
NEW INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM
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often, the vantage point of knowledge produced about Asia
and Africa has been, as one scholar notes, 'from the deck
of the ship, the ramparts of the fortress, [and] the high
gallery of the trading-house.' In an effort to facilitate
more autonomous histories of regions outside Europe, tanap
offers MA and Ph.D. programmes to train young, promising Asian,
African, and European scholars. Research in voc
archives is not an easy undertaking. Key skills must first
be developed to make full use of the archives. However, the
practitioners of these skills will make a profound mark upon
the conception and writing of history on both the local and
global levels.
The Advanced Master's Programme (AMP)
ANAP
offers twenty scholarships in total for young, promising historians
from Asia and Africa. The amp provides a year of intensive
language and historical training at Leiden University and
the National Archives of the Netherlands, culminating in a
well-researched and original Ph.D. proposal by the student.
A Master's degree in history or a related field is required
for admission. Fellowships, which include allowances for travel,
tuition, and living expenses, are set aside for students from
regions where the voc archives are
most relevant. However, other students with appropriate interests
are encouraged to apply as well.
The Advanced Master's Curriculum
asic
Dutch language acquisition and acquaintance with the archives
are the heart of the amp curriculum. Both intensive and semi-intensive
courses are offered to develop reading proficiency in early
modern Dutch. Palaeography courses acquaint the participants
with the work of deciphering and transcribing old manuscripts.
A course of study on research methods explains how to explore
the voc archives efficiently. Methodology
and history courses, combined with preparatory research coursework,
are designed to lead the amp students to the formulation of
a Ph.D. proposal grounded in the relevant archival sources.
The amp training takes one year and runs independently of
the Ph.D. programme.

The first group of AMP trainees in the reading
room of the National Archives in The Hague. (click
image to enlarge)
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The Ph.D. Programme
rom
the Advanced Master's Programme, a number of tanap students
will be eligible to embark upon Ph.D. research. Ph.D. candidates
receive financial, technical, and academic assistance from
Leiden University and the expertise of faculty and staff in
the Netherlands working under tanap. Furthermore, these tanap
Ph.D. students continue to receive support from supervisors
in their home countries. Within the tanap framework cnws also
offers a limited number of Ph.D. scholarships to Dutch students
who will carry out their research in close co-operation with
their Asian and African tanap colleagues.
Organization
he
TANAP research programme in the Netherlands is a nation-wide
endeavour involving experts from all major Dutch universities.
The programme is housed at Leiden University, which has outstanding
Asian and Oriental library collections and an especially broad
base of faculty expertise and other scholarly resources in
Asian and African studies. Administratively, the research
programme is integrated into the Research School for Asian,
African, and Amerindian Studies (cnws). A national team of
scholars, the TANAP Programme Committee, is responsible for
the quality and progress of the programme itself.
The specific initiative to develop the TANAP research
programme came from the Institute for the History of European
Expansion and Global Interaction (IGEER), a research cluster
within CNWS. IGEER has a high international profile and a
longstanding commitment to training non-western scholars,
and most of the historical research on non-western societies
conducted within the research school comes under its auspices.
This research cluster will therefore provide the bulk of the
expertise needed to conduct the TANAP programme at Leiden.
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