Source overview: Wolf: "Peopling Eastern Europe", Gersdorf: The Poetics and Politics of the Desert

Extremely briefly, both are excellent in discussing the transposition of the "Orient" (however defined) onto domestic borderlands.

In the case of Wolf's work on German and American travellers to the very near east (or, in other words, Poland), the spectre of the Orient allows local peoples, including ethnic Germans, to be re-cast as "Oriental" and thereby uncivilized, "sunken", "degenerated", or as Georg Forster put it, "cattle in human form." Wolf discusses geographically defined racism, with Western Europe as civilized and Eastern Europe as barbaric, and for Russian colonialists, with Occidental Russia as civilized and Oriental Russia as barbaric, etc. He also discusses the increasing association with race, skin colour, and civilization. He goes into the association between Cossacks ("Cossacs") and "Tartars", and between "Tartars" and "Negroes" or, for that matter, the "Tartars" as "white Savages" by western European/American travellers and theorists. On page 348-349, there's a rather large section, which is obviously most pertinent for my research, on a letter from John Ledyard to Thomas Jefferson in which the former defines Native Americans as "American tartars" and lazily/confidently conflates housing, "personal ornaments", etc. "No matter if in Nova Zmbla, Mongul in Greenland, or the banks of the Mississippi, they are all the same."

Chapter 2 of Gersdorf's book describes American Orientalist art and literature focusing on the deserts of the newly annexed southwest in considerable detail. While Gersdorf surmises that Orientalist allusions to Egypt, the Sahara, etc. allowed the deserts -- thought to be uninhabitable by WASPs/unassimilable into American civilization -- to become "Americanized" as part of the cultural space of the United States, and in the process, generate difference between the United States and Europe, the author says very little about settler colonialism or actual Indigenous peoples inhabiting these territories. This is in no small part because the media which he analyzes largely renders them invisible (or, if not, quickly vanishing). But, the characterization of these lands as Oriental does more, I would argue: it does not only "indigenize" America; it de-indigenizes those Indigenous peoples living there. Much like Columbus' own perscription of the Indian onto the Indigenous peoples of the lands he surveyed and claimed, the characterization of the southwest into a Sahara like wasteland with little more than Zuni ruins transformed it into an assimilable no man's land. Needless to say, characterizing the Hopi, Navajo, etc. as vanishing naturalized the violence inflicted upon them by Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans alike. At any rate, Gersdorf intoduces the term "domestic Orient," which seems to fit this phenomenon rather nicely.

Snippet: "The Discovery of the Northwest"

Details on geographic indistinction between Asia and the Americas in early modern Europe.

Both Shea and Parkman, in their histories of Northwestern discovery, recognize John Nicolet as among the early explorers. Parkman tells the story of the traveller's approach to a Winnebago village, clothed in a long robe of Chinese damask covered with rich embroidery of birds and flowers. Rumours had reached the French in Canada of a people from the far west, without hair or beards, who came in trade with the Indians beyond the Great Lakes. These people, it was conjectured, must needs be Asiatics; for nobody doubted then that Far Kathay was far only when sought for by an eastern voyage of journey; but the westward traveller would soon and surely come upon those wonderful kingdoms of the great Khan. Columbus, on his last voyage, had sent out messengers to find the court of that renowned monarch, which he was sure could not be many miles distant from the coast of the Carribean Sea. they were no wiser in Quebec when, nearly a hundred and fifty years afterward, Champlain sent Nicolet on an exploring expedition westward, and the ambassador was furnished with this gorgeous robe of damask that he might be in suitable apparel to meet the mandarins of the East. 

From The Dominion Illustrated, 9th Feb, 1889, pg. 95.

