RACE AND EMPIRE IN THE ASIA PACIFIC

This seminar explores the historical entanglement of race and imperial warfare in the Asia Pacific, focusing on China, Japan, and the U.S. We will begin by considering how the colonial discourse of civilization arrived on the shores of East Asia and shaped the self-perception of its peoples in an evolutionary unfolding of the international order. Our goal is to understand the changing conceptions of race and racism in the Asia Pacific from the 19th century through the postwar era. Readings include primary and secondary texts relating to international legal instruments such as extraterritorial rights, formal and informal colonial education, scientific racism such as the dissemination of racialized medical texts, racial anxiety, decolonization, revolutions and the possibilities of global transformation. For example, we will revisit the rise of Pan-Asianism, the problem of the color line, Japan's demand for equality at the Versailles Treaty negotiations, the May Fourth Movement, China's centuries-long anti-imperialist struggles, and the contradictions of white supremacy and Afro-Asian revolts. The seminar will conclude by reflecting on the post-WWII rearticulation of "self-determination"--the non-Wilsonian moment--to the idea of human rights as well as the world historical significance of Afro-Asian insurgences against white colonial domination in the 1940s-70s.