The David K. Wyatt Southeast Asia Collection

A major acquisition in October 2005 was the purchase of the private library collection of retired Cornell University professor David K. Wyatt. The collection, consisting of roughly 15,000 volumes, about half of which are in Thai, includes most of the standard works on Thailand and Southeast Asia in general, a substantial number of the Thai royal chronicles, the greater part of King Chulalongkorn’s (1868-1910) diaries and letters, and an extensive array of monographs, memoirs and cremation volumes. The acquisition of the Wyatt materials, one of the largest private library collections ever acquired by Ohio University’s Alden library, greatly increases the scale and scope of the SEA collection's holdings on mainland Southeast Asia.
The SEA Collection staff is currently cataloging the Wyatt materials (although, given the sheer size of the collection, it will obviously take considerable time to complete the process). The SEA staff is also in the process of preparing a database of the Wyatt materials. The database, which will be accessible from the Southeast Asia Collection homepage, will include a complete index of the Wyatt materials, including Thai-language works (using both Thai and romanized script) to enhance access to the collection.

David K. Wyatt

David K. Wyatt, the eldest of five children, was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1937. Wyatt spent much of his childhood in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, Iowa. He studied philosophy at Harvard University, from which he took a Bachelor’s degree in 1959. He received a M.A. in History from Boston University in 1960. He graduated from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in History in 1966. In 1964, prior to completing his dissertation, Wyatt accepted a teaching position at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where he taught Southeast Asia History until 1968. From 1968 to 1969, he taught at the University of Michigan. Subsequently, in 1969 he accepted a teaching position at Cornell University, where he served as the Director of the Southeast Asia Program, Chair of the Department of History, and the John Stambaugh Professor of History & Asian Studies before retiring in 2002. Dr. Wyatt briefly served as interim curator of the Echols Collection at Cornell University in 2005.

David Wyatt was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1973-1974), and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1983). Professor Wyatt also served as President of the Association for Asian Studies between 1993 and 1994.

During his distinguished career, Wyatt published a prodigious number of articles and books. In addition to several translations of Thai chronicles, and contributions to In Search of Southeast Asia (1971, c1987), and The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia (2005), Dr. Wyatt is the author of The Politics of Reform in Thailand (1969), Thailand: A Short History (1984, c2003), Siam in Mind (2002), and Reading Thai Murals (2003). His most recent book, Books, Manuscripts, and Secrets, is due to be published in 2007.

Professor Wyatt, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis several years ago, succumbed to congestive heart failure on November 14, 2006, in Ithaca, New York. He was 69. Long recognized as a leading authority on Southeast Asia, and the foremost historian of Thailand, the impact of his passing on the academic world cannot be exaggerated. Wyatt helped give shape to the field of Southeast Asian studies, and left behind a formidable body of literature on Thai history which, in terms of both quantity and quality, will not likely be surpassed for many decades to come.