Liquid geography : the Yalu River and the boundaries of Empire in East Asia, 1894-1945
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines imperial Japan's efforts to transform and control the Yalu River boundary between Korea and Manchuria (Northeast China) during the period 1894-1945. Following the Japanese colonization of Korea in 1910, the Yalu River, together with the neighboring Tumen River, formed the longest formal, non-maritime border of the Japanese Empire until its dissolution in 1945. Yet despite the Yalu's strategic significance in the imperialist politics of early twentieth-century Northeast Asia, its modern history has been surprisingly overlooked. I address this historiographical gap while making three key interventions in the larger scholarship on borders, climate history, and Japanese imperialism. First, by drawing on archival materials in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and English, I argue that dynamic environments like the Yalu are more than mere backdrops to border histories, but co-agents of border creation and contestation alongside local human residents. A focus on what I call the liquid geography of the Yalu border shows how the transnational flow of people, goods, and the river itself exposed the limits of the colonial state even while providing the material underpinnings for further imperial expansion. Second, in analyzing the river as an agent of history, I propose a new, seasonal approach to history. Controlling the movement of peoples and goods across the Yalu meant contending with winter ice, summer floods, and other aspects of a seasonally changing riparian geography. Third and finally, I challenge conventional understanding of the political unity of the Japanese empire in Asia. I show how the internal contradictions of Japan's imperial project, as well as its external challenges, were most glaringly exposed along fault lines like the Yalu River border.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Seeley, Joseph Andrew |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Uchida, Jun |
| Thesis advisor | Uchida, Jun |
| Thesis advisor | Moon, Yumi |
| Thesis advisor | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Thesis advisor | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
| Thesis advisor | Wolfe, Mikael |
| Degree committee member | Moon, Yumi |
| Degree committee member | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Degree committee member | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
| Degree committee member | Wolfe, Mikael |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Joseph Andrew Seeley. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Joseph Andrew Seeley
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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