short of the target. Although from the start firm in arguing that the School ought not to begin on a pound less than the Reay Committee's estimate of ,000 annually, Hartog had at last reluctantly come round to the view that if any further delays took place the School might never come into being, and that it was necessary to 'take the current while it serves, or lose our ventures'. In November the newly-appointed Governing Body invited Dr Denison Ross, who had served with distinction in the Indian Education Service, to become the first Director and got him to take office within ten days of his appointment.* The first students were admitted on 18 January, and on 23 February 1917, in the presence of a large and distinguished gathering, at the head of which stood Lord Curzon and other members of the War Cabinet, and to the strains of music, both Western and Oriental, the School was formally op ened by the King Emperor, George V It was suggested to Philip Hartog that he shoul d become the first Director, but he d e clined on the grounds that the Direct o r s hould be a scholar.

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2 Growing Pains, 1917-39 'It is, I believe, destined to be the first School of Oriental Studies in the world.' Sir John H ewett,first Chairman of the Governin g Body, 22 June 191 6 ... eac h year on the present financial basis involves a ... nearer approach to ultimate crisis.' Report of the Senate of the University on the School, 1928 'Th e School is half-starve d. H. L. Eason, Principal ojtlze University of London, May 1938

PAGE 19

THE purposes for which the School had been brought into being were set out in the second article of the Royal Charter. It was 'to be a School of Oriental Studies in the University of London to give instruction in the Languages of Eastern and African peoples, Ancient and Modern, and in the Literature, History, Religion, and Customs of those peoples, especially with a view to the needs of persons about to proceed to the East or to Africa for the pursuit of study and research, commerce or a profession and to do all or any of such other things as the Governing Body of the School consider con duciv e or incidental thereto, having regard to the provision for those pur poses which already exists elsewhere and in particular to the co-ordination of the work of the School with that of similar institutions both in this Country and in Our Eastern and African Dominions and with the work of the University of London and its other Schools.'* In the many discussions which had precede d the foundation the primary emphasis throughout had been placed on the need to provide practical training for those about to proceed overseas, whether as representatives of Government, commerce or missions, so that against this background it was not surprising that initiall y the Senate of the University of London shoul d show a proper academic caution in giving only temporary university recognition to the School for a period of three years, and that for the express and sole purpose of registering students for higher d e grees. With the Governing Body and its senior officers in being and a Director in post, with a building ready to start work in, the first task was to recruit staff. t Twenty-six of the teachers already concerned vvith Oriental and African studies at University and King's Colleges, that is all but two, accepted transfer to the School, which was doubly encouraging, for out of its -exiguous, recurrent income far from generous t erms cou ld be off ered, representing in fact for the majority no more than part-time employment; Parts of this Article were later modified by Orders in Counci l in 1932 and 1938. t The S choo l has been exceedingl y fortunate in its senior officers. B e tw ee n the first Chairman, Sir John Hewett, and the present Chairman, Lord Radcliffe, there may be mentioned Sir Harcourt Butler, Lord Harlech, Lord Hailey Sir Jolm Cumming, Sir George Toml inson and Lord Scarbrough.

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1 8 GROWING PAINS Dr L. D. Barnett, the Lecturer in Sanskrit, for example, being offered the princely sum of annually and the promise of a share of the fees if his students should ever exceed six in number. Assuming, not unreasonably, that on these terms the School was running the risk of not being able to recruit or keep really good men, the Governors made an urgent appeal for help to the Treasury, which, succeeded only in producing from the Financial Secretary, the young Stanley Baldwin, the l acon i c reply that 'the opportunities of earning an income from the teaching of Oriental languages must be so limited that it does not appear to me that you ought to have any difficulty in retaining your existing lecturers or acquiring new ones on existing terms'. They were, in short, to be like Robert Surtees's gentlemen, 'generally spoken of as having nothing a year, paid quarterly'. V\'ith such restricted financial resources all that could be attempted in the first decade after the School's foundation was gradually to transform the numerous part-time into full-time appointments, and simultaneously to attract a small an.d if possible distinguisheu nucleus of senior teachers. As a beginning the University title of Professor of Persian was conferred on the new Director, to which were added by 1 922 four further professorships and the same number of readerships. VVith such names among those appointed as Thomas Arnold in Arabic, Ralph Turner in Sanskrit, Grahame Bailey in Urdu, Sutton Page in Bengali, and Henry Dodwell in History, the School was a t once assured of a high academic reputation. Initially, teaching was offered in twenty subje cts, loosely organized into seven groups for convenience, steadily increasing in the early years up to a total of seventy-four courses in 1932-33. But the small size of classes, only two per cent attracting e leven students or more and ninety-five per cent con sisting of fewer than six, made the School highly expensive to run, and rendered inevitable the extensive use of temporary assistance paid by the hour. In the aftermath of war Britain was suffering a painful reaction from the exertions, losses of the previous five years. The national energies had run l ow, and the insidious effects of war-time inflation followed by a swift descent into post-war det1ation were already being widely felt. Along

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GROWING PAINS 19 with other major national institutions the universities had suffered, and every part of the School's work in the early years was bedevilled by lack of money. The glaring inadequacy of university staff salaries in London induced the London County Council to initiate improvements, but although a higher, standardized scale was introduced, the School itself was unable to make the recommended increases. Adamant though he had been in saying that it would be folly to make a beginning on an annual sum of less than ,000, in fact the first t entative annual estimates of income presented by Hartog were for ,806 and for expenditure ,065, and although the budget was eventually balanced, it was a continuing cause for anxiety that a large proportion of the income was precarious. The only certain elements were the ,000 annually provided by the Treasury, plus one-third of that amount promised by the LCC, along with the dividends on the invested appeal monies. From the start, too, contrary to all expectations, ,relatively little use was made of the School by commercial firms, which kept down the income from students' fe e s to less than twenty per cent of the total. However, a general approach to the Treasury then being made on behalf of all British universities and the formal emergence of the new university grants system eased the School's situation, so that its Treasury grant was soon raised from ,000 to ,000 and in 1921-22 to ,000, and four years later, when university grants generally were restored to earlier lev e ls, to ,250. Even so, from 1924 onwards, the School's annual expenditure began regularly to exceed income and fresh sources of aid had to be sought. In 1925 the Governors authorized the Director to pass round the hat to commercial firms, but entirely without success, and, two years later, the occasion of the tenth anniversary was used to issue a public appeal for funds, but, hastily conceived and ill -prepared, it produced only a slight response, barely enough, it was said, to cover the <.:Ost of the splendid lunch at which the appeal was launched. For Ross especially, who bore the brunt, it was a dispiriting period, but he continued with unquenchable zest to seize every chance of raising money,

PAGE 22

!20 GROWING PAINS setting up a committe e to formulate applications to the charitable trusts, dis p atching a m emorandum to the British Indemnity Delegation at Peking, s cuding begging l ette rs to eleve n of the princely rule rs of the Indian States and not l eas t s eeking out likely donors at soc i ety dinne rs But mone y wa s hard to com e b y and at the end of it all the S c hool was b ette r oifby about a m e r e 750 annua lly Imperia l C h emical Industries l1aving b ee n persuade d t o off e r 250guineas a year for five years, and the N i zam of Hyderabad a y ear for three years for the study of Arabic and P ersian. N o w onde r that the Director w a s h eard singing in his w e ll-know n light baritone (whic h it was s aid had fir s t brought him to Lord Curzon' s not i ce in India ) the r efrain fro m Gilbert and Sullivan, It' s t rue I've got n o s hirt s l a wea r ; It's true my but c h e r s bill i s due; I t' s true my p ro spect s all look bl ue -But d on' t l e t that uns e ttl e you! N eve r you mind As Gilbert c onclud e d, the o n l y thing t o do in the circums t a n ces was R o ll on! On the ac a d emic sid e t o o the prosp ect s see m e d tliin. Opini o n in the University g enerally w a s uneas y on w h a t w a s thought to b e the S c hool s ine x plicabl e s lowness in fulfilling t h e high exp ectations of t h e lle a y R e port, and although r ecognition for the r e gi stration of hig h e r d egree s h a d b een r enewed p e riodi ca lly, i t was ge n e rall y ag r e e d that t h e time h a d arrive d for some stock-taking In p a r t i cular, attention was direc t e d to t h e di spro portion b etwee n the r elative l y large numbe r of stude n ts attending the School for short c ours e s of an e l e ment ary and sub-univer sity charac t e r and the v ery small number actually taking unive r si t y cou r s es. In 19 2 6 -2 7, for example, the student b ody of 5 2 8 included no m o r e than 6 5 working for university d egree s or School examinations; and the o n l y sustaine d d emand for university c ours e s h a d bee n i n His t ory, coming mainly fro m students from India. The S e n ate the r e f o r e d e cid e d to institute a thorough inquiry, and m eanw h il e took the apparently ominous st e p of extending r e cognition for higher

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GROWING PAINS Q1 Jcgree purposes for a period of on l y one year from March 1927. Against the bachground of a p r ecariou s financ i a l situation, a disappointing r esponse from commerci a l and industrial firms and the slow growth of university work prope r it seemed tha t the Schoo l's future as a separate institution hung in the b alance. At an early stage in the inquiry the Senate memb e rs came to appreciate the very real di fficulties with which the School had been grappling, and the r e for e found no difficulty in agreeing that 'it i s inevitable that ... the cost of insLruction i n the School ... must always be disproportionate to the income derive d from students' f ees', and that 'until steps have been taken which w ill place t h e School in a position to meet in full its annu a l li ab iliti es, eac h year on t h e present financial basis involves a l essening of avai labl e r e sources and a nearer approac h to ultimate cris i s'. S u c h modest increase s of expenditure as h a d already taken place wer e appr oved as r easonable and unavoidabl e 'if the School i s to fulfil its purpos e '. It was recognized, too, that the School h a d attracted a distinguished professoriate and with remarkable speed had achieved through the public a t ion of its BulleLin (t h e initial volume of which f or instance, include d many of Arthur vVal e y's elegant, vital and lucid translations of Chinese po ems) an unrivall e d r eputation in the fie ld of ori entalist scho l arship, and that its library was forging a valuab l e instrument of r esearc h for the future. These considerations l e d the Inspectors to assert in conclusion that 'the School of Oriental Studies is rend ering great services to the S tate and to the Empire, and in doing so it is r eflecting credit upon the University of London, and doing work whic h the Uni versity should b e proud to undertake', and since in their v iew 'the School's continuance on a sound financial basis was not only of University but of Irnperial concern', they urged the Senat e to approach Government for help on b ehalf of the School. On its part, the Senate, fully con curring in t h ese findings and with a gesture of faith in the future, extend e d t h e S c hool's r ecogn ition for b oth first and hig h e r degree s, and, with a blaze of enthusiasm in the session tha t f o llowed, approved the introduction of first degree cour se s in Arabic, BengaL, Chinese, Gujarati,

