A Brill Calendar: June 28

Few civilizations compare in longevity and resilience with China.

When Vasco da Gama returned from his voyage of discovery on the brink of the turn of the 16th century, China boasted a vast mercantile network, comprising the Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific, a sophisticated empire second to none: a ‘Realm of the Middle’ with the rest of the world for outskirts. Serious study of its language and cultures at European universities only started, hesitantly and hardly in an informed manner, rather late in the 19th century.

The scholarly career of Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak (Harlingen, Fryslân June 28 1889 – Leyden, July 9 1954) is representative for the period that China studies reach maturity in the West; after Opium Wars and a Boxer Rebellion during the turn of the 20th century. Duyvendak had spent his early manhood in China: from 1912 until 1919. While studying Dutch language & literature in Leyden in his youth, the powerful ‘virus’ of love for all things Chinese had caught him – a syndrome well-known since Marco Polo and Jesuit missionaries of the 16th century. His first acquaintance with the language and its writing was at the universities of Paris and Berlin, after which he got a job as assistant-interpreter at the Dutch delegation stationed in Peking. After the seven proverbial years, (and after the First World War) the corresponding itch brought Duyvendak back to Holland and to his Alma Mater, where he became a Lecturer, lacking the academic credentials for a Professorial Chair.

The professional who witnessed hesitating modernization of China had to study and wait for another nine years before seeing his Doctoral Thesis accepted. That was in 1929; the Chair was his a year later.

It is seldom that a better proof presents itself for the proposition that the West deemed itself superior to a civilization, presumed to be antiquated and alien, than this ‘casus Duyvendak’. More than most scholars, Jan Duyvendak, an aficionado with the rare gift to inspire and enthuse, brought the great ‘Realm of the Middle’ to true general attention in his small nation.