Source analysis: "Fujimura Hisakaza and I" by Umehara Takeshi in Henka to ahachi

I'm working on a piece which details 1860s-70s Japanese sovereignty claims to Ainu land by the likes of Okamoto Bunpei. Okamoto fancifully described the contemporary Ainu as preserving the language, culture, customs, and religion of the very ancient Japanese. This creates a sense of kinship between the Ainu and Japanese in Okamoto's time, though, perhaps with two siblings at very different ages. I argue that this has the effect of rendering the Ainu proto-Japanese and thereby legitmizes Japanese colonial incursions into Ainu territory. Moreover, with the increasingly aggressive stance of the Russian Empire in the boundary dispute in Karafuto/Sakhalin, this would render Ainu territories across the island always-already Japanese territories. In other words, it de-legitimized the Karafuto Ainu as a distinct political or cultural entity, in effect de-indigenizing them, while, in turn, indigenizing the Japanese settlers who Okamoto hoped would settle the island in great numbers. And as it was, after all, a numbers game, rendering the thousands of Ainu present in southern Sakhalin "Japanese" would greatly bolster the settler body politic, then numbering in the hundreds.

Stunningly, this discourse has continued to recent times, co-existing with settlers' claims that the Ainu have "disappeared' through their forcible assimilation into the Japanese mainstream. In fact, I was astounded and troubled by the inclusion of a short essay by the 20th century Japanese philosopher Umehara Takeshi which was included in Henka to ahachi -- a book of interviews with Hokkaido-based Karafuto Ainu. The essay, acting as a forward, is stunning in how it reproduces Okamoto's colonialist discourse, with the philosopher asserting that the Ainu -- still in the 1980s when the book was published -- represent a truly ancient, primordial, and thereby pure/authentic form of Japanese culture left over from the Jomon period. Describing his great excitement as a nationalist in learning about (and hoping to "understand" (rikai)) Ainu culture, he stated that in more perfectly understanding the Ainu, he could more perfectly "understand" a timeless Japanese culture as well. Such Ainu culture was, according to Umehara, fundamentally anti-modernist and adopting it allowed him to overcome the Cartesian mind-body split which supposedly characterizes all modern philosophy. His proof for all of this? Exactly like Okamoto, he turns to the most superficial of linguistic and religious similarities (ie. Japanese kami = Ainu kamui). Essentially, this mode of categorization reproduces (or, perhaps it's better to say, "updates") the colonial discourse of Ainu as primitive, as unchanging, or as in a state of nature while erasing them as a distinct Indigenous people.

There's little more to say about this which I didn't write above about Okamoto, but what's even more curious than this discourse's own "essence" proving to be fundamentally changeless 150 years into the future is the efficacy in which Ainu themselves responded to it in the same volume. Henka to ahachi contains an incredible critique of such colonial de-indigenizations. The Karafuto Ainu man, Nishihira, describes Japanese legitmizing their own theft of Ainu land through creating histories of the Ainu consisting of "nothing but lies". Nishihira, in turn, claims that the Japanese themselves were from Thailand (comparing the Ainu epithet for settlers as "Shamo" to the medieval southeast Asian kingdom Cham) or from the northeast Asian mainland. All of Japan, he reminds his interlocutor, was originally Ainu land.

Editing notes: Karafuto Ainu

The first chapter of my dissertation will both be included in my publishable manuscript and will also be presented, in a highly condensed form, at this year's AAS conference.

Very briefly here, I will sketch out key revisions I need to make as well as what is most salient for public dissemination.

Book manuscript

1. I rely too much on too few secondary sources for Russian Sakhalin and Russian Kodiak Island. More into this would be extremely helpful, and help flesh out my own understanding. Plus, are there any translated documents, besides Chekhov?
2. More secondary literature on Japanese colonialism, including better incorporation of extant sources.
3. The bits on de-Indigenization/settler self-Indigenization should be tightened up. Ideally, based on comments during my defence, this should become a larger part of my central argument and the finer details should be moved to the introduction chapter. 
4. And, for that matter, the bit on Okamoto should be fleshed out. I should also stress that this discourse continued unabated.
5. More on the international system and imperialism. This is a good place to bring in literature on civilization discourse as it relates to imperialism and national sovereignty.
6. More on Taiwan and Korea? More on gunship diplomacy and Kuroda?
7. If possible, more on Enomoto and especially his plans for the Ainu, his activities in Russia.
8. Something direct from Kuroda Kiyotaka would also be essential here -- he features so heavily as the "villain" of the chapter, and rightly so, but is largely silent.
9. Really -- more from the Karafuto Ainu and their decedents, if possible. There may be memoirs, interviews, etc.
10. I should mention the violence inflicted upon the Karafuto Ainu in the introduction, and tighten that up too.
11. Footnotes on topics such as Canada's claim of Inuit (and their territories) as Canadian would be good, as would something on race shifting Japanese settlers in Hokkaido.