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22 GROWING PAINS History (with r e ference to India and to the Near and Middl e East), Japanese, Malay, Marathi, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali, Indo-Aryan, Sinhalese, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu and Hindi. From this thorough scrutiny the School therefore emerged with great credit and, with the opening of the doors for entry into full university status, confidence among the s enior membe rs began to rise. A m emorandum urging the nee d for expansi o n in both linguistic and cultural studies, including anthropolo gy, was submitte d on the occasion of a visit by the Univer sity Grants Committee, along with a request for a recurrent incre as e of ,000, and university syllabus e s for the approved first degree courses in six t ee n subjects were eagerly prepare d eve n though it was not at all clear where the students were to b e found. When in the same p e riod it was asked what its own attitude would b e towards t h e development of the newly acquire d University of London site in Blo omsb ury, the School without hesitation indicated that it would welcome the opportunity of moving to 'the University precinct' and coming into closer touch with the central administration and with other colleges and libraries, thus enabling its staff and students to c r eate and enj oy 'a larger university life '. Although in some ways it would b e sorry to l eave the City, the School f elt that it could do what was required equally w e ll in Bloomsbury, and in any event experience had shown that the d emands of the comme rcial world had fallen far short of the expectations of those witness e s who had given evidence to the Reay Committee. In the light of the Senate' s vote of confidence, the r e was also some fe eling among some o(the m embers at the School, not as yet fully crysta lli zed or forcefully expresse d, that its true future lay not so much in providing ad hoc training courses as in creating an advanced centre of university studies. Thus far, despite the accretion year by year of n e w subjects, the S c hool's a cademic structure and administrative s ystem had r emaine d r elatively unchanged. In theory the fin a l word on academic policy r e st e d with the Academic Board but this body was too large and misc e llaneous both in its composition and spread of studies to provide effective discussion, l eadership

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GROWING PAINS 23 or decision, and the r e for e in practice the control of affairs, both administrative and acad emic, had r emaine d to a very considerabl e extent in the hands of Ross, the Direc tor. Always genial, bursting with energy, enthusiasm and good living, a great conve rsationalist at heart something of a n enfant t e rribl e Ross carrie d lightly his r e sponsibiliti e s and the many troubles that bes e t the Sc hool and neve r fail e d to radiate confid e nce. But, lacking the n ecessary funds, h e had found it impossibl e to look far ahead. There was no move to drop the initial e mphasis on the provision o f practical training, and no d etermine d attempt was made to define clear line s of aca demic policy for the fl.ttur e and to d e vise the w ays and means of following them. It is true that on oc cas ion h e consulted his senior colleagues, but the system was casual, and in the context of the challenge off e r e d by the Senate' s r eport, and by the acc eptance by the University of a very wide range of new first degree courses and the urgent need to r a ise funds, it b ecame ev id ent that the loos e alb eit comfortable administrative and academic arrangements of the past would have to be replaced. In 193 2 the r e fore, the d ec ision was t ake n to r eorganize t eaching and research into eight departments, consisting of six d evo t e d to the study of languages and cultures, and two r e spon sible for Oriental history and law, and for phonetics and linguistics, the latte r incidentally marking the formal introduction of a n e w disciplin e into British universit y studies. The six 'regional' d epartments cove r e d r e sp ectively Ancient India and Iran, Modern India and C e ylon, South Eas t Asia and the Islands, the Far East, the Near East, and Africa To take charge in eac h of these a Head of Department was appointed, and all of the Heads o f D epartments were brought togethe r in a committee unde r the chairmanship of the Directo r vvith r e sponsibility for initiating and guiding academic poli cy It was a sensible arrange m ent which has last e d down to the pre s ent and h a s se r ve d the S c hool well. For the first time, the r e for e systematic aca d emic planning ov e r the whol e range of the School s work b eca m e possible, one o f the ea rliest consequences In 1936 the number of d e p artme n ts was reduced t o six b y absorbing A n c i ent India and Iran, and South East Asia into other departments.

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24 GROW!NG PAlNS b eing the emergeu ce of proposals for a purposeful scheme of r esearc h into linguistics an.d African l anguages. Thus f a r t eaching in African languages h a d b ee n in the hands of the veteran vVerner sisters, Alice and Mary, and in the discus s ions on what should be done on their r etire m ent an ambitious scheme was propounded b y the young phoneti cian Mr (a fterwards Pto f esso r ) Arthur Lloyd James for the e stablishment of an international centre of linguistic study, research and teaching giving special emphasis to spoken African l anguages, and an approach was made to the Ro cke f eller Foundation for financial suppor t. University institutions in the Unite d Kingdom, not l eas t the School, are d eeply indebte d to the Rock e f e ll e r Foundation, not only for the most generous financial aid, but eve n more for the w ise c ounsel which when sought is always h e lpfully and tactfully proffered by the Foundation's officers; and this occa sion once more illustrated the rule. It was largely o wing to the intervention of James Gunn of the Foundation that the rather d iffuse original proposa l finally emerge d as a compact programme of African linguistic r esearc h with an annual budget of ,000 for three years. Through this work, whic h was in f ac t continued with Rock e feller aid down to 19 3 8, a nucle u s of staff was c reat e d unde r the gifted phone tician, Ida Ward, the D epartment of Africa was brought into b eing, and the unique scheme of research and teaching was started which has continued with gathering weight and momentum down to the present. It was a natura l corollary, first suggest e d in 1935 by Lord Lugard, on e of the Governors, tha t the title of the Schoo l should be enlarged to include Africa, which was done three years later. In this p e riod the pattern of t eac hing i n most d epartments had gradually assumed a new s h a p e with a growing emphasis on university courses, thus providing some jus tifi cation for the faith r ecently expressed by the S e n ate. The pattern and content of university education in Britain had been r ela tively little affected by the g rowth of the British Empire in A sia anu Africa, and a p art from any provision which was sought b y Government d e partments for the training of c i v il servants, there was very little academic demand by

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GROWING PAINS 25 British students for what the Schoo l could offer. To most the studies appeared exotic, even mysterious, 'gleams of a remoter world', and no one today who is concerned with extra-European studies and who did not actually grow up in Britain between the two wars can readily appreciate how r estric t e d were the opportunities in these studies for British students. Those who have known only a land flowing with milk, if not honey, cannot easily imagine the desert. There was an almost total absenc e of scholarships, of trave l and publication funds, of career opportunities, which deterred all but a tiny handful of dedicated young British scholars. Although British students taking university courses were few and far between, the traditional attraction of the mother country and metropolitan centre on the d e pendent countries of the Empire, combined with the presence of a small group of really outstanding scholars (now including, for exampl e, 'the young men', Harold Bailey, Hamilton Gibb and Waiter Henning), began to draw students from abroad, especially for postgraduate study. It was ironic that it should have been university students from overseas rather than from Britain who for many years, and until quite recently, most benefited from the School's existe nce. By 1927 -28 there were 115 students at the School from overseas, a number which by 1936 -37 had risen to 174, that is to very nearly 4 per cent of the S c hool's total student population of 428. Some there may be in British universities who, in the pungent words of Sir Ifor Evans, 'prefer the age of Rutherford to that of Franks', but the truth is that for many young British scholars it was a bitterly cramping period. Despite this welcome increas e in work of university standard the bulk of the teaching was still being given in short courses, usually of several duration and mainly for members of government, business firms and missions. The demand from firms for this type of course usually constituted no more than between ten and fifteen per cent of the whole, and a renewed attempt to redress this presumed imbalance was made by offering Commercial At this period the students taking university courses in Indo-Aryan, Indian History, Indian Law, Arabic and Persian were almost wholly drawn from the Indian Empire and

PAGE 28

26 GROWING PAINS Certificates to those who completed the short courses, but the demand soon fell away and the scheme was abandoned. On the other hand the longer and more testing first-and second-year School Certificates and Diplomas mainly in language studies, had been from the start serving a small but steady demand and were therefore maintained. It seemed that in meeting effective demand the School had already begun to take a turn away from the provision of short courses of a sub-university character towards the development of university courses, but the rate of change was so slow that it seemed almost imperceptible. Nevertheless, it was consistent with this trend that when the University, which was actively proceeding to develop the Bloomsbury site, offered the School a place within the precinct, it should be accepted with alacrity. Negotiations for the sale of the Fins bury building were started (complicated somewhat by the need to compensate at a finally agreed cost of ,000 the rump of the London Institution members), and in July 1936 completed for the sum of ,000, and, pending the erection of the proposed new building in Bloomsbury, temporary premises for administration and teaching were rented in Vandon House, a cramped, red-brick building in Westminster, and for the library in Clarence House, near St James's Park. The building had served its purpose admirably, and no one who worked there is likely to forget either its cellars, which for long provided the common rooms for staff and students, or its serene and lovely library reading room, whose wooden floors and panelling glowed with subdued light; there within its alcoves could always be found tranquil solitud e And such society As is quiet, wise and good. Had the School been able to foresee that through the vicissitudes of war and peace it was to be denied for a period of more than thirty years the facility of a new library building, it might well have hesitated to make the move. On a calmer note of assessment, the decision to move from the City to the University precinct forms a critical turning-point in the School's history.

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GROWING PAINS 27 Remoteness of place encouraged academic i solation; the School was in the University but not of it. As Henry Dodwell, on the eve of retirement and of death, pointed out later, in an unforgettably moving plea for the maintenance of high academic standards, it was of immense benefit for a small, young College, in which by and large there were few long-established traditions and standards, to move into the heart of the University; symboli cally right, too, that its studies should be taking a central place in the world exchange which is developing in our own time. Plans for the new building, which was to accommodate an academic staff of forty, a library of several hundred thousand volumes, a small administrative staff and an undeclared number of students, were quickly prepared and readily approved by all concerned. So smoothly beguiling was this pro gress that the Governors could be forgiven for announcing in a mood of optimism in 1 938 that 'the School would be installed in its Bloomsbury home by March 1941'. Time and again in the matter of new buildings was hope to criumph over experience. The favourable terms of sa l e of the Finsbury building apparently provided for the foreseeable capita l needs of the School, and therefore threw renewed emphasis on the continuing inadequacy of the recurrent funds. From all sources the annual income had crept up to ,000 by the earl y 1920s, and slowly to ,000 through the following decade of economic depression. Renewed appeals to City firms had elicited no response, and by this time it was becoming obvious that Britain's industry and commerce were so preoccupied with the task of extricating themselves from the economic slump that the School's only hope of aid lay in trying on national grounds to obtain greater support from Government; and the gathering political tension between the European powers and the clear signs of German and Italian and Japanese ambitions in Asia and Africa encouraged this switch of emphasis. With some Departments of State the School's association was close. From the start the India Office had recognized the value of the Schoo l 's work in training Indian Civil Service probationers by making an annual grant of

PAGE 30

28 GROWING PAINS ,250, soon increased to ,500, and in 1922 raised again to ,250, but it was remarkable that, despite the School's substantial contribution to the training of Sudan and Colonial Service officers, no similar recurring grant (except for an annual from Hong Kong) had ever been made by the Colonial Office or by Colonial Governments. When, therefore, a carefully co-ordinated approach was made with the ready support of the Secretary of State, Mr Ormsby Gore (later Lord Harlech), to all the Colonial Governments, it readily evoked from fifteen of them for the session 193839 a vote of ,380. At the same time the Treasury grant was raised by ,500 to a total of ,4. By this period, therefore, the annual income and expenditure had climbed to close on ,000, but with one-third of the total income still being drawn from ad hoc annual grants and donations, the School's existing programme of work was far from secure, the rate of growth of staff was small and long-term planning was impossibl e. But these financial worries, although acute, were overlaid by the f ears arising from the quick succession of international crises, apparently and inexorably l eading to another world war, and consE-quently by anxious thoughts of what part in that event the School would lJe called on to play; and by the gravest doubts about its state of preparedness. At this critical juncture Ross reached the point of retirement, and was succeed e d by Ralph Turner, who had first join e d the School in 1922 as Professor of Sanskrit after serving in the Indian Education Service and in Allenby's army in Palestine. With a distinct flair for publicity and undaunted optimism, Ross had managed against heavy odds in a most difficult and depressing inter-war p e riod of twenty years to keep the School alive. This was a considerable achievement, but he had not been able to make of it the imperial and practical training centre envisaged in the Reay Report, or to define clearly the School's prope r function as a Coll ege of the University. It may be that the two functions were not easily reconcilable. In retrospect This grant for 1936-37 already included the Treasury grant fixed at ,250 in 19Z5-Z6 and the LCC grant originally fixe d at ,535, both of which had been incorporated in 19 5 0-31 in to the block grant of ,933 from the University Court.

