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> From:         Gayle Williams <[log in to unmask]>
> Date:         Fri, 5 May 2000 12:36:23 -0400
> Subject:      OBIT: PROFESSOR CHARLES BOXER (fwd)
> To:           [log in to unmask]
> Reply-To:     Latin Americanist Librarians' Announcements List              
> <[log in to unmask]>
> 
> >
> >
> >The following obituary of Charles Boxer is available in the online version
> of The
> >Times at:
> >http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/05/01/timobiobi03004.html
> >
> >                      May 1 2000        OBITUARIES
> >             The holder of five university chairs without a degree to his
> >name whose rare books excited the Japanese at the fall of Hong Kong
> > Professor Charles Boxer, FBA, soldier, linguist, historian, bibliophile,
> antiquarian, was born on March 8, 1904. He died on April 27 aged 96
> >           In 1947, at the age of 43, a professional soldier with no
> >academic qualifications or experience, Charles Boxer to his surprise was
> >invited to take the first of the five university chairs he would eventually
> >be offered in subjects ranging from Dutch to Portuguese.  He went on to
> >become a Fellow of the British Academy, the Master of a Yale College (1971)
> >and the author of some 350 works. On the fall of Hong Kong, where he was
> >then serving, to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941, Captain Boxer’s rare
> >book collection was sufficiently celebrated in East Asia to be seized for
> >the Imperial Library in Tokyo. He was able to recover most of it after the
> >war.  Born in Sandown, Isle of Wight, into a naval and military family (a
> >kinsman of Admiral “Bloody” Boxer who died in the Crimea), Charles Ralph
> >Boxer was educated at Wellington and Sandhurst. A boyhood fascination with
> >Japan led him early on to teach himself Portuguese and Dutch in order to
> >read the orginal records of their first contacts with the East.
> >Commissioned into the Lincolnshire Regiment in 1923, he spent three years
> >as a language officer in Japan and was appointed an official interpreter in
> >1933. Three years later he joined the Intelligence Service in Hong Kong
> >where, in December 1941, after being wounded in action, he became a
> >prisoner of the Japanese.   In February 1947 he returned to Japan with the
> >British delegation of the Far Eastern Commission, but later that year
> >resigned from the Army when London University offered him the Camoens
> >Chair, then the only Portuguese chair in the English-speaking world. He
> >held the chair until retirement in 1967, except for the two years 1951-53
> >spent as the first Professor of History of the Far East in the London
> >School of Oriental and African Studies.  In retirement he taught at Indiana
> >University and served as consultant to the Lilly Library. In 1969 he was
> >invited by Yale to take a personal chair in the History of European
> >Expansion Overseas. In 1972 he finally retired with an emeritus
> >professorship from Yale; he had been made Emeritus Professor of Portuguese
> >by London University in 1968.  Outstanding among his works were pioneering
> >studies of The Christian Century in Japan (1951); South China in the
> >Sixteenth Century (1953); The Dutch in Brazil (1957); and the controversial
> >Race Relations in the Portuguese Empire(1963).  In retirement he continued
> >writing, reviewing, and lecturing on his two chief academic concerns: Dutch
> >and Portuguese colonial and naval history. He also indulged his interest in
> >ceramics, coins, marine archaeology and shipwreck relics, besides
> >continually adding to his collection of rare books and manuscripts, which
> >included the unique Codex Boxer, now in the Lilly Library.  He received a
> >number of foreign honorary degrees and decorations, and good-humouredly
> >accepted a papal knighthood in 1969. Yet despite an international
> >reputation, and a war wound which left him with a crippled arm, his name
> >appeared in no Honours List. (This was believed to be because he had once
> >refused a military award on a matter of principle.) His friends were,
> >therefore, delighted when in 1996 King’s College London established a chair
> >in his name. The unexpected offer of his first chair in 1947 was one result
> >of the reputation earned by "Captain Boxer’s" prewar writings, such as Jan
> >Compagnie in Japan (1936).  Once in the university he soon became a legend
> >there too, in both junior and senior common rooms. At King’s College London
> >he found himself the only member of the academic staff without a degree,
> >and when he had to appear among gorgeously robed colleagues at a
> >commemoration ceremony he remarked ruefully that people probably thought he
> >was "the man who’d called about the gas". He was amused as well as honoured
> >that his first doctorate (1950) should have come from the University of
> >Utrecht, which, as he put it, gave him something in common with his hero,
> >Beachcomber’s Dr Strabismus.  Boxer had a salty style, and was no respecter
> >of personages. Never a conventional lecturer, but always a stimulating and
> >generous teacher, he inspired devotion in the students who came to him from
> >all over the world. A self-confident man with firm opinions always firmly
> >expressed, he was a far more complicated personality than most people
> >suspected. His prison years in solitary confinement had given him time to
> >formulate a personal philosophy of stoicism to which he remained faithful.
> >He tried to believe that "nothing matters much; most things don’t matter at
> >all". Despite the horrors and humiliations suffered as a prisoner of war,
> >he harboured no resentment and continued to admire the Japanese to the end.
> >Characteristically, he pleaded for leniency at the trial of his former camp
> >commandant.   Concern for the underdog and contempt for delusions of racial
> >superiority informed all his writing and teaching. In lectures delivered in
> >the University of Virginia (1962) he criticised the rosy myth of Portuguese
> >racial tolerance in her former colonies. The publication of these lectures
> >brought furious attacks of a politically sponsored origin. For some years
> >the outcry rendered him persona non grata in certain circles. However,
> >Boxer, always a private person, appeared unmoved by the onslaught and the
> >subsequent hate-mail.  Boxer was a pessimist who believed in coping rather
> >than hoping. His favourite bedside reading was Marcus Aurelius; his
> >favourite proverb was from the Japanese: "Bees sting a crying face." Too
> >superstitious to be a successful atheist, he remained a devout agnostic who
> >was at once fascinated and amused by missionary Catholicism, especially as
> >represented by the activities of the Jesuit Order, which he greatly
> >admired.  His impatience with pomp and circumstance made him uncomfortably
> >outspoken at times, but he had a healthy sense of fun, and a lively
> >interest in gossip. His extraordinary memory for barrack-room ballads and
> >bawdy limericks, and an unexpected taste for poetry ranging from Pope to
> >Kipling, were best displayed when, in congenial company, the glasses were
> >raised shoulder-high. Such occasions were not infrequent.  In 1991 he made
> >a final visit to Japan as a guest of Tenri University where he delivered
> >his last public lecture, and visited the fencing academy in Nara where
> >sixty years earlier he had practised kendo. Failing eyesight troubled his
> >last years and ended that scholastic work which for him had always been
> >among life’s pleasures; his output remains his monument. Boxer had been
> >elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1957.  His first marriage to
> >Ursula Churchill-Dawes ("the most beautiful woman in Hong Kong") ended in
> >divorce in 1937. In 1945 he married the American feminist writer Emily
> >Hahn. She died in 1997 and he is survived by two daughters.
> >
> >                                                            Next page:
> >Helen Tomkinson, ski racer      Arts (Mon - Fri) |   Books (Sat)   (Thu) |
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >                  Next: Helen Tomkinson, ski racer
> >      Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on
> >Times Newspapers'   standard terms and conditions.   To inquire about a
> >licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication
> >website.
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  Pat Noble
>  University of London Library
>  Senate House
>  Malet Street
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