Basically, everything is good but not great. My argument is sound, the chapter organization is tight. There's nothing wrong with it, but it lacks theoretical depth and nuance which other chapters are rich with. 

AAS

1. A discussion about the concept of a "token of sovereignty"; both in the sense of material objects as well as (in this case) human bodies.
2. A brief history, and overview of relevant historiography (including popular representations).
3. Discussion of the Russo-Japanese rivalry, the situation in Sakhalin/Karafuto and the Kuriles/Chijima.
4. Discuss proposals for Japanese colonization hinged on the bodies of Ainu, with Ainu literally becoming tokens of sovereignty.
5. Talk about the Treaty of St. Petersburg, relatively generous terms for people who became permanent residents.
6. Talk about the state's rescinding of less-than-generous terms for Karafuto Ainu in Japan.
7. Give a brief overview of Matsumoto Juro's account, aftermath.
8. Conclusion.
9. ALSO, if space: multi-ethnic colonization and the Kuriles as Alaskan.

Source overview: Jodi Byrd et al - Predatory Value; A.G. Morise - Carriers and Ainos at Home

Introducing a special edition of Social Text, Jodi Byrd, Alyosha Goldstein, Jodi Melamed, and Chandan Reddy discuss racial capitalism, or as Cedric Robinson argues in opposition to Marx's developmentalism, "the development of capitalism" as "historically inextricable from processes of racialization." They tie this into contemporary discussions of "financialization," or, through ongoing, disparate processes of "numeracy, abstractions, proceduralism," the "abstractability of humans as tools for capital." 

They write,

colonization and transatlantic slavery set in motion the dynamics and differential racialized valuations that continue to underwrite particular forms of subjection, property, commerce, and territoriality. Racialization and racism further colonial dispossession just as the colonization of Indigenous peoples and those subjected to colonial rule contribute to the specific conditions and practices through which racialized subordination are enacted. 

This is to say, that colonialism was/remains generative of racialized categories and racism, and that these "differential valuations," are tied to how subjective and economic categories are formed. This is most obviously visible in regimes of private property, which -- in a colonial setting, and subsequently in Europe in the transition from "feudalism" to "liberal capitalism") -- were/remain predicated on dispossession. Dispossession, they state (in reference to Denise Ferreira da Silva's discussion of "transparency versus affectability" and Elizabeth Povinelli's discussion of "the autological subject versus genealogical society"), is "insatiable predatory relation that entails a specific manner of world making that is at once predicated on and generative of a dialectic of biopolitical sorting." The authors describe the such property regimes as "economies of dispossession": "those multiple and intertwined genealogies of racialized property, subjection, and expropriation through which capitalism and colonialism take shape historically and change over time."

While evocative of David Harvey's famous critique of “accumulation by dispossession," the authors differentiate their own argument in that it is  not so much foundational (or "originary, or, in Marx's terms, "primitive") as it is ongoing, and how "colonization and racialization" are "constitutive and continuing" for capitalism itself. This is certainly true, and is demonstrably true that that. One need look only at the Dutch East India Company to find the roots of the modern corporation in extra-European colonialism. However, the authors stress that regimes of private property, and eventually, property relations between settlers and, before long, in Europe have their roots in the European dispossession of Indigenous land in the Americas. Indeed, "Imperialism provides the vectors of economic speculation and the enmeshment of administrative, plantation, and multiple colonial formations that have underpinned the rise of the world economy." Indeed, while many treat both "so-called original accumulation" as well as colonialism itself, "as merely a historical precursor to the subsequent depredations of racism rather than an ongoing relation of theft, displacement, foreclosure, and violence that cannot be reduced to one determinate relation to racialization," the authors stress that racial and colonial violence are "as ongoing conditions of possibility" for capitalist accumulation.

