Wang Gungwu is widely regarded as a pre-eminent expert on the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia and the history of China, but at 95, he writes in his latest memoir that he is no longer able to call himself a historian.
In No Borders: Journeys Across Islands and Continents, launched in Singapore on Thursday, Wang writes that while a historian today has the objective of reconstructing the past as it actually happened, the Australian sinologist is no longer interested in this.
Through his studies that took him across Southeast Asia, the UK, Australia and Hong Kong, Wang says in his book he has begun to see the past as a “repository of human experiences, values and ideas that, when examined through what is known, can help us understand the present and also provide guideposts to the future”.
“There should be no doubt that I respect those who really want to know the truth about the past. That said, I have to admit that I am no longer one of them,” Wang says in the epilogue of No Borders.
At the book launch, veteran Singapore diplomat Tommy Koh disagreed with Wang’s assessment that he could no longer call himself a historian.
“You have transcended the narrow confinement of an academic historian, but you remain a historian because you’re able to explain the world in the past in order to help us understand the world at present, and you continue to be our teacher. I will call you the sage of Singapore,” Koh said.