D.G.E. Hall

Prof. Daniel George Edward Hall (17 Nov. 1891, Hertfordshire, England — 12 Oct. 1979, Hitchin, UK) was a British historian, writer, emeritus professor of University of London, visiting professor at Cornell University (USA), a specialist of the history of Burma [Myanmar], who expanded his research to the whole region, culminating with the encyclopedic A History of Southeast Asia (4 editions, 1955 – 1983).

A graduate of King’s College London in 1916, Hall was appointed to the first chair of history at the recently founded University of Rangoon (Yangoon) in 1921, where he taught and furthered his research on the history of Anglo-Burmese relations until 1934. Back in England, he became Headmaster of Caterham School in Surrey, then chair of the History of South East Asia department at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from 1949 to 1959. Retiring from the University of London in 1959, he took up a visiting professor position at Cornell University.

Reviewing the fourth edition of D.G.E. Hall’s History of Southeast Asia, historian Dilip Chandra remarked [in India Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4 (October-December 1983), pp. 480 – 483]:

Hall’s scholarly work, therefore, can be said to have filled a void and in that sense was a pioneering work. Moreover, it was perhaps for the first time that a scholar had recognised Southeast Asia as an area, “worthy of consideration in its own right.” While acknowledging the indebtedness of the people of Southeast Asia to the Indian and Chinese civilizations, Hall qualified that terms such as “Greater India,” or “Little China,” often applied to this region, ought to be highly deprecated and shunned because they undermined the importance of the indigenous cultures. Hall contended that the history of the people who had built the majestic Borobudur Buddhist Complex in Central Java or the Angkor Vat in Cambodia cannot be studied from any other point of view except their own.
Hall thus set about trying to accomplish a task which was gigantic and challenging, given the vastness of the area, the diversity of its people and the vast amount of unexplored material. However, notwithstanding the shortcomings which such a work would invariably suffer from, Hall’s History of Southeast Asia remains, till this day, one of the most comprehensive and illuminating volumes on the subject.
The book itself grew out of a series of lectures delivered by Prof. Hall at the Universities of London, Rangoon, Singapore and Djakarta. His first hand knowledge of the region and its people provided him with a rare insight into the complex socio-cultural life of Southeast Asians and this led him to treat them with greater understanding and sympathy. The study has been divided into four main parts, starting with the proto-history of Southeast Asia and concluding with the emergence of nationalism and challenge to European domination in the present century.

Publications

“A Professorship of Far Eastern History”, Journal of the Burma Research Society, 1922.
A Brief Survey of English Constitutional History, London, Harrap, 1925.
“English Relations with Burma, 1587 – 1686”, Journal of the Burma Research Society, 1927.
Early English Intercourse With Burma, 1587 – 1743, Rangoon University Publications, 1928.
A High School British History, 1714 – 1930, for Burma, India and the East, London, Oxford University Press, 1935.
Europe and Burma: A study of European Relations with Burma to the Annexation of Thibaw’s Kingdom,1886, London, Oxford University Press, 1945.
Burma, London, Hutchinson’s University Library, 1950.
A History of Southeast Asia, London, Macmillan Limited, 1955, 1^st ed.; 4^th, Macmillan Limited, 1983.
Michael Symes, Journal of his Second Embassy to the Court of Ava in 1802, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1960.
[ed.]Historians of South-East Asia: Historical Writings on the Peoples of Asia, London, Oxford University Press, 1961, 342 p.
Henry Burney: A Political Biography, London, Oxford University Press, 1974.

Photo: via Wikipedia.