Indeed, and, as Glen Coulthard writes, "[s]ettler-colonialism is territorially acquisitive in perpetuity." The authors of this essay agree, writing,

Indigenous dispossession continues unabated to provide the logics that order power, violence, accumulation, and belonging for all those who find themselves on lands stripped from Indigenous peoples. ... Not only has land made territory made property in this sense provided the foundational relations of colonial accumulation and profit, but dispossession has also remained a perpetually incomplete project that continues to strive toward conforming and confirming these terms of value and belonging.

All of this is tied to property, and, as Hegel and others famously themselves argued, property is tied to conceptions of "proper" personhood, in that being propertied is to be human, and to be incapable of possessing property is to be (as Hegel put it) a "mere thing." Accordingly, "Colonization, Indigeneity, racialization, and chattel slavery and its afterlives, along with the heteropatriarchal household economy, are among the primary conditions of possibility for this proposition."

All this is enough to the Jordan Petersons of the world furrow their brows to the point of piercing muscle spasms, to be sure. But, in as much as (the authors stress) the conditions of racialized violence and settler colonialism are disavowed today, we can find direct and, indeed, celebratory references to this same dynamic in the recent past. 

Take, for example,  missionary and linguist A.G. Morice's short essay, "Carriers and Ainos at Home (The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal Vol. XXIV Jan-Nov 1902)," which has obvious applications for my own research project. The essay is, put simply, a crude attempt to compare the Carrier people (or the Dakelh) of what's today British Columbia and the Ainu of what is today Hokkaido. Unlike Berthold Laufer, Morice does not attempt to construct a grand theory of a shared trans-Pacific culture, but, instead, identifies the purported kinship between such "savages" and non-human animals such as dogs and bears to be central to Indigenous people's "psychology," distinct as it is from "the white man." This, for Morice, is all that links "savages" from opposite sides of the north Pacific, and explains seeming cultural similarities. Indeed, "the Indian ... does not possess to the same extent as the white race the idea of domination, or such a key sense of ownership." Of domesticated animals, Morice differentiated "the self-styled 'noble' Aryan" from the "humbler Indian" in that the former is "the 'master' of his dog and the 'proprietor' of his horse." 

Source overview: Berthold Laufer - "Columbus and Cathay, and the Meaning of America to the Orientalist"

A short article based on Laufer's presidential address to the American Oriental Society, "Columbus and Cathay, and the Meaning of America to the Orientalist." Laufer celebrates Euro-American imperial expansion as opening up Asia to Orientalists' "scientific research." He claimed, "[t]he entire Old World is ours, therefore, but our oriental (sic) imperialism is one of peaceful penetration, and, accentuating as it does the unity of mankind and the common origin of human civilization." Imperialism is, this implies, essentially humanistic. Knowledge of the Orient derived thereof can only but lend itself to "the unification and harmony of mankind."* And, amidst this celebration of the expansion of Euro-American colonial powers into Asia, Laufer, a proud Orientalist scholar in the United States in turn asks, "Does America hold out a similar interest to the orientalist? Have we the right to expand our activity into the western hemisphere." The answer is obviously yes, though his justifications thereof are somewhat counter-intuitive.