PAGE 31

The Finsbury Circus school building

PAGE 32

The librarx of the Finsburx Circus building

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GROWING PAINS 29 it s ee ms cl ear that the m ove to Bloomsbur y was d ec isive but time h a d to e lapse b e for e this could b e appreciate d M eanwhile othe r more urgent c onsid e rations h a d to b e fa ce d. Takin g over in a p e r i od of n ationa l e m e r ge n cy, Turne r naturally s a w his primary t a sk as that of prepari n g the S c h o ol to m ee t any d emands whic h Britis h involv e m ent in a major war in Asia and Africa would impose on it. Disquieting n e ws c o ntin u e d to reach L ondo n of the great stride s i n t h e A si a n and African fie lds of study b eing take n by G ermany and Ita l y a v ow e dl y for the purpos e of exploiting future politi ca l conque sts in A sia and Afri ca. This thre w into high r elie f the scantine s s of the School s r e sourc e s the fragility of its a c ad emic structure, and the lac k of British nationa l poli c y A case to b egin to put the situatio n right, e sp ec i ally to build up the S c hool s c ov erage of strate gically important language s was the r e for e hurriedly pre p a r e d and submitte d through the Unive r sity to the S ec r etarie s of Sta t e f o r India and the Coloni e s and t o the Financia l S ec r e t a r y of the W a r Office, as a result of whic h an inter-de p artmenta l committee was s e t up t o c onsid e r i n the national conte:h.1: the cost of the S c hool's urgent n eeds. This was rapid l y assess e d b y the committe e a t 25 000 annually. With su c h prog r ess ho p e s ran high, but bitte r dis appointment soon follow e d when the Treasury on the ground of economy r e j ec t e d outright the committee's r ecommendation. Meanwhile, on the assumption tha t in the event of war L on d o n would b e imme di a t e l y and h eavil y bombe d, arrange m ents w e r e made t o evac u a t e the S c hoo l to Cambridge, whe r e som e ac commodatio n for staff and t eaching was reserved in Christ' s Coll e g e Thus, when war fina ll y broke out in S eptembe r 1 93 9, the S c ho o l f o und itself in temporary quarte rs in C ambridge, with its fin a n c i a l resource s full y committe d to a halfcomp l e t e d building in Bloomsbury with its s taff s cattered, its library in stor a g e and the bitte r knowledge tha t compare d e v e n wi t h the R eay proposa l s of 1909 its t e a ching e stablishment was still d efic i e n t in every d epartment. Founde d in the closing stages of the first VVo rlcl War to m eet national nee ds, financ iall y half-starv e d in the two d ec ad e s of p eace, it n e rvously brace d its e l f to r e spond to a c h a ll enge of a t otally n e w orde r

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3 The Years of War, 1939-46 'During the war the advice of scholars has again and again be e n thrust aside by unimaginative offic i a ls military as well as civi l on l y t o be taken late r sometimes too late.' Professor R. L. Turne r to the Earl of S c arbrough 1 O c tober 1945 'Th e Commission ... has unanimously reache d the conclusion that the existing provision for these studies i s unworthy of our country and p e opl e R eport of the Interdepartme ntal C o mmission of Enquiry o n Orie ntal Slavonic, East European and African Studi e s 1 6 April1946 'The f oresight of the Senate and the Court in urging upon the Government the need for a n expans ion of the School was ampl y prove d by the experience of war.' Report of the Court of th e Univ ersity of London 6 January 1947

PAGE 37

IT was only after the greatest hesitation and on Government's advice that the School had left the metropolitan centre for Cambridge, and as soon as it became clear that despite German air raids it was possible to resume work there, a return was made in July 1940. Only sixty-two students had followed the School to Cambridge, falling to twenty -six in 1940-41; and there had never been any question but that in time of war the School's proper place was to be in close touch with the Service Ministries and Departments of State. The School's half-completed building in Bloomsbury had become an early casualty of the bombing, receiving in September 1940 a direct hit, which incidentally quite demolished the newly-constructed (and fortunately empty) air raid shelter in the basement, but repairs were at once made and building continued. Anticipating an early entry into its new home, the School itself had found temporary quarters in eleven small and overcrowded rooms in Broadway Court, overlooking St James's Park station, and was therefore filled with consternation to learn that the Ministry of Information, already installed since the outbreak of war in the Senate House of the University, wanted to play cuckoo in the School's nest by occupying the whole of the new building. l=ediately a battle of argument was joined for possession, Sir Philip Hartog, at this period a Governor and as dedicated and selfless as ever, energetically jumping in to lead what proved to be his last fight on behalf ofthe School, but it was not until February 1943, and then only after final reference to the Cabinet and House of Co=ons, that a solution was found by which the shell of the whole building as originally planned was to be completed, a matter of the greatest subsequent importan.ce, the School occupying the two upper floors and part of the basement, and the Ministry the remainder on condition that it would vacate six months after the end of the war. It had been taken for granted in the dis cussions leading to its foundation towards the closeofthe first vVorld War that the School would have a significant national part to play in any future world conflict, but by the outbreak of the second World War and despitethe long,precedingperiodofincreasing

PAGE 38

THE YEARS OF WArt international tension onl y the most tentative indication had been given by the War Office that in the event of hostilities it foresaw the need for some courses for officers in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Japanese and Siamese But no steps had been taken to put the School in funds or to make sure that in the event teachers would be avai labl e, and b y late 1941 only two of these co urses for a total of twenty officers had in fact been firmly requested. Meanwhil e some work of a voluntary character had been contributed, including research by the Phonetics Section into radio t e lephone speech for the Air Ministry, and an ad hoc short, intensive course which had been organized for officials of the Colonial Office and British Counci l. This constituted a ludicrous l y small contribution to the war effort, and the Director found it alarming that d espite the increasing scale of the war in the Middle East and Africa and the threat of war in the Far East, no far-reaching programme of language training for the Services was even being considered, especially since at that stage of the war there happened to be many students at universities awaiting delayed call-up into the Services who would have provided admirable recruits for such training. As a partial gesture the School itsel f volunteered to provide a short course in Urdu for officers and cadets intended for the Indian Army, the cost of fees being met by the vVar Office and, although no maintenance grants were provided, some 365 cadets and officers took advantage of the offer. Acutel y dissatisfied by this hand-to-mouth treatment of the problem, the School in the summer of 1941 made formal representations to both the Foreign Office and \Var Office, and in v iew of the threatening posture of Japan pointed to the critical British shortage of experts in Japanese and to the long period of training which servicemen would have to undergo to acquire a knowle dge of that language. It was true that at that particular juncture the Services were stretched to the utmost, aheady quite unable to meet the manpower needs of the vast, widely scattered theatres of war, but the School woul d have been doing less than its duty if it had n o t urgently continued to seek dis cussion of a problem which sooner or later would have to be faced and solved. However, the War Office's r esponse, when it came

PAGE 39

THE YEARS OF WAR 35 in August 1941, was discouraging, and expressed in a style which no-doubt would have earned the Prime l\1inister's censure. 'So far as can be reasonably foreseen at present,' it said, 'in spite of the kal e ido scopic changes which have taken place in the countries which might in the future develop into theatres of war, we f eel we are at present reasonably insured in the matter of officers knowing Oriental languages.' Two months l ater Britain was at war with Japan, and by the end of the year, Malaya and Singapore had been overrun, and the British Intelligence Departments were desperately casting around for men able to read and speak Japanese, only to find that, despite the War Office's r ecently expressed optimism, the supply compared with the demand, as they had been informed by the School, was almost nonexistent. "\Vhen the School renewed the offer its services were accepted, but some eight months were still to elapse before any servicemen were actually sent to begin their instruction. Once trained, the men were eagerly snapped up, and so great was the military need in the Indian and Far Eastern fields of war that those whose only training was a ten weeks' course at tl1e School in recogni zing and recording Japanese radio signals, were on arrival in India pressed into translating documents, pending the arrival of translators proper, who could at the earliest not be ready b e for e August 1943. However, after this agonisingly slow start, these basic courses were built up steadily and satisfactorily, and by October 1945 nearly 600 men had qualified. Large numbers of radio-telephonists with some knowledge of Japanese were required in the Far Eastern theatre of war, especially by the Royal Air Force, but the preparation of a short, effective course offered peculiar difficulties. In the early d ays of the war, Professor Lloyd James, Head of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, had made some useful explorations of the problems, abruptly cut short b y his tragic illness and death, and his successor, the immensely energetic and ingenious J R. Firth, went on to devise a system by which men could be trained in a very short period to record accurately. The RAF sent its first men for this course in October 1942, and at the same time, on the not unreasonable assumption that the

PAGE 40

36 THE YEARS OF WAit Fleet Air Arm would have like needs, the School gave a similar invitation to the Admiralty. But the latter show e d no immediate interest. within a year, however, the Navy was vainly trying to borrow men so trained from the RAF and by August 1943 had started to send its own 1nen for training to the School. As the Japanese pressed home their early military successes in Burma, and the British sought to consolidate their defensive positions in Assam, it became obvious that links with China woul d be of great importance, and the Director therefore sought to draw the War Office into discussions on the likely need for men trained in Chinese. But he got littl e encouragement, reporting: 'Later, when a Chinese army was coming to our help over the passes into Burma, I again sought an intervie w at the War Office to urge t lt e training of even a small number of offic e rs in Chinese. I r ece ived rny answer: educated Chinese spoke English; our liaison officers had no need to speak Chinese. In what era was this senior officer of the Intelligence D epart ment living? I have heard that Chinese soldiers, even if they could speak English, were not please d that their own language was so little regarded; anJ. the imponderable has weight even in war. The story is as before. The advice, rejected in 1942, begins to be taken in 194. This year the Services have already sent 71 for Chinese, and more are to follow .' As the demands of war mounted and as the Service Ministries became able to assess their manpower and to project their forward needs more accurately, the School was called on to undertake a wider range of work. The Postal and T elegraph Censorship Department enlisted the School's aiel in reading letters in languages which could not be dealt with in the Uncommon Languages Section of the censorship, more than 32,000 altogether in 192 languages being in this way dealt with during the war, reaching a peak of more than 1,000 a month in the early part of 1945. The demand by the Servic e s for intensive courses in a variety of languages continued to grow, bringing into the School, for exampl e in the session 1943 44 about 1,000 servicemen, and in the process overwhelming the Schoo l 's restricted accom modation and necessitating the transfer for the remainder of the war of the

