In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Japan, China, Tsarist Russia and later the USSR, vied for imperial dominance in Northeast Asia. They contested and adopted many of the physical and rhetorical features of Old-World imperialism, mitigated by domestic political forces and deeply ingrained cultural and historical values.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japan, China, and both Tsarist Russia and later the USSR, vied for imperial dominance in Northeast Asia. In the process, they contested and at the same time adopted many of the physical and rhetorical features of Old-World imperialism, mitigated by domestic political forces and deeply ingrained cultural and historical values.
With chapters written by scholars from Europe and Asia, including Russia, this collection offers new international and interdisciplinary perspectives on competitions between imperialisms in Northeast Asia in the period 18941953, exploring encounters between old rivals and new protagonists. Bringing together specialists from different disciplines and drawing on newly discovered and hard-to-access sources, it presents a uniquely comparative and holistic perspective on the symbiotic relationships between these regional powers and resistance to them. The contributors focus on four key areas: ideology, rivalry and territoriality, social factors, and visual representations.
A valuable resource for students and scholars of modern Northeast Asian history, and highly pertinent to understanding the imperial posturing between some of the same protagonists today.
Table of Contents
Foreword
(Peter OConnor)
Introduction
(Aglaia De Angeli and Peter Robinson)
Part I: Imperialism in Northeast Asia: drivers and structures
(Sait Eiri, Christopher W. A. Szpilman, Tsuchiya Reiko)
Chapter 1: The Role of the Internal Colony in Empire and Imperialism: Japan
and Britain Compared, by Sait Eiri.
Chapter 2: Social Darwinism as a Factor in Japanese Territorial Expansion,
1914-1941, by Christopher W. A. Szpilman.
Chapter 3: Media and Imperialism in International Press Conferences in the
Early 20th Century, by Tsuchiya Reiko.
Part II: Imperial rivalries and questions of territoriality: Russia and Japan
in Northeast Asia (Sherzod Muminov, Alexander Titov, Kobayashi Akina,
Yaroslav Shulatov, Denis G. Yanchenko)
Chapter 4: Reconsidering Japans Preoccupation with Soviet Power in East
Asia, 1917-1937, by Sherzod Muminov.
Chapter 5: National appropriation of imperial lands in Northeast Asia, by
Alexander Titov.
Chapter 6: From Japanese militarism to Soviet communism: The change of
heart of Japanese POWs through Soviet indoctrination, by Kobayashi Akina.
Chapter 7: The Key Rivalry: Russo-Japanese Relations and International Order
in Northeast Asia, 1895-1945, by Yaroslav Shulatov.
Chapter 8: Government of Nicholas II and economy of the Far East in Russian
archival materials, by Denis Yanchenko.
Part III: Imperialism and society: actors and victims, migrants and the
dispossessed
(Rachel Lin, Cho Mikwi, Peter OConnor, Nikita Kovrigin)
Chapter 9: "We are on the Brink of Disaster": Revolution, War and Imperial
Conflict in Blagoveshchensk-Heihe, by Yuexin Rachel Lin.
Chapter 10: Subversive or Ambitious?: Migration of Korean Students to the
Metropole and the Response of the Empire, 1910-1933, by Cho Mikwi.
Chapter 11: Compradors of Opinion: Irish Adventurers on the Road to Systemic
Change in Northeast Asia, 1916-1949, by Peter OConnor.
Chapter 12: Shaping Chinese Communities in Japan and Russia: The Role of
Political Factors, by Nikita Kovrigin.
Part IV: Visualizing competing imperialisms
(Peter Robinson, Aglaia De Angeli)
Chapter 13: Picturing Imperialisms in North-East Asia: Illustrations for The
Timess Japanese and Russian Supplements, 1910-1917, by Peter Robinson.
Chapter 14: Competing imperialisms in Manchuria: Mapping a contested and
disputed territory, by Aglaia De Angeli.
Aglaia De Angeli is a Senior Lecturer in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queens University Belfast, UK.
Peter Robinson is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Japan Womens University, Japan.
Peter OConnor is an Emeritus Professor of Musashino University, Tokyo, Japan. In 2022-2023, he was a George Lyndon Hicks Fellow at the National Library of Singapore.
Emma Reisz is a Lecturer in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queens University Belfast, UK.
Tsuchiya Reiko is a Professor of Sociology and Media History at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
