RJC

Finally, what I've been waiting almost a year for: confirmation that I'll be going to RJC -- eight years after graduating from there. The letter arrived this afternoon, surreptitiously, while I was asleep, and much earlier than I expected.

The hard work starts now, I suppose. (Ok, I laboured at Queensway, but admittedly not that much after I had finished my observations.) The new school (or old school) has been in touch, and I am heading up there tomorrow afternoon for a benchmarking meeting, at which I will discuss four 2,000-word essays that I've marked and be given 30 more to critique. If you think that's a lot, well, I'll be marking 120 mid-year exam papers come July, on top of having to prepare for lectures and tutorials.

I won't mind it though. I've started delving into postwar Southeast Asian history and though not as compelling as, say, the fall of Rome, it has its historiographically interesting parts. For instance, I'm intrigued by the question over whether or not the end of colonial rule in Southeast Asia after World War II was inevitable. It looks so at first given how badly hit the European powers were by the war. But as my handy Cambridge History points out, their wartime losses made them redouble their efforts to reimpose their rule on countries whose nationalist movements had also been severely affected by the Japanese Occupation. For some reason, Herbert Butterfield comes to mind here, and I think I will make use of him in my first lecture. I might actually have to read The Whig Interpretation of History first though.
Posted by kungfuzi at 5:28 pm |