PAGE 41

' fi-fE YEA R S OF vV A R 57 Far Eastern cours e s under the w1se and maternal care of Profe ssor Eve Edwards to a group of converte d houses in Sussex Gardens. Altogether 1,674 servicemen passed through courses at the School between 194 2 and 194 6. With the accompanying sharp rise in income from f ees, the School's financial troubles s ee m e d to be over, and modest annual finan cial surpluse s accrued, r eaching 8, 140 in 1942-43, 5,9 10 in 1943-44 and 3 ,71 2 i n 1944-45. But the Schoo l s financ ial buoyancy was more apparent than real, its annual recurrent grant fron"l the University b eing st ill no more than 2 1,000 and, casting a look ahead to the post-war p e riod, it s ee m e d certain that the School's financial position would b e no more secure than in the pre-war days. vVars and rumours of wars there might be, but this fa ctor it seen"led was to remain constant. During the long months of preparation to invade Hitler' s Europe thought in Britain was everywhere leaping ahead to the post-war world, c reating a climate of opinion in favour of d evelopment and change. It was to be e x pected tha t in the context of its assumed national role and its somewhat chastening experiences in the pre-war and earl y war years the School should wish to r e -examine its own position, and the a d equacy of the pro v ision of those studies in Britain for whic h it cm:ried a major responsibility. The incidence of war, especially the initial military debacle in the Far East and the associated failure of British military inte lli gence, could not but provoke renewe d discussion on national needs, both prac tical and academic. The plain fact was that in many r e sp ec ts the Scho o l's prov ision of studies still f ell short of what the R eay Report had propos e d in 1909, and the sharp compmison of r eality with what appear e d urgently necessary to sustain the war effort evoked from the School s departments a succession of plans for d evelopment, first for Near and Far Eastern studies, the n for Indian studies, and in February 194-4 a t the Foreign Offi ce' s r equest ffi"lothe r consolidat e d statement of need. Some months later a compre h ensive summary of all of the s e proposals was gathered tog ethe r and put forward as a plan for the expansion of the School over a tenyear period from the d a t e of the end of the war.

PAGE 42

38 THE YEARS OF WAR The Schoo l founded its c ase not so much on the actual military needs of the nation in wartime, which were only too evident, but on the like lihood of great changes in Asia and Africa in the immediate post-war period. 'Th e tide of nationalism,' it said, 'is running high in every Oriental and African country, and the peoples of thos e countries will look forward to great economic development, industrial commercial and agricultural. In this they will welcome the assistance of theW est, but not in the bygone spirit of submission to West ern authority.' An expansion of Oriental and African studies in British unive rsities it was argued, would assist in preparing and equipping Britain to take a full and sympathetic part in these changes, and in adjusting her own outlook and polici es accordingly. The School es timated that it would need an annual recurrent grant of ,000 rising to ,000 by the end of the decade, a long with a capital grant of ,000 to enlarge its accommodation. / Meanwhil e, in interviews with the Minister for \7Var, Richard Law, and vv:ith Leo Amery, the S ec retary of State for India, the Director had expressed the conviction that the time was ripe to set up a Government Com mission to review the future of Oriental and African studies in Britain, and Lord Hailey, at this time Chairman of the School, at once added his powerful voice. The movement of world affairs, the ebb and flow of British fortunes, favoured the proposal, and the great changes brought about by the war in Asia and Africa, and the implications of the wartime alliance with Russia had made it urgently necessary to make a fresh appraisa l of Britain's position in relation to these major areas. In June 1944 Mr Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, therefore announced among other m easures the Government's intention of setting up a commission 'to examine the facilities offered by universities and other educational institutions in Great Britain for the study of Oriental, Slavonic, East European, and African languages and cultures, to consider what advantage is being take n of these facilities and to formulate recommendations for thei r improvement'. Losing little time, the commission of fourteen members started its

PAGE 43

THE YEARS OF WAR 39 inquiries m 1945 under the chairmanship of Lord Scarbrough. Deeply interested in these studies through his servic e as Governor of Bombay and as Minister for India and Burma, and subs equently to become their life-long patron, no one more eminently fitted could have been chosen for the task:, and \Vith the admirably prompt report of his Commission's findings in April 1946 and their publication in the following year, scholar s had good cause to invoke the po e t Horace, in hailing Maecenas alavis edite regibus 0 et praesidium e t dulce d ecus m eum. The Scarbrough Report formed a milestone in the development of these studies in Britain. without beating about the bush, it declared that the course of war had already given a clear indication of the importance which increasing contacts between countries woul d assume after the war and of the relatively growing significance of the countries of Asia, Africa and the Slavonic world, and had at the same time revealed Britain's d eficienc ies in the number of persons available to provide expert knowledge and teaching about the governments and peoples of these parts. In its opinion, this kind of knowledge in a world at peace no less than at war had to find a permanent and growing place in British culture, starting in the universitie s, where the existing scale of research and t eac h ing was quite inadequate to meet Britain's immediate needs. The first requirement in the Commission s view was to build strong university departments, primarily in the study of languages with some related cultural stu dies, in p l ace of the few isolated professorial posts for centuries had existed in several British universities. As a means to recruit staff for these new departments, Treasury studentships were propos e d and provision was also to be made for those so traine d to keep up-to-date by travel abroad. The Commission was not d e t erre d by the expectation that for some time to come the number of umlergraduates -in these der)artments would be small, and declar e d that the national importance of these studies and the evident need for much more r esearc h justifi e d exceptional treatm ent. In this proposed programme of growth it r ecognize d that all fields of

PAGE 44

4 0 THE YE AR S 01.? WAR study relating to Asi a and Africa would be d eve l oped in the University qf London, mainly at the Schoo l of Oriental and African Studies, and that for economy, conveni e nce and e ffi ciency the study of the languages of Africa and South Eas t Asia in particular should be concentrated there. Incisive in its analysis and prac tical in its r ecommendations, t h e report was given a warm and unanimous welcome in Britain. The fulfilment of the r ecommendations of the Report was envisaged as r equiring a p e riod of ten years, the lik ely cost a t the half-way stage being assessed at ,000 annually, with a similar inc r ease to follow over a second five-year period. Capita l expenditure too, would b e r equired for new premises to accommodate this expansion. So far as the y affected the universities, the Government promptly accepted these recommendations and a ll ocated the recurrent sums r equired as an earmarke d grant for the first five years, and the University Grants Committee a t onc e invited s e l ected universitie s, including London and the School, to submit their proposa l s for development. Although g e neral r efe r ence had b ee n made in the R eport to the n ee d for capita l funds for building, no specific proposals w e r e included, and the post-war priority rightly g iven to the r epair of bomb damage, associat e d with a strictly applied licensing syst e m caused the subject to b e deferred, much to the School's disadvantage l ater. In the c onfid e n ce tha t its importunate pressure on Government and its own contribution to the war effort had playe d no small part in clearing the way for the commission, the School submitte d the scheme of expansion whic h it had long sin ce drawn up, being promptly asked by the commission's chairman to r aise i ts sights and increase the sca l e of its propo s als. Thus a t the beginning of the post-war p e riod, which happene d conveniently to coincide with the start of the first post-war quinquennium for the unive r siti e s the pro spect for the d eve lopment of Oriental and African studies seemed set fair, and orientalists eve rywh ere rejoiced in 'The innocent brightness of a new-born day'.

PAGE 45

4 Expansion and Developinent, 1946-67 'Adopted, the Scarbrough Report will be a new charter for Oriental and African studies in this country ... Professor R L. Turner to th e East India Association, 19 June 194 7 'The School's work should be relate d to the conditions of the time .... With the rising importance of Asia and Africa in the modern world, Oriental and African studies should take their proper place as a normal part of the education of western society.' The School to the Rockeje ll e r Foundation, 16 O ctobe r 1957 'The School of Oriental and African Studies has built up a pre-eminent position nationally and internationally in the depth and range of its activities.' Statem ent of th e Chairman of th e Univ ersity Grants Committ e e to the Univ ersity of London, 21 October 1965

PAGE 47

THE SCARBROUGH EXPANSION Well in advanc e of any of the monies which might be forthcoming unde r the proposals of the Scarbrough Report, the School h ad been promised by the Court of the University of London that its recurrent grant would be raised to ,000 annually for the period of the 1947-52 quinquennium. At the same time the adoption by Government of the Devonshire Report on training for the Colonial Service had assure d the School of a grant for African language studies, so that for the first time ever, it knew that it could rely on an ampl e surplus and therefore could malce an immediate start on its post-war programme and at the same time take long views on future development. At last there was 'some honey and plenty of money'. Consistent with the proposals of the Scarbrough Report and with its own long-standing intention, a period of expansion over ten years was envisaged in which the academic establishment starting at 63 posts would rise at the half-way stage to a total of 2 18 posts and at the close in 19 57 to 256 posts, providing for general growth and spread in the humanities acros s the vast expanse of Asian and African studies, with emphasis on the study of history, language and literature and including a very modest addition in law and anthropology. Against a background of three decades of financial stringency and of academic frustration and of the more recent disturbance and distortion caused by the war, this was undoubtedly a formidable and far-reaching programme. Yet in the post-war climate of opinion it was in keeping with the times, for in Britain policies of expansion were in demand. A new Government, pledged to a policy of reform and development, had taken office, the unexpectedly quick victory and armistice in the Far East had uplifted the national spirit, and the minds of people everywhere were set on fulfilling the many ambitious plans which h ad been formulated to keep hope alive in the dark days of war. Death met I too, And saw the dawn glow through. In this context there was no reason why those who for many years had

PAGE 48

44 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPl\'lENT called for the expansion of the S c hool should question the correctness of this policy or the S c hool's ability to carry through suc h a massive enterprise. But there was one factor of supreme importance. B e fore the war the School had been fortunate in g etting t eac hers of distinction from the missionary societies and the ov erseas services, not l e ast the civi l and education services in India, but with the winding dovm of these Services it was obvious that everything dep ende d on the School's ability to attract young British scholars into these new fields of study. In justification of their own optimism they were able to point to the existence of a score of temporary t eac h e rs especially in Chinese and Japanes e recruite d from among young servic emen to run the wartime courses, who already provided a r e serve, and to the large numbe rs of d e mobilized servicemen about to return from the Asian and Afri ca n theatres of war, many of whom it was assumed would have gained an enduring interest in those areas From the se sources alon e the S c hool thought that it could fill as many as one hundre d Scarbrough training studentships. Bearing in mind the advice of the Scarbrough Commission that it was important to build strong departments, the School sensibly proposed to expandon the one side around the existing four nuclei forme d by the teachers of the principal l anguages and literatures of Asia and Africa, whose work had long bee n organi ze d on a regional basis, that is for Afric a, the Near and Middle East, India, Pakistan and Ceylon, and the Far East, and on the other side around the longe stablished although sti ll small units of pho netics and linguistics and of history and l aw. However, these existing structures w e r e partial in extent and variabl e in character, so that although a ll six departm ents at once s e t to with a will to r ecruit and train staff, som e made quick e r progress than others. Under the stimulating, not to say provocative sway of Professor Firth, an outspok e n and shrewd Yorkshireman, the D epartment of Phone tics and Linguistics expanded in numbers and maintained its role of l e adership in the se fields. In History, the whole of the proposed quinquennial programme of filling twenty new posts was compl eted, so that the nucle us of teaching staff was trained for all the major Asian areas in the

