Description

UCLA will join forces with the University of Hawai’i and the University of Washington to establish the Program for Early Modern Southeast Asia, to be housed at UCLA’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. The early modern period (EMP) between 1400 and 1830 will be the focus of research by a network of scholars in archaeology, climate science, anthropology and history. Asian partners include National Chengchi University (Taiwan) and Partido State University (Philippines), with collaboration also from the National Museum of Natural History, the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and scholars from UC Irvine, William Paterson University and the University of Texas, among others.   PI Stephen Acabado, an archaeologist, writes, “The rise of European colonial empires in the EMP caused Old and New World species and land management to collide in the tropics, with significant ramifications for human environments and demography. These empires followed millennia of indigenous activities with possible cumulative regional and global climatic effects. Yet, we know very little about how these pre- industrial impacts varied on regional and global scales, what they meant for local human sustainability, and how they compare to changes wrought across the tropics today.” With an emphasis on previously negelcted local and indigenous histories, the Program will build “the first pan-tropical spatial characterizations of pre-colonial, colonial, and industrial land-use” in the region. It promises to bring SEA into global discussions on environmental change during the EMP. The reconstruction of past environments will help contemporary researchers and policymakers understand the pace and threat of land-use changes in SEA today.   This effort will advance the study of SEA at UCLA and more broadly, contributing to the training of a new transnational cohort in multidisciplinary approaches and enabling development at UCLA of a new SEA studies major and a SEA-track PhD program in Asian Languages and Cultures. Undergraduates, graduate students, and SEA-based early career archaeologists and historians will participate in annual field schools and workshops in SEA. A community engagement plan will bring local SEA stakeholders into the research process. The Program incorporates outreach to heritage students and SEAsians in Los Angeles, home to the largest SEA community outside of the region.   Various units within UCLA have committed significant funding to the Program, amounting to $1.3 million, with other support coming from the National Science Foundation and partners in Taiwan and the Philippines.