Patrick James Honey Obituary: Vietnam Scholar
P. J. Honey was the first person to hold a lectureship in Vietnamese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University; in the course of a productive career he became the first Reader in Vietnamese Studies, and later also the Head of the Department of South East Asia and the Islands. His knowledge of the language, first-hand experience of the country and above all his interest in current affairs led to his opinions being sought by government agencies when Vietnam was going through a most turbulent phase of its history.
Patrick James Honey was born in Ireland, in Navan, County Meath, in 1922. He went to Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London, and entered Birkbeck College, London, in 1940 to read Classics. When called up in 1941, he chose to enlist in the Royal Navy and saw active service on the Atlantic convoys, on the Russian convoys, in the Italian campaign and finally in the Far East. After the surrender of Japanese forces in Saigon, a small British force under General Douglas Gracey was charged with maintaining civil order, and it was as a young lieutenant with this force that Paddy Honey had a first brief encounter with Vietnam.
After being demobilised in 1946 he resumed his studies in London and graduated in Classics from University College in 1949. He was persuaded to take up Vietnamese by the 1947 Scarbrough Report, which drew attention both to the importance that increasing contacts between countries would assume after the Second World War, and to the serious lack of expertise across Oriental and African languages that the war had revealed. Classics graduates were believed to have a special aptitude for mastering 'difficult' languages and the Linguistics Department at Soas, under Professor J.R. Firth, was asked to recruit and train, among others, scholars to cover the languages of South East Asia.
Honey was recruited and appointed to a newly created post of Lecturer in Annamese (as Vietnamese was then known) in 1949, given 16 months' preliminary language and linguistics training and then sent out on his first year- long study tour of Vietnam. He arrived in Saigon in February 1951, at a time when the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, were waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war against the French colonial regime.
With difficulty and at considerable risk, he made his way to Hanoi, where he set up a safe base from which to carry out his planned research and his study of the local language. In the event this proved to be Honey's only opportunity to visit Hanoi. The country was partitioned under the terms of the 1954 Geneva Agreement and, when he next went to Vietnam in 1958, it was only to visit South Vietnam, and a Saigon 'full of Americans'.
Patrick James Honey was born in Ireland, in Navan, County Meath, in 1922. He went to Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London, and entered Birkbeck College, London, in 1940 to read Classics. When called up in 1941, he chose to enlist in the Royal Navy and saw active service on the Atlantic convoys, on the Russian convoys, in the Italian campaign and finally in the Far East. After the surrender of Japanese forces in Saigon, a small British force under General Douglas Gracey was charged with maintaining civil order, and it was as a young lieutenant with this force that Paddy Honey had a first brief encounter with Vietnam.
After being demobilised in 1946 he resumed his studies in London and graduated in Classics from University College in 1949. He was persuaded to take up Vietnamese by the 1947 Scarbrough Report, which drew attention both to the importance that increasing contacts between countries would assume after the Second World War, and to the serious lack of expertise across Oriental and African languages that the war had revealed. Classics graduates were believed to have a special aptitude for mastering 'difficult' languages and the Linguistics Department at Soas, under Professor J.R. Firth, was asked to recruit and train, among others, scholars to cover the languages of South East Asia.
Honey was recruited and appointed to a newly created post of Lecturer in Annamese (as Vietnamese was then known) in 1949, given 16 months' preliminary language and linguistics training and then sent out on his first year- long study tour of Vietnam. He arrived in Saigon in February 1951, at a time when the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, were waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war against the French colonial regime.
With difficulty and at considerable risk, he made his way to Hanoi, where he set up a safe base from which to carry out his planned research and his study of the local language. In the event this proved to be Honey's only opportunity to visit Hanoi. The country was partitioned under the terms of the 1954 Geneva Agreement and, when he next went to Vietnam in 1958, it was only to visit South Vietnam, and a Saigon 'full of Americans'.