PAGE 49

S o m e s enio r m embers of th e s taff, 19} 6 Left to right -Professo r (lat e r Sir) Hamilto n Gib b P rofe ssor H H D o d we ll, Pro fessor Sir E D enis on R oss, Professo r (later Sir) Ralph Tur ner and D r T Gra h ame Bailey

PAGE 50

The Common Room, Finsbury Circus

PAGE 51

EXPAI SION AND DEVELOPM.ENT 4 5 study of ancient and modern times, and a start was even made in opening up the relatively unexplored pre-European history of Africa, which in fact had not been envisaged in the Scarbrough programme. Attracting students throughout the world, especially from South Asia the History Department g1ew within a d ecade into the largest research department in history in a British university In the regional departments the principa l i ncreases were made by India, Pakistan and Ceylon (twenty-nine established posts), by the Near and Middl e Eas t ( twenty-si x establis h e d posts ) and the Far East (twentysix established posts ), with roughly half dispos e d on the language side, c hiefly on the modern spoken tongues, and half on related studies in philo sophy, religion, the history of art and archaeology. The Africa Department r eached an establishment of twenty posts in language studi es but progr ess in the South East Asian field g enerally was slow, for the D epartment i tself, which had been disso l ve d in 1 936, had first to be recreated under Professor J. A. Stewart b efore the di fficult tas k of recruitment and training could be starte d in earnest.* On the advice of t h e University Grants Committee the very small number of t eachers in the subjects of law and of anthropology, who were already attached to other departments, were grouped together in 1947 and 1949 res p ective l y to form Departments of Law and of Anthropology, under Pro f esso r s Vesey FitzGerald and Fi.irer -Haimendorf, but not without an expression of doubt by substantial groups of teachers in some of the regiona l departments who, fearful that the proc es s of sub-division once started might be taken to extremes, preferred the policy of bringing or holding together all disciplines of study within the existing departments. t But this would undoubtedly have produced overlar ge and administratively cumbrous, r egional departments, cutting across, moreover, the established lines of development Five membe r s for the Departm ent of South East A si a and the Islands were trained in the principal languages of this area hythe Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, creating an intimate r elationship between the two d epartments. -jAround a nucle u s o f study of language and literature, the regional departments included and still include t h e study of phil osophy, religion, archaeology, art history and music

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46 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT in other major colleges of the University in which the tradition of closelylinked undergraduate and postgraduate programmes through single-subject disciplines was strongl y maintained. Desirable though in some ways it may have been to promote region a l or 'area studies', the regional d epartments in the School had not yet turned their attention to this problem of organizing area studies w i thin their exi sting framework of teaching either at the undergraduate or postgraduate stages. Moreover, the creation of new depaTtments by disciplin e of study on the same lines as the existing Departments of History and of Phonetics and Linguistics not only facilitated their rapid growth by evoking both understanding and a Teady acceptance throughout the University, but also ensured the maintenance of high standaTds by est ablishing them as integr a l membe rs of the r elevant University schools and bo ards in these studies. These were critica l decisions foT once taken it became virtually impossible, eve n if desirable, to accept 'area studies' as the sole conceptual framework within which to fost e r the whole of the School's work. As part of the general scheme of academic growth in this first post-war quinquennium, seveTal T elate d impoTtant policies weTe tested b y the School and incoTpoTated into its working routine. A cadre of language assistants was creat e d consisting of reseaTch informants annually recruited from the field areas, and a system of overseas research leave was carefully worked out by whi ch a dozen or so members of the permanent academic staff annuall y proceeded to cou ntTies in Asia and Africa for res earch. The School, too, took the responsib ility f o r setting up and administering a new Foundation of Chinese Art, containing a unique and priceless collection of Chinese ceramics, which had generously bee n donate d to the University by Sir Percival David. In d efining and applying these p l ans, especially in recruiting and training young scholars to open up fresh fie lds of study whilst simultaneously maintaining the normal routine of unive r sity t eaching and administration, the whole attention and energy of the senior members of staff was absorbed often at the expense of their own research, and in several instances of

PAGE 53

EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT 47 their health. The School's debt to a small circle of dedicated heads of depart ments, not l eas t to Professor Eve Edwards, Professor John Firth, Professor Waiter Simon and Professor Ida Ward, who, along with the Director, carried the burden of the day, was immeasurable. On the foundation laid by them a whole new generation of young British scholars entered and transf0rmed the Asian and African fie lds of study. Neverthel ess, despite high hopes and great endeavours, many of the quinquennial objectives were not achieved. It was found possible to award no more than twenty-four of the Treasury studentships, compared with the figure of one hundred which had been aimed at; and b y the close of the quinquennium the net increase in the Schoo l s academic staff amounted to about one hundred, which constituted only two-thirds of the programme as originally proposed However, all initial plans had been made on the assumption that there would immediately follow a second period of five years with earmarked financial support, and that the p r esence of a large and vigorous body of young scholars, already introduced into its fields of studies, was bound in this s econ d quinquennium to have cumulative effects of the greatest academic importance. In the light of its achievements in these first years, the School felt confident that in the second quinquennium the whole of its Scarbrough programme could be fulfilled, and therefore looked forward in the period 195 2-57 to adding another ninetysix academic posts to its establishment, roughly as large an increase as had been achieved in the first post-war quinquennium. No new major dis c iplines or departments were envisaged, and the expressed aim was to extend and consolidate existing studies in the humanities, along with modest growth in law and anthropology, and to continue to advance along the broad regional front, great reliance being once more p l aced on the possibility of attracting and training recruits to the staff by means of the award of Treasury studentships. In anticipation of an expansion of staff on this scale, some attention was paid to the pressures which would fall on the School's already inadequate buildings, and to the need for new accommodation for the library, which was rapidly growing in

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48 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT size; but, possibly because the minds of the senior members were still concentrated on the vexed question of how best to recruit and train staff, unfortunately no more than a general reference of need was made at this stage. Many and severe were the obstacles-the unfinished state of the existing building, the lack of a new site, of decanting space and of capital funds -but failure in this matter of new accommodation to make more decisive progress in this period was later to create grave difficulties and a bottleneck to further growth. THE END OF SCARBROUGH EXPANSION But the sky which had seemed to be set fair suddenly clouded over. The start ofthe second quinquennium in 1952 unfortunately coin cided with one of Britain's recurring post-war financial crises, and the unive rsities at once felt the cold wind of economy. In the sharpl y inc r e ased competition for funds within eac h university the Oriental departments with a relatively small proportion of undergraduate students were ill-pla ced to assert their priority. Thus far they had been protected by the earmarking of their grants, but this policy was generally suspect in the universities, and the Scarbrough Commission its elf, while clearly intending to provide for a tenyear period of expansion, had committed its elf to the view that it did 'not think it necessary or even desirable that this arrangement should be a permanent one'. With these considerations in mind, the University Grants Committee decided to discontinue the earmarked grants in the quinquennium just about to b egin and 'in the best interests of the Oriental and African departments' to leave them to compete for funds with other University departments. With a poor competitive position, espec iall y in the face of t h e demands of the scientists, the Oriental faculties and departments fared very badly indee d, and in most universities their growth came to an abrupt halt. By virtue of its s eparate existence as a grant-receiving college of the University of London, the School continued in its own right as a college to enjoy the steadfast support from the University Court, and therefore suffered l ess than

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EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT 49 most. But all Colleges in London were suffering cuts and here, too, the se tback was severe, the School's rate of increase in its annual recurrent grant, which had varied in the first quinquennium between ,000 and ,000, dropping sharply in the second quinquennium to an average of ,000, a sum which, moreover was increasingly subj ect to erosion by the prevailing financial inflation. However, out of these additional monies it was still possible to maintain some momentum, and in the following five years twenty-six new academic posts were added to existing departments, which repres ente d in effect one-eighth of the programme which had bee n put forward.* But ov erall the Sc ho o l had entered a phas e in which the only rule whic h seemed to apply was jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday, but n eve r jam today'. Disappointed in their ambition of reaching the Scarbrough targets, it was understandable that, when the time arrived in 1955 to prepare pla:J.Js for the following quinquennium, 1957-62, the d epartments of the S cho ol should reaffirm their intention of completing their original proposals b y s eeking to add another fifty-three posts. Like the Duke of W ellington at Waterloo they thought that the right policy was 'Hard pounding, gentlemen; let's see who will pound longest'. But by this time the realization was beginning to grow in some quarte rs that the School was lik e l y to command neither the money nor the space to do this, and that the wiser course might well be to review the whole situation afresh. Bythisstagetheregionaldepartmentshad reached a considerable size, India, Pakistan and Ceylon comprising twentysix posts, the Near and Middle East thirty-one posts, the Far East twenty-eight posts a11d Africa twenty-one posts, so that a reasonable scale of teaching had already been provided for all the major and many minor lan guages, and a lso for a numbe r of associated studies. One adve rse consequence of the general p r eoccupation with the policy of expanding the teaching staff in the f a c e of continuing difficulties in recruitment was that inadequate attention was given to the exis t ence of The net staff increase was only twe l ve because a number of existing posts were for various r e ason s allowed to lapse

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50 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT potentially disturbing, underlying trends. First among these in a pe1'iod in which there had been a general expansion in the numbers of students at British universities was that the Oriental faculties and departments, including the departments at the School, had been failing to attract-British undergraduates to their courses. Despite the very large increase of the academic staff, the number of undergraduates at the School actually fell from sixty-two in 1952-53 to fifty-six in 1956-57, so that the question which sooner or later had to b e answered was how far the Scarbrough policy of building strong departments, independent of undergraduate demand, was to be taken, and in particular how far young scholars were to be recruited and trained for posts which by their nature would inevitably be largely devoted to research. It had rightly been taken for granted that the total number of students at the School would decline from the very large figure at the close of the war, especially because of the t ermination of the courses for servicemen and the running down of the training courses for the Indian Civil Service and the Sudan and the Colonial Office probationers consequent on the transfer of power from British Empire into Commonwealth. Some decline, too, in the demand for short courses for representatives of commercial and industrial firms was to b e expected as the bigger firms instituted their own post-war training sch emes. Moreover, the Scarbrough Commission had recognized that 'the number of undergraduate students in most of these studies is likely to be relatively small' and that 'any increase can only be gradual', and the conclusion had been drawn that in any event the right policy was to create strong departments 'independent of undergraduate demand'. At the same time there was doubtless an expectation that some growth in the number of students taking full-time university courses would follow the large increases in staff. Yet in 1956-57, ten years after the adoption of the Scarbrough Report, there was no sign of an increasing undergraduate demand in Oriental and African studies, and in particular the failure to attract British students both at the undergraduate and postgraduate stages appeared likely to undermine the future of these studies in

