JOHN LEGGE
Founder of Asian studies
24-5-1921 - 4-2-2016
In the words of a former president of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Elaine McKay, John Legge more than any other was the founder of modern Asian Studies in Australia. In the great expansionist period of the Australian university system he was (as professor of history, and then dean of arts) a leader in the building of Monash University - and also in the vital interaction between academic analysts and government policy-makers.
Through his international and Australian networks, and growing numbers of students, he influenced Australia's engagement with Asia. Internationally, Legge was especially recognised for his writing on Indonesia - and also as a theoretician in the discipline of history. 
A graduate of Melbourne University and Oxford, John Legge wrote initially on colonial government, with major books on Papua and British Fiji. The Papua project, on Australia's administration of the territory, arose from Legge's war-time work in the government's Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, which recruited also the poet James McAuley and future Governor-General John Kerr. At the University of Western Australia in the immediate post-war period (1946-1960) Legge was also a pioneer in the teaching of Asian history - Fred Chaney, Sir Neil Currie and others spoke later of how his survey course changed their lives.
These years in Western Australia were particularly happy ones for Legge. It was here that he met and married, in 1952, Alison Hale, a fellow Oxford graduate and the star of a local production of Shaw's St Joan. In 1956 John and Alison took sabbatical leave at Cornell University, the pre-eminent centre of South-east Asian Studies in the United States. Here Legge was impressed by the academic leadership of George Kahin, with his focus on modern Asia not Orientalism, his (often critical) engagement with Washington and his network of relations with the rising new elites of post-colonial Southeast Asia.
Born in Murchison, Legge had a particularly Australian style, shaped in part in Western Victoria (at Warrnambool High School and Geelong College). His father was a Presbyterian clergyman and his great grand uncle was the missionary James Legge, the translator of Confucius and first professor of Chinese at Oxford. In the midst of academic debate, John Legge's face - like that of his ancestor - could assume an expression of Protestant tenacity.
At Melbourne University Legge studied in the history department where influential professor R.M.Crawford, was questioning the nature of history as a process of inquiry, and also warning Australians that the age of European empires had ended, and that they must now come to terms with the societies of the new Asia Pacific. In future years Legge addressed these two themes himself as an academic leader, especially when he moved to the new Monash University as foundation professor of history in 1960.
Established in Melbourne with Alison and their three children - David, Catherine and Colin - Legge created a department of history which was soon regarded as one of the country's finest. He was also central in developing the Monash Centre of South-east Asian Studies - modelling it in some ways on the Cornell Centre, and achieving a wide international reputation for Australia as well as Monash. The first South-east Asia specialists who came to Monash - including Herb Feith, Cyril Skinner, Ian Mabbett, Michael Swift, Jamie Mackie and Milton Osborne - were renowned in their various fields. Monash also now contributed to the development of South-east Asian Studies in the region itself - Legge, for instance, spending 1969-1970 as director of Singapore's today-famous Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. One of his initiatives there was to institute weekend seminars where public servants, business people and journalists could interact with academics. As always, he believed an academic institution "should not be an ivory tower".
In his own academic writing following the Cornell sabbatical, Legge's principal focus was Indonesia - which he recognised as a country of the highest possible importance for Australians to understand. He was the first Australian historian to devote himself primarily to the study of Indonesia, his best-known works being a biography of Indonesia's founding statesman Sukarno (first published in 1972) and a general history, Indonesia (1964). This latter work combined Legge's desire to understand the historical processes that shaped Indonesia with his commitment to advancing the discipline of history. It is an achievement in inter-disciplinary collaboration, with the historian Legge reaching out to a range of social science writing. America's leading anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, acknowledged that it was Legge more than any other scholar who had brought the disciplines together in Indonesian studies.
Alison's illness in the late 1970s was a blow which the couple met with dignity and fortitude. Legge faced the death of his 52-year-old wife with a strength which may have drawn on his childhood in the manse and the early death of his own mother. A second, 16-year marriage to Jane, a fellow Indonesianist, brought new happiness.
It was from his strong academic foundation in history and Southeast Asian studies that John Legge played a broader role in Australian public life. Many of his students went to key academic and governmental posts around the country. He supported research and educational projects which he believed would help the nation and he accepted high office in a range of public institutions.
Legge was a guiding influence in the Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Asian Studies Association of Australia - and played a large part in many major forums and "teach-ins". He was prominent in the debate over Vietnam, opposing the American-led campaign, and from 1987-1993 was an executive member on the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board. He chaired the Department of Foreign Affairs editorial advisory board for the series Documents on Australian Foreign Policy. Legge's students and colleagues will best remember his fundamental fairness, personal warmth and delight in debate. He was determined that Australia should be in the vanguard of international historical research.