First, Laufer (surprisingly critically) gave what today might be described as a discourse analysis of Columbus' writings. This is a central part of the text. Laufer argues that Columbus' writings helped shape European conceptions of Indigenous America, though, reflexively, he argues that these very writings are deeply imbued with sailors' "lore" from ancient Europe and the near and far East. He opens this section stating, "it was through the medium of Asia that America was discovered." He specifies, describing ancient Greek/Hellenic and medieval European sources (such as Marinus of Tyre and Marco Polo) as shaping Columbus' geographical/socio-cultural understanding of the Orient, and, a variety of trans-Eurasian mythologies filling in the admittedly significant gaps in his understanding of Indigenous Americans. For Laufer, all of this merely extenuated the fact that Columbus himself believed that he had discovered Asia, and never thought otherwise until the end of his life (Japan, or "Cipangu", was discovered in Haiti, or, as Columbus understood it, "Cibao").**

Also important was "Oriental lore" for Columbus, according to Laufer, with the latter writing:

Not only, however, were Columbus’s expeditions and movements determined by his notions of Asiatic geography, hut, what is still more attractive to us, his mind was imbued with Oriental lore to such a degree that he projected Asiatic tales into the life of the aborigines of the New World. Columbus was a man without profound education and learning, and was endowed with a vivid and poetic imagination, which equaled (sic) his knowledge of navigation; he was somewhat credulous, deeply religious with a trend toward mysticism, yet a man of extraordinary abilities, keen intelligence, indomitable courage and energy, foresight and sagacity. Whatever fault his critics may have found with him, he remains the man who did the deed.

Columbus was, this is to say, blinded by his own predilections for "mysticism" and mythology. And, Laufer presented evidence of remarkable interplay between Euro-Asiatic sailors' "lore" in explaining the European explorer's fantastical accounts of the Indigenous peoples he encountered. Interestingly, Laufer does not end there, and notes that Columbus himself, in his diaries, admitted, "I do not know the language of the Indians, and there people neither understand me nor any other in my company, while the Indians I have on board often misunderstand." Nevertheless, despite this immense gap in communication, the explorer described the geography and the peoples of the Caribbean(/"the Indies") in considerable detail. Ancient European (/Eurasian) tales of dog-headed men filled in the gaps in local peoples' stories of invaders from foreign islands, such as the "Caniba"/"Canima". What he and his crew couldn't grasp was simply, in other words, filled in with preconceived understandings of the Orient. These "Caniba" invaders became, for Columbus, one-eyed dog cannibals. The very term Caniba, Laufer adds, was a corruption of Carib, and came to be influenced, he claimed, by the Latin cane/canis. Thus, Laufer traces the racist colonial mythology of Indigenous cannibalism to "Oriental tradition." He likewise finds in Ponce de Leon and others traces of the most ancient of "Oriental"(/Orientalist) mythology, such as Greek references to a Persian fountain of youth. This indistinction between the Orient and the Americas works both ways, with Laufer stating, "[h]owever paradoxical it may sound, I hope that the day will come when a history of the discovery and conquest of america will be written by an orientalist (sic)."

Similar to Carl Schmitt, Jean Baudrillard, and others, Laufer describes the "discovery of America" as like a "bombshell into the learned camps of Europe," which threatened to de-centre/provincialize Europe (/Christendom). The "high civilizations" of Mexico and Peru had "developed without the agency of Greeks and Romans."*** And, while these civilizational achievements of Indigenous American states could be, for some, attributed to pre-Columbian settlement of Greeks, "Hebrews," or Phoenicians, or -- more recently -- to East Asia,**** Laufer describes these -- and especially the latter -- as "pure fiction." He certainly does trace the ancestry Indigenous American peoples to Asia, writing predictably, "The Old World is the cradle of mankind, and the American Indian is an immigrant from Asia." However, he traces them as migrants from as early as 25,000 BC, and thereby these Asian "immigrants" were culturally "extremely primitive." Accordingly, while Asiatic in their roots, these peoples evolved cultures which soon became distinct, with Laufer pointing to the "highly developed stage of agriculture" which "[m]any Indian tribes" enjoyed "long before they had the misfortune of being discovered by the Spaniards."*****

However,

when all this has been said, there is no reason for assuming that America has always marched along in splendid isolation; on the contrary, we recognize more and more that in historical times, at least during the last one or two thousand years, there has been an intimate contact between the two continents and that currents and undercurrents of Asiatic thought have swept over America, especially its northern part.

