Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion [Mīkstie vāki]

"Empires were never the agents of progress as their apologists claimed. Yet during the Progressive Era, various people across the Pacific turned to empires as a source of empowerment. While the United States and Japan strove to emerge as the world's great powers, numerous Asians and African Americans embraced Japan to challenge the long-standing human inequality based on the color line. Japan's allure, however, was hardly limited to nonwhite peoples. American policymakers perceived Japan as a "progressive" empire akin to their own, and the two powers cultivated an amicable relationship across the color line, even as they competed for influence in Asia and conflicted over Japanese immigration to the American West. The Allure Empire traces how American ideas about Asians were made and remade on the imperial stage, and how these ideas shaped US foreign and immigration policies. Based on research conducted in South Korea and the United States, it uncovers how Americans justified Japan's colonial rule in Korea by comparing it to the US rule in Cuba and the Philippines. It reveals that the United States refused to exclude Japanese immigrants the same way as it had excluded Chinese and Indian immigrants until American perceptions of Japan took a negative turn, in light of Japan's violent treatment of Koreans and the Chinese. But even after Japanese exclusion in 1924, the mutual respect for "progressive" empires sustained the inter-imperial relationship until World War II, when both sides erased the history of their collaborations to cast each other as incompatible enemies"--

The Allure of Empire traces how American ideas about race in the Pacific were made and remade on the imperial stage before World War II. Following the Russo-Japanese War, the United States cultivated an amicable relationship with Japan based on the belief that it was a "progressive" empire akin to its own. Even as the two nations competed for influence in Asia and clashed over immigration issues in the American West, the mutual respect for empire sustained their transpacific cooperation until Pearl Harbor, when both sides disavowed their history of collaboration and cast each other as incompatible enemies.

In recovering this lost history, Chris Suh reveals the surprising extent to which debates about Korea shaped the politics of interracial cooperation. American recognition of Japan as a suitable partner depended in part on a positive assessment of its colonial rule of Korea. It was not until news of Japan's violent suppression of Koreans soured this perception that the exclusion of Japanese immigrants became possible in the United States. Central to these shifts in opinion was the cooperation of various Asian elites aspiring to inclusion in a "progressive" American empire. By examining how Korean, Japanese, and other nonwhite groups appealed to the United States, this book demonstrates that the imperial order sustained itself through a particular form of interracial collaboration that did not disturb the existing racial hierarchy.