Leonard Blussé van Oud-Alblas, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1946. Ph.D. from Leiden University. Professor of European – Asiatic Relations at Leiden University.
Fellow (1 September 1999 – 30 June 2000)
The Sabbatical year spent at NIAS in the academic year of 1999/2000 was extremely useful.
I have listed the various projects which I was able to complete or partly complete during the year: In all the 400 YEARS Netherlands-Japan-project resulted
a) in the publication of a Dutch edition edited by Leonard Blussé, Willem Remmelink and Ivo Smits, Bewogen Betrekkingen, Teleac), an English edition, Bridging the Divide, Hotei Publishers, and a Japanese edition (Nichiran Koryu yonhyakunen no Rekishi to Tembo)
b) in the production of a television documentary production in four instalments of one hour each edited by Leonard Blussé, Gerard Boerhof and Mariëtte Roelvink. The memorial book containing essays by some 60 Dutch and Japanese specialists constitutes the first overall picture of four hundred years of cultural interaction between the Netherlands and Japan.
In April 2000 appeared under the title Retour Amoy, a biography of a Peranakan lady from Solo, Anny Tan. The book is meant to be a portrait of the twentieth century as seen by a female participant observer. Throughout the narrative larger issues are dealt with such as the changing position of the Chinese minority in the Dutch Indies/Indonesia, female emancipation and decolonisation. The rough draft of the manuscript was revised in July and September 1999 and the first and the last chapters were written at NIAS in the autumn of 1999, before and after my visit in November to Anny Tan in Xiamen, where we went through the proofs of the manuscript.
After two years of research co-author Nathalie Everts and I were able to finish the second volume of The Formosan Encounter, a sourcebook with annotated data on the early history of the aboriginal tribal societies of Taiwan. It will be published before 25 October, 2000 by the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines in order to be presented to Prof. Tsao Yung-ho at the international conference at the occasion of his eightieth birthday in Taipei.
In collaboration with Prof. Tsao Yung-ho, Drs. Nathalie Everts and Drs. W. Milde the proofs of the fourth and last volume of the RGP source publication. The dagregisters van kasteel Zeelandia dealing with the closing years of the Dutch occupation of Taiwan, the invasion by the Chinese warlord Cheng Cheng-kung and the final surrender were thoroughly revised and annotated during my stay at NIAS.