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EXPANSION A D DEVELOPMENT 51 the United Kingdom. Between 1947 and 1 957 the number of British undergraduates at the School had fallen from fiftyfiv e in 194-7-48 t o twenty seven in 1952-53 and to twenty-two in 1956-57, a situation w hicl1 was even more disturbing b ec aus e British graduate students already constituted such a small minority, in 1 960 -61, for exampl e providing ouly twenty out o f 2 1 7 from all countries. VVhile this situation obtaine d it was clearl y impossible to provide a solution for the difficulti e s of staff recruitment. To make matters worse at this juncture, a Treasury dec i sion to promote economy by r estricting the award of Scarbrough studentships to p e rsons who were already assured of eventual appointment to a university post had the effect of sharply cutting back the programme i tself, and, b ecause the universitie s simply did not possess an adequate financial surplus to make the new system work, the studentship scheme its elf slowly withered awa y In a situation in which very few British graduate s were coming forward to study Oriental and African subjects this was a disastrous l oss. PROBLEMS OF ACCOMMODATION These trends, which were evident m all Oriental fa culties and d epartments in British universitie s, raised question s of great importance for the future of Asian and African studie s and o f the School i tself, including the p l ace of these studies in British education; but su c h questi ons we r e not susceptible of easy or quick answer, and thoroug h cons i d eration of them at the Schoo l had unfortunately been deferred so that by this period they were rather overshadowed by the even more pre ssing problem of how to accommodate in the pre-war building the already enlarged numbe r of staff and the rapidly growing book collect io ns in the library. The School s buildings as originally planne d in the rnid-1930s were meant to provide for a staff of about one-third the numbe r t h a t had been reached by 1 957 and for a library collection of about one-quarter the size; of those buildings, one wing and a fourth floor over the whole block remained unbuilt, w h i l e the eas t wing was still a sh e ll divided into rooms by temporary partitions. In the library, expedients, su c h as reducing to a minimum

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52 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPi\IENT the width of gangways and raising the height of stacks, storing bo oks in a number of w i de l y scattered, often unsuitable storer ooms, putting stacks in corridors and on landings throughout the Sc hool i n short, eve r y con c e ivab l e exped ient-were adop t e d, including the d eposit of many thousands of books at Engl efield Green, some thirty miles away from the School. Five houses in the adjoining Woburn Square and some rooms in Tavistock Square, h e lpfully made avail able by the University, provided sub-standard accommodatio n for some fifty to sixty memb ers of s t aff, but there was a complete absence of primary facilit ies s u c h as large classrooms, and throughout the Schoo l accomJnodat io n was put to uses fo r which it was not designed. Intended to be used for public lectures, t h e assembly hall was set aside as a library reading room and the patheti ca ll y small and unsuitable provision for socia l and athletic amenities for the s tudents was lamentable. If its work was to b e done in an efficient and civilize d manner, enlarged and suitabl e accommodat i on had b ecome the ov er-riding need of the School. The University was pers u a d e d to allocate a site for d eve lopment adjacent to the School, but among the large numb e r of colleges o f the Univ e rsity which were st ill suffering from the d evastation of war and obsoles c ence, the Schoo l's priority for capita l funds f o r building was low. In this situation, to press on with an expansio n of staff o r student numbers was to run the risk of turnin g the Sc hool into a n academic workhouse In 1 957 Sir Ralph Turner retired from the direc torship, being s u cceeded by Profe ssor Cyri l Philips who had b ee n Head of the D e partment of History since 194 7. In Turner's twenty years as Director, the Sc hool had b ee n transformed and g iven a h eighte n e d sense of national significance and purpose. Although t h e Scarbro ugh prograrnme in its entirety h a d not been complete d, nevertheless som ething like two-thirds of the intended increase of staff had been achieved A substantial numbe r of young Britis h scholars had b ee n attracted t o the study of Asia and Africa and strong departments had been cr eated with a fresh outl ook and great vitality and a broa d and sound foundation of s c h olarshi p had been l a id particul arly in the study of languages and history in both their modern and cl assical aspec ts.

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EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT 53 PR.OBLEJ\lS OF POLICY AND DEVELOPMENT Relative success ever brings in its train a host of problems. Important questions and choices of po li cy could no longe r be deferred. It was high time to look well ahead, to make guesses about the future, to take the Duke of vVell ington's sober sound advice when he said, All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I call e d "guessing what was at the other side of the hill".' The School's proposals to the Scarbrough Com mission had constituted a programme of expansion, based on the general purpos e of creating a centre in Britain where sooner or later all sign i ficant knowl e dge about Asia, Oceania and Africa would be availabl e ; but, like water finding its own l evel, expansion had naturally proceeded fastest where r ecruitrnent permitte d, and it was by no means clear in what particular direc tions of development the Schoo l was headed. It was aheady plain that the recently announced grant for the new quinquennium 1957-62, which yielded an annual recurrent increase of ,000, would neither enable the Schoo l's departments to complete what they still regard e d as the phase of their Scarbrough expans ion nor permit any considerable r edeployment of academic resources. There was some realization, but by no 1neans general, that in the face of the S c hool's failure to attract undergraduates it would b e a mistake at that stage to add even more academic posts which by their nature could have little relevance to undergraduate studies and to an increase in' student numbers; and that the time had arrived to broaden the School s range of t eaching, and in particular to emphasize its inte r est in the study of the modern and con temporary societies of Asia and Africa, by further expanding its work i n history, law and anthropology and b y including within its scope the major social sciences of economics, politics and sociology, and also the subject of geography, which as an establish e d study in the curriculum of schoo l s could exert an important influence in attracting Briti sh students. But the majority of departments had a prior and legitimate inte rest in wishing to comp lete the original Scarbrough programme, and a critica l

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54 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT internal discussion therefore arose on how to reconcile these d esirable proposals, which in a period of financial stringency were apt to b e seen as competitive. In any event the policy of attempting to build up the social sciences rested upon a host of uncertainties; whether any money for the purpose could be obtained from sources outside the UGC grant; whether both senior and junior scholars could b e attracted in subjects suc h as econom ics, politics and soci o log y in which there was a known national scarcity and in which the period oftraining was bound to b e arduous, expensive and long; whether the co -operation of establishe d departments in the western aspects of these subjects, particularly at the London School of Economics and University College, could be gained, and lastly upon the very big question whether, if and when scholars were duly recruited and trained, the money would be forthcoming at the right time from the UGC to enable the School to incorporate their posts in the permanent structure of the School. What was required was, in Charles Dickens's words, 'a kind of universal dovetail edness with regard to place and time'. Nothing at all, however, could be attempted without additional funds, and it was therefore the evident r eadiness of the Ford, Leverhulme, N uffield and Rockefeller Foundations to support new academic enterprises at the S choo l to the extent of several hundreds of thousands of pounds, to provide, as it were, T. S. Eliot s 'little dish of cream', which tipped the internal balance of d ecision, and enabled the School to embark on the long and costly operation of training small but coherent cadres of economists, economic historians, sociologists, political scientists, geographers and lawyers with reference to the major areas of Asia and Africa, equipped with a knowledge not only of their own disciplines but also of the languages, history and cultures of these areas, reinforce d by first -hand experience in the field. This undertaking was a difficult pioneer effor t of the first importance b ecause no such development on this scale for the major regions of Asia and Africa had been envisaged or attempted previously in the United Kingdom, and success, if achieved, would b e bound in the long run not only to enhance the scholarly

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EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT 55 and practical contribution of the School but a lso to exert a revolutionary influence upon British studies in these fie lds. Meanwhile the basic question of how to attract students, especially undergraduates, for the already established departments had come unde r close study. This matter had assumed a fresh urgency because of a growing awareness in these departments that the concentration of a large body of young university l ecturers in the School without offering at a r easonably early stage some scope and challenge in teaching, preferably for both first and higher degrees, was already beginning to create a situation in which the maintenance of high academic morale was difficult. In History, where a rich choice of courses was already offe r ed, combining the study of Europe with that of Asia or Africa, the general educational position was academically satisfactory, attractive to would-be students, and capable of substantial development. But the majority of courses for honours degrees offered at the School were in the study of Asian and African language s and lite ratures, many of which, for instance, in subjects such as Marathi, Gujarati or Burmese, were never likely to be in steady demand. By comparison, courses for first degrees in Arabic, Chinese, and Japanes e had attracted substantial numbers of students, but were in need of review. Based on a three-year period of study, their adequacy and suitability as university courses for British students in particular, who had to begin these studies from scratch, had to be reconsidered. Almost all the t eac h e rs concerned supported the view, especially in relation to British students, that the educational case for a fouryear undergraduate course was very strong; so that gradually this change was brought about in the majority of courses in the study of language. Some teachers, however, were convinced that a good, general education for undergraduates in Asian or African studies cou l d be best provided through a twin-subject syllabus with a specific area reference, eJ..'tending over four years of study, combining the study of language with an equal emphasis on a related discipline, or combining any two of the disciplines with reference to a major area or civilization within the School's purview. An experiment of this kind, including study in both language and anthropology with

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56 EXPA1 SION AND DEVELOPMENT specific refe r ence to Africa, had been starte d as early as 1955, but relatively few students had been attracted, and the other region a l departments of the School were cauti ous about extending this kind of course to Asia, pre f erring the conservative c hoic e of gradually diversifying their essentia lly singl e -subj ect syll a buses by adding optional and special subjects, and simul taneously introducing some much-needed tutorial teaching. At the same time an ancillary prog ramme of producing sets of t eaching material s and aids for the study of language s along with a general scrutiny of the useful ness of language laboratories did much to bring new vitality and e ff ective ness into longesta blished cou r ses Whil e some of the existing degree syllabuses were being revised and made more attractive to B r itish students, the r elate d quest ions of how to make direct contact 'vith prospective students and how to enlarge the catchment area of students in Britain were examined. Some sporadic contac ts ffith schoo l s had already been made through a modest programme of l ectures, but if an assumption made by the Director was correc t that 'ffith the rising importance of Asia and Africa in the modern world, studies relating to these areas should take their proper place as a normal part of t h e education of western society', and if British boys and girls of the right quality and aptitude were to be attracted session by session, then it was essent i a l for the Schoo l itself not only to devise the appropriate university courses but a lso to create a direct, close and cumulative association ffith a large number of schools. Such a programme vvith this aim and on this scale could best be achieved by forming an extramural division to make p e rsonal contac t in the first instance 'vith headma st ers and headmistresse s and with their staffs As a beginning, the refore, an education officer, supported by a committee, including representatives of the Ministry of Edu cat ion and Science, the Ministry of Ov e rs eas D eve lopment, lo ca l education authoritie s and schools, was appointed to do this. M eetings b etwee n schools and small teams of teachers from the College were h e ld in selected centre s throughout t h e United Kingdom, and a regula r programme of l ectures and of one-day courses f o r schoolteachers and sixth-forme rs was d evise d, and, ffith the aid

