Lecture by Peter Carey: ‘Worldly honours and local neglect – The strange case of the Babad Diponegoro’

The Leiden University Libraries like to invite you to a lecture of our honored guest Peter Carey, Adjunct Professor of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Indonesia, on Friday September 25. His lecture is called ‘Worldly Honours and Local Neglect – The Strange Case of the Babad Diponegoro’.

What is the relevance of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme if National Governments take no meaningful steps to make their national literature available to their citizens? Why have three of Indonesia’s four Memory of the World manuscripts and archives involved foreign scholars? What is the significance of the fact that these three applications were also backed by the former colonial power? The answers to these and more questions will be provided in Carey’s presentation.

The lecture covers two subjects:
• The origins of the Memory of the World Programme established by UNESCO in 1992.
• Babad Diponegoro or Autobiographical Chronicle of Prince Diponegoro (1785-1855); a Javanese nobleman, Indonesian national hero and pan-Islamist. Inscribed in the Memory of the World Register in 2013. The official Dutch translation of this manuscript is situated in the KITLV collection in the Leiden University Library.

In addition, Leiden University Libraries will place unique objects from the Special Collections on display for you. Peter Carey will guide you along the items and give you further information.

If you would like to come to this free lecture, please register by sending an e-mail to [email protected] (as subject please mention Registration lecture Peter Carey) or call the secretariat of the University Library: 071-527 2832. We urge you to register as soon as possible, since seating is limited.

We hope to welcome you in the University Library on this occasion.

Kurt De Belder,
University Librarian
Director Leiden University Libraries