Curiously focused on Canada, he finds supposed cultural affinities such as scapulimancy in Labrador and Quebec and that of Central Asia, or Algonquin water divination as "corresponding to the crystal-gazing of India and eastern Asia." Even the bear ceremony (ie. of the Ainu) is "practically alike in form and content" to the "primitive type of religion we call shamanism" in northern America (See: Hallowell, "Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere"). Other examples are shared weapons, armour, art and design between the northern parts of the Americas and ancient Egypt, Constantinople, Persia, China and "our northwest Coast Indians." This is, according to Laufer, only the tip of a deeply submerged iceberg. He argues that it is imperative that Orientalists put their energy into the study of what appears to be a wide range of (sometimes admittedly superficial) examples of cultural or religious similarities.

"The Orient may sometimes be nearer to our door than we are inclined to assume," he concluded. While stating, "[w]here there is smoke there is fire," this comparative drive effectively aims to find examples, wherever they may be found, which can make Americans Asians and Asians Americans. Europeans, interestingly, are largely left out of this picture. Despite the focus on Columbus, or ancient Greeks and Romans, "oriental lore" is transmitted to Europe from the outside and through the prism of Indigenous American.

* Even if Laufer consistently separates the Orient from Europe at all stages of history except for the very earliest.
** If Laufer is correct that Columbus and his immediate successors interpreted the Americas through "oriental lore," this might beg the question as to whether he did so thinking he was in Asia.
*** Europeans certainly weren't thinking in terms of "high civilization" in 1492. Others, such as those alluded to, who have described the "problem" which arose following Europe's "discovery of America" focus on the great discomfort caused by encountering people who were totally unaware of Christianity/Abrahamic monotheism.
**** Thereby stripping Indigenous peoples of the Americas of any "civilization" outside of settlement of/intercourse with Eurasians.
***** Interestingly, while certainly an almost giddy colonialist, his descriptions of Indigenous peoples in this piece were consistently positive. Following American wars with Spain and Mexico (and occupations of Cuba and Nicaragua) over the past century at the time of Laufer's address, it's perhaps not surprising that be elevating Indigenous peoples of the Americas he would take a negative stance towards Spanish colonialism, however. Munro Doctrine American legitimacy as a pan-American hegemon rested on Spanish illegitimacy.

New Start, Next Steps

I've just arrived in Japan and am currently figuring out my next steps. I've spent the last three days basically sitting on my hands. The last time I was here, in 2016-2017, it took me half the summer to figure out what I wanted to do. It worked out (hence my being here, I suppose), but it took time. I don't think it's unhealthy to sit and stew when it comes to creative work, which research -- after all -- is. But, being a salaried employee instead of scraping by on a small stipend gives one a sense of responsibility. If I'm not actively designing or conducting research, or, preparing my current research for publication, I should be doing something towards my goal, which is an academic career, and, for that matter, to fulfill the mandate set by the university. The university here expects me to conduct new research and actively publish and present it. While I, in all honesty, can't wait to get back into the archives, it's imperative that I also lay out a plan to publish my existing research.

1. I would like to produce one more journal article from my dissertation research. It's probable but unclear if SCL will publish my current work (now under revision). Another article based on one of my chapters would be preferable, at this point, to an article based on new, original research. The chapter on oyatoi gaikokujin in Hokkaido as co-imperialists has potential to be an important contribution (relatively speaking) to larger debates on Japan-US relations, the origins of Japanese imperialism, and America itself as an imperialist power. It also raises questions about the nature of colonialism and how it intersects -- and sometimes doesn't -- with national sovereignty. Hokkaido could, and indeed was, colonized concurrently by Japan and the United States, though the latter did so on behalf of Japan. It sounds entirely counter-intuitive, but American newspapers in the 1870s framed it as such.
2. However, my research on the Tondenhei is also significant in that it simply hasn't been done before. There simply is a dearth of research which analyzes the Tondenhei -- even uncritically -- and my