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EXPANSION AND DEVELOl'MENT 57 of the Leverhulme Trust, a promising scheme of schoolteacher fellowships was late r instituted. What was in proc ess of creation was a national n etwork of extramural r e lationships, rich in potentia l growth in the g e n eral fi eld o f e ducation, with the r esult that the School or SOAS, as it is often f amiliarly called, not only became well-known throughout the educati onal system, but also began to be accepted as the nationa l h eadquarte rs for this kind of work. Assisted no doubt, too, by the national rise in the demand for university places, the declining trend in the undergraduate intake was by this policy quickly r eve rs e d and the numbe r of British unde r graduate s at the School rose from thirty-one in 1957-58 to 137 in 1 96 1-62, the sum tota l of undergraduates in that session being 1 99. Thereafter the undergraduate intake, while steadily rising in quality, was maintained at about this l evel, which was as much as the School's extremely restricte d accommodation would allow. As this juncture the s e new direc tions of policy at the S c hool r ece ived a blessing and powerful impetus from a report publishe d in the summer of 1961 by a committee of the UGC which had been set up under the chairmanship of Sir William Hayte r to review the progress made under the Scarbrough Report and to advise on future deve lopments. Afte r drawing pointed attention to the s e v e r e blow suffered in 1952 by the Oriental departments of British universities through the premature r emoval of their earmarked grants, and after analysing such progress as had subsequently b ee n made, mainly at the Schoo l the Hayter Report concluded that in t erms of national need and of attracting more British students, the over-riding con sid eration was not so much the completion of the Scarbrough expansion as the reinforce m ent of the study of the modern societies of Asia and Africa in all their aspects, and especially from the point of v iew of the s o cial sc i ences This should b e done the R eport said, with earmarked grants extending over a ten-year period. So similar was the Committee's general anal ysis of past progress and pre scription for the future to the conclusions already drawn and acted upon in the School that some said that the R eport must have been drafted there. But immediate reactions among the academic staff of the

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58 EXPANSION A N D DEVELOPMENT School on its m e rits were mixe d, despite its very high commendation of the School's achievements sin ce 1947 of its actual and potential national and international role and of its plans for the future Government duly accepted the Hayte r programme, upo n whic h the UGC e stablished a sp ecial sub-committee to supervise the allocation of earmarke d funds in the first five years, 1962-67, and to provide a 'poo l of l ecture ships, and some concentration and extension of effort in six s e lected university centres of Asian and three university centres of African studies also including the School within eac h group. These proposals, which immediately assur e d to the Sc h ool a r e latively modest allocation of t e n posts out of the 'pool' of l ectureships, came at the right moment with just enough support to enable the socia l sc i e ntis t s already in training unde r Foundation funds to b e absorb e d into the permanent staff, and to f acilitate the creation of a D epartment of Economic and Political Studies under Dr (late r Professor) Edith P enrose (1962), a new section in socio logy under Profes sor Ronald Dore and a new D epartment of Geography unde r Professo r Charles Fisher, besid es permitting the Schoo l out of general funds to add to strength in the regional departments and in anthropology, history and law. The fact that on such modest inc r e ases it was possible to do so much strikingly illustrated the opportunity that can b e afforded for acad emic redeployment by a relatively small financial r e s erve. Without this reserve, stagnation might well have occurred. With these additions the School's broad framework of studie s in the humanities and the social s c iences with reference to the major areas of Asia and Africa was erected and given a new orientation, so that fresh thought was stimulated o n the provision of courses for undergraduates and post graduate s and on the magnificent opportunities which were b eing opened for advanced work and research.* In the changed climate of opinion brought about in British universitie s, not least in the University of London, by the publication of the Robbins The growth o f the study of art history, archaeology and musicology also provides some base for future development; and no doubt other fields suc h as psychol ogy and demography require early i nvestigation.

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EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT 59 Report (1963), earlier hesitations and reservations at the School about the desirability of introducing undergraduate courses in combined and area studies were swept away, and additional degree courses in history and language, and in languages and anthropology with r eference to the major areas of Asia and Africa, were devised as likely to attract students and serve a national need. Simultaneously, the introduction by the University of a one-year course for the l\1aster's degree provided the opportunity to organize in London a comprehensive postgraduate progra=e of combined studies by courses of instruction for each of the major extra-European areas of the world, including the areas covered by the School. The scale and quality of applications by British students for places in the first cours e s for the Asian and African regions indicate d that a quite new source of recruitment had been uncovered. These developmen ts in turn opened the way for dis cussions on the formation of a London graduate schoo l in international studies which would be unique of its kind and size in the world. To this the School could obviously make a big and original contribution, radically affecting not only its own character but also that of the University as a whole. Within the School the introduction of postgraduate courses on this scale and complexity precipitated the long-discussed formation offiveAreaCentres for African, Near and Middle Eastern, South Asian, South East Asian and Far Eastern studies respectively, through which postgraduate teaching, and particularly inter-disciplinary and research studies, could b e fostered and extended. These Area Centres, each of which included all of the members of staff relevant to the study of the area, were intended to reinforce and complement, not to replace the departmental system, to create an organic scheme of area study and to encourage the initiation of programmes of work of national and international r e levance. Thus by the start of the s ession 1966-67 the School had put itself into a position to offer a comprehensive, attractive and relevant range of courses to students from Britain and overseas and to enlarge and intensify its already formidable scale of research. The interaction between its many

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60 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT disci pli nes and studies, between its undergraduate and p ostgraduate programmes and betwee n its own programmes and thos e of other universities at home and abroad had b ecome cumulative, and therefore pregnant with immense possibilities of grovn:h for the fu ture, so that in all discussion of forward plans a p ros p ec tive student population of from 1 ,2 00 to 1 ,500 stud ents, a high proportion of w hom would doubtless be graduates, h a d to b e reckoned with. A POLICY OF SELF-HELP More than eve r b e for e, with an academi c staff some 2 00 strong, nsmg prospective l y to 250, with a n enlarge d student b ody and the prospect of a sharp increas e in the number of graduate students, with a big and fast growing librar y, attention was concent rated on the vexed problem of accommoda t ion Sho cke d by the Schoo l's l ack of amenitie s, the Hayte r Committee had declar ed: 'A bottlenec k to furthe r expansio n of studi e s and students is ca u se d by the lack of e l e m entary faciliti e s such as clas s rooms and seminar rooms and most seri ous of all, of a library building. The School has r ece i ve d no money for building since the w a r .. .. The Committee regards t h e congest ion in t h e Schoo l as a serious barrier to progress and a discourage m ent to the staff' Certainl y, no sure r method of s l ow strangulation could have bee n devise d tha n to provide on the advice of two Government R e ports and as a matte r of Government policy, handsom e and earmarked recurrent m onies for d evelopment without any associated capital grants for building. There could be no clearer exampl e of not l etting 'thy left hand lmow what thy right hand doeth'. In the absence of a direct grant from Government and of top priority on the University of London's lon g building list, it was p l ai n that the School would have to s e t about h e lping i tse lf. Funds were s c raped tog ether from the remnant s of the pre-wa r sal e ofthe Fins bury building and from accumul a t e d surpluses in order to ext end ac commodation in Tavistock Square and to ad d a fourth, to p floo r over the w hol e of the main building. Intende d ultimately for use as r e fectories this p r ovided sp ace for classro oms and for thirty

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Sir Ralph Turne r, Director 1927 -57 ( photo : Lajayeue)

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The Director and studen t s on the site of th e proposed new building

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EXPANSION AND D EVELOPMENT 6l members of staff, and prospectively, in the hope of future e xtensions, a useful 'decanting' area. For the new library a private appeal was directed by Sir Neville Gass, the Treasurer, a man of vision, charm and unsparing endeavour. Whenever there were difficult, embarrassing j obs to be done, h e was willing to do the m caring little about the credit. Nearly a quarte r of a million pounds w as quickly raised which enabled the School to claimacharac t eristicallygenerous offer from the staunchest of the Sc ho ol's b e n efactors, the Rockefe ll e r Foundation. Plans for the n e w building were put in hand under the arch: i tect Mr Denys Lasdun, but it was a pparent that the costs would b e high probably well over million, and until the Schoo l should find itself at the top of the University Court's priority list, the r e was nothing for it but to show a brave face, to go on bursting at the seams and by 'patching, darning and letting down' to do everything possibl e to avoid the direst effects o f indecent exposure. CUMULATIVE GROWTH By this period, despite the cramping e ffect of inadequa t e accommodation, the cumulative effects of the Scho o l s growth sinc e 1 947 h a d b ecome v e r y evident in every aspect of its work, e specially in its r e sear c h and advance d studies Co -operative and inter-disciplinary r e search by groups of staff members regularly found expression in the organization of study con f e r e nces attended by the leading authorities in the world on t h e subject unde r investigation. Meetings on 'Historical Writing on the P e opl e s of A s ia' ( 19 5 6 and 19 5 8 ), 'African History and Archaeology' ( 1953, 1957, 1961 ), and on 'Linguistic Comparison in South East Asia and the Pacific ( 1961 and 1 9 65 ) not only produce d important advance s in lmowle dge but c r eate d a foundation and framework of reference within which the subject was to grow in future. Advanced study groups, some short-and some long-term, the work of most of which was designed t o lead to publication, as, for e xample, on agricultural reform in co ntemporary China, or r evolution in Asia and A f r i c a or t h e

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62 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT partition of India, or the economic history of the Middle East, have become a normal activity of the School. One mark of a university's standing is the readiness of the great foundations to contribute to its research funds, and in these years Ford, Leverhulme, Nuffield, Gulbenkian, Rockefeller and Wenner Gren between them have made grants to the School amounting to many hundreds of thousands of pounds. The School's contribution by research is remarkable. Its Bulletin, long since accepted as one of the outstanding journals of orientalist scholarship in the world, does much to maintain its international reputation; and from the School as an institution and from members of its staff as individuals there has flowed an impressive and varied stream of publications. New journals have been introduced to blaze trails a lon g and across the frontiers of know ledge, Asia Major, a joint venture with Oxford and Cambridge, and in the last few years, the Journal of African Histor;r, the Journal of African Law, the Journal of African Languages, the Journal of Development Studies; and in 1966-67 in co-operation with the new Asian Centres at Cambridge, Hull, Leeds and Sheffield, a journal, lt!Jodern Asian Studies, devoted to the study of modern societies. In addition the School itself, through its active Publications Committee, maintains three series of publications: an Oriental Series of monographs, a series of African Language Studies, and, as a reflection of the increasing attention being paid to the contemporary scene, a series of Studies on Modern Asia and Africa. It sustains, too, a comprehensive revision of the Enc;rclopaedia of Islam and supports a large and important l exicographica l and bibliographical programme. Wisely expending its originally modest grant of funds in order to sponsor work of quality which was unlikely to find a place on the commercia l market, the Publications Committee has been so successful that from 1965-66 it has actually earned some ,000 annually on income from sales! A NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ROLE The scope of the School's overseas research leave programme continued to grow and was by this period fully matched by the scale of secondment of

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EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT 63 its staff to Commonwealth and foreign universities and to governments ove rs eas for specialist work. Invitat ions to memb ers of staff to teach in the universities of the United States were embarrassingl y frequent; and r equests from the Soviet Academy of Sciences and similar bodies in Czech o s l ovaltia and Hungary for a regular interchange of staff were welcomed and in corporate d as part of the School's routine. Academic honours are frequently bestowed on members of the staff. Attracting professors from other universities both a t home and abroad to its chairs and senior appointments, the Schoo l in turn sends out a steady flow of trained m e n and women to p lay a part in the politic a l, administrative and edu ca tional life of t h eir own countries. At the same time ge n erous schemes h ave been d evised to enable overseas students to pursue advanc e d studies at t h e School and, a lon g with the increase in the intal<.:e of undergradua tes to g i ve se l ecte d British students the opportunity of sp ending short periods in thei r a r eas of study i n Asi a and Africa; and similar advantages are of f e red to postgraduate students. As natural as l eaves to a tree, this ever-increasing nexus of firm and cordia l r e lation s hips with governments, universities and p eop les overseas is an organic and spontaneous growth, i nspire d and constantl y nourished by the School's dedication to the study of Asian and African civ ili zations and cultures. Advanced research in the humanities and soc ial sciences depends on the support of well-endowed and wellequippe d libraries; and in these respects the School has been doubly fortunate in its own library coll ection, steadily built up over the years, and in its easy access to the great libraries and museums of London, which e njo y the fruits of Britain's commercial imperial and Commonwealth rol es. Yet, bearing in mind the need of Britain in a rapidly changing world order to maintai n her position in t h e Asian and African fields of study, it must b e noted with disquiet that the most serious under-provision in British universities in the years since the war has b ee n in the realm of libraries. To provide for the routine needs of undergraduates and to enable British sch o l ars to reach and maintain the highest l evel and quality of research it is necessary to mobilize much larger

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64 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT financial r esources for libraries than are at presen t avail able, and i f and when obtained, to use them in the mos t economically e ffi c i e n t ways Fortunately, in a small, compact co untry like Britain, much w h ic h would other wise be i mpossib l e can be achieved, and money can be made t o spi n out and do more through the adoption of co-ope rative library po l icies b y uni v ersiti es and other national libraries From the beginning, and on a n inc r easing scale in the past couple of decades, the Schoo l has allocate d a good proportio n of its income in order to buil d up its library into w hat i s t o day r e c ognized as a major national and international resour ce, w i t h a current to t a l s i ze o f some 290,000 volumes, and t o make it gen e r ally available t o all s erio u s students in t h e United Kingdom through a gen ero u s po l ic y of l ending all the more va luable because such faci l ities are not affor ded b y the Britis h Museum or by Oxford and Cambridge. It has also come to apprec i a t e that Asian and African studies offer a splendid field nationally in which t o d evise an.d test a variety of co-operative library enterprises and t o examine the feasibilit y of using computerized systems; and that, i f rightly condu c t ed, suc h a p olicy might play a rol e as a p ioneer national ven t ure. Recognizing the force of these argument s, and emph as i zing the centr a l and formative rol e which the School can p lay w i thin t h e Britis h educational system, the Hayter Committee put forward and t h e Univer s ity Grants Committee accepted t h e proposal that the Sc hool 's l i brar y should be g iven financial support 'to operate fully as a national library'. F rom this d ecisio n two lines of policy stemmed, on t h e one hand that t h e Schoo l should take the initiative in promoting the closest co-operat ion between interested university libraries, including t h e newl y estab lished Asia n and African Centres, and on the other hand, with a view to creating in the s e fi e lds a national lending library, that the School s hould prepare a uni on catal og u e of all works on Asia and ascertain the annual cost of acquiring all new and significant publ ications relating t o Asia and Africa. A t pri ces ruling in the summe r of 1965 this was found to be 000 annually, and vvit h the h elp of the University Grants Committee, the Schoo l a t o n ce se t itself to r e a c h this sca l e of book collection, which meant doub ling i ts exis ting outlay, and to

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EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT 65 increase accordingly the size of its staff of specialized librarians. Within a short period agreements between the relevant libraries were reached, providing for a division of responsibility in acquiring materials relating to African countries, and a start was made in the same directio n for India, and also in exploring the possibility of co-operation among librarians in making field visits for book purchases, and in book selection and cataloguing If centres of academic excellence are to continue to exist in Britain, it is through national policies of this kind that they can best be cherished and nourishe d; and for the example they are setting the librarians d eserve praise. The School has obligat ions and privileges which extend beyond the national context, for it has become a n established international centre, now attracting scholars and students, many of the highest quality, from some seventy countries spread throughout the world. They come to enjoy and share in teaching and research of distinction. In turn the Schoo l s catters its scholars about the world, their knowledge bringing forth racial sympathy and understanding, which are among the greatest of mankind' s needs. Without them, our statesmen and scientists cultivate a barre n and dry land where no water is'. While maintaining a dynamic equilibrium, the School must continue to grow and change because its Asian and African interests daily b ecome more significant and central in the contemporary dialogue between the developed and developing countries, encompassing the civilizations of the Far East now in search of a new ro l e on the world stage, the cultural and r e latively unexplored kaleidoscope of South East Asia, the great Indian sub-continent where Asian democracy has take n root, the f erment of the Islamic countrie s of Asia and the Mediterranean, the peoples of Africa stirring at last fro m their long slumber. Each change of many-coloured life we drew, Exhauste d worlds and then imagin' d new. And within Britain the ways and means have still to be found and explore d to make these studies a mean.ingful and p ermanent part of the c hanging pattern of education throughout our national syst e m

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66 EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT With its considerable size and comprehensive spread of studies, with its ready access to the unrivalled resources of London, V\>ith its record of achiev e ment and tradition of fine scholarship, and establish ed capacity for leadership, the School in its own fields has a unique potential for cumulative growth. It possesses the power and experience along with the duty and privilege to maintain itself nationally and internationally as a centre of excellence, and thus to make a nobler, richer and more profound contribution to the welfare of mankind. But one l esson for the Schoo l perhaps the outstanding l esson of the first fifty years of its history, is that institutions, like men, must continue to make their opportunities, as oft as find them.

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Appendix: Organization of Departn1ents, 1966-67 K EY P = Professor R =Reader SL = Senior Lecturer L =Lecturer AL =Assistant Lecturer F =Fellow

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Department of the languages and Cultures of India, Pakistan and Ceylon lndo-Aryan lan.guages Dravidian Languages Indian Musi c Philosophy & Religio, 1 s -----2 P of Sanskrit R in Sanskrit R in Bengali R in Pali & Buddhist Sanskrit R in Urdu l in Bengal i l i n Benga l i & Oriya l in Sinhalese 2 l in Hindi l i n Urdu l in Mar athi & Gujarati -------------------------l in Tamil R in Indian Philosophy l in Ind ian Music l in Indian R eligions 2 F in Indian Studies

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Department of the Languages and Cultures of South East Asia and the Islands Burmese P of Burmese 2 L in Burmese Tai R in Tai L in Tai Languages & Lite r atures Vietnamese R in Vietnamese Studies Mon-l
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of the languages and Cultures of the Far East Chines e Japanese Korean Mongolian Tibetan Buddhist Studies P of Chinese t P of Japanese R in Classica l Chinese R i n Chinese R in Chinese Philosophy L in Modern Chinese 4 L in Chinese R in Japanese SL in Japanese l__ 2 L in Jap anese R in Mongolian R in Tibetan L in Korean L in Tibetan L i n Far Eastern Buddhism F in Tibetan Studies

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Department of the languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East Arabi c P of Islami c 2 R in Arabi c Studies 6 l in Arabic l i n I slami c Art & Arc haeology l i n B erbe r (jointly wit h Departmen t of Africa) Persian P of P e r s ian R in Persian l in Persian Turkish R i n Turkish l in Turkish F i n Turkish Iranian & L P of Iranian R i n Iranian L l i n Iranian Cau casian Stud ies languages Studies Studies P o f Caucasian l in Central Studies Asian Art & Archaeology Semitic L P of Semitic R in Modern Languages Languages L a n g u ages H e b rew A l in Modern Hebrew P of Assyriology Fi n H ittite P of E thiopian Studies (jointly w ith Department of Africa)

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Department of Phonetics and linguistics Phonetics P o f Phonetics (SE Asian Languages) R in Phonetics (W African Languages) Phonetics Lian Languages) 4 L in Phonetics (Chinese. Turki c Languages. African Languages. Tibeto-Burman Languages) Linguistics 2 P of General Linguistics (lndo-European. Amerindian) -------------r-L i n Linguistics L (Oceanic Languages) Department of History Africa P of History of Africa R in His t ory of Africa l L in Comparative Lingu istic s (lndo-European) 2L in History of Africa L in History of S Africa l in History of W Africa

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Near & Middle East Far East South Asia South E ast P of History of N & M East P of Arab History P of History of Far East P of History of S Asia Part-time P of History of S Asia P of History of SE Asia [ L ;o E
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Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa Ban tu Languages West African Languages North East Afr ican Languages Berber Music 2 P of Ban tu Languages P of West African Languages P of East African Languages P o f Ethiopian Studies -----R in Hausa -----R i n Cushitic ( joint l y with Department of N & M East) l5 L in Ban tu Languages 2 L in Swahili ---r-S L in West A frican Languages 5 L in West African Languages l in Hausa Studies l in Berbe r ( joint l y with Department of N & M East) L in African Musical Studies F in Southern Bantu Languages

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Department of law Law P of African R in African L 3 L in African Law Law Law 2 R esea rch O fficers i n African Law 2 P of Oriental L R '" """""' L l in Indian & Fin Hindu Laws (Is lamic, Laws (Chinese) Pakistan Law Law Indian) R in I s lamic l in Islamic Law law Department of Anthropology and Sociology Anthropology L P of Asian R i n African 2l in Asian FinN & M Anthropology Anthropo logy Anthropology E a s tern A nthropology P o f Indian L in Anthropology Anthropology with referenc e to Africa L in Indian Anthropology Sociology P of Sociology L i n Soc i ology with special with referenc e reierence to to Africa Far East

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Department of Economic and Political Studies Economics Politics P of Economics with reference to Asia P of Government & Politics with reference to Asia P of Politics with reference to the N & M East Department of Geography Geography P of Geography with reference to Asia R in Economics (China) R in Geography (Africa & the M East) l in Economics (China) l in Land Economics (M East) (jointly with Department of Geography) l in Economics with reference to M East l in Economics with reference to S Asia 2l in Politics with reference to S Asia l in Geography (Far East) l in Land Economics (M East) 2 F in Economics with reference to Africa S of Sahara F in Economics with reference to SE Asia F in Politics with reference to Far East F in Politics with reference to Africa 2 F in Geography (Far East, S Asia) (jointly with Department of Economi c & Political Studies\