De Nieuwe Stem. Jaargang 17

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Caroline F. Ware^*
Professor Jan Romein colleague and co-author

It was my great privilege to work for eight years with Professor Jan Romein on the Unesco History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind. We shared responsibility, together with a third colleague from India, Sadar K.M. Panikkar, for the volume of this History dealing with the Twentieth Century. The mandate which we carried out was to create a joint work, a genuinely international product, rather than to divide the field and assume responsibility individually for separate parts. Thus we worked through together every problem, from major questions of organization, interpretation and emphasis to editorial details. According to the procedure established for the preparation of the History, the draft of our manuscript was circulated for comment and suggestions to the national commissions for Unesco in all the member countries, and we shared responsibility for accepting or rejecting the multitude of suggestions offered.

It is difficult to put into words what Professor Romein brought to this task and to describe the quality of his collaboration. Obviously, international collaboration and joint authorship of a work such as this is far from an easy process, especially when the three co-authors are widely separated by distance. We had to establish our working relationship by correspondance, and we met for the first time six months later, after we had worked out the general plan of the volume and the details of its first section. In this process, I come to know the justness of Professor Romein's judgment, his flexibility, modesty and humor even before I had met him. In one of his early letters, he

* Author-Editor of Volume VI, ‘The Twentieth Century’ of Unesco's History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind. Co-author-Editors, Jan M. Romein and K.M. Panikkar (in press).

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responded to my suggestions in a wholly characteristic manner. First he set forth carefully the reasons for his original proposal: then he considered my suggestions and concluded that if he were writing an independent work he would insist on his proposal, but he recognized that my suggestions were more in line with the assignment we had been given by Unesco; then he examined systematically the points he had intended to cover and ascertained that they could be encompassed within a revised plan which he designed, incorporating my suggestions. He then concluded, ‘I hope that I have not produced a mouse. (I do not consider myself a mountain).’ With such a collaborator, no problems would he insoluble, and positive contributions would be great. And so, indeed, it proved.

Professor Romein's great fund of knowledge was always ready to be drawn upon to support or test a generalization, to pose a problem, to correct a misconception. We knew that he would keep us on solid ground. His penetrating and creative analysis, whether of literature or religion, of changing social structures or of the impact of political events, was a guarantee against the danger that the work might become pedantic. His insight not only illumined the parts which he drafted but, through his sensitive criticism, the sections drafted by others. Then there was his judgment, always just, always honest, never hasty or dogmatic, always subject to revision if the evidence warranted. As the work progressed, I came to depend greatly upon this judgment, and often burdened him with questions, imposing on his patience and conscientiousness, because I felt such reassurance in his response.

To the practical, day-by-day task of writing, revising and editing, Professor Romein brought a generous dedication of his time and energy, as well as an unfailing, meticulous attention to detail. In spite of pressure of other work, he never delayed to send material or reply to an inquiry, except when he was ill, and, well or ill, nothing was overlooked. From his first letter presenting his preliminary ideas for the opening

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section of the volume, to his last note very shortly before his death suggesting the addition of a minor item in one of the charts, he gave every problem his full attention and the full benefit of his sharp mind and careful workmanship. At the same time, he never assumed a proprietary attitude toward the ideas which he contributed or his particular way of developing or expressing a point. His sense of excellence on the one hand and his modesty on the other made him insist on accuracy and quality but not on a personal form or identification. Such a combination of meticulous care and flexibility is indeed rare, yet he managed to be systematic without being rigid, always precise but never petty, clear and concrete but not unyielding.

These qualitities of scholarship and workmanship, in and of themselves, made him an ideal colleague. But it was his attitude toward humanity, toward history and toward life that made the process of collaboration with him a rare and rich experience. He viewed mankind in general, and people in particular, in terms of their potentialities. His profound sense of human dignity, his compassion and his basic faith in man's ultimate capacity to face and shape his own destiny infused his thinking and his attitude. He saw modern civilization, based on science and rational organization, as making a break with age-old patterns of human society based on personal relationships, - a break which can be seen in historical contrasts and also in the gap between ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ countries today. In this light, many of the problems and processes of the modern age are manifestations of mankind's adaptation to this modification of the ‘common human pattern’. While he was keenly interested in historical theory, it was never divorced from the human reality.

Perhaps what gave the experience of working with Professor Romein on the cultural history of the twentieth century such a special quality, - apart from the sheer delight in his rich mind, his warmth and sensitivity, his unfailing humor and his capacity for enjoyment - was the fact that he himself epitomized

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so much of his time. Het was completely European, yet respected and loved in Asia, and at home in the literature and thought of most parts of the world; an intellectual, with direct sympathy and understanding for man, women and children of all social groups; an historian steeped in the past, but thoroughly alive to the present; a scientific intelligence and a humanistic spirit. To work with him on the history of the age, many of whose finest aspects he so truly represented, was not only to gain a living understanding of his time, but to experience a constant renewal of the faith in human potentiality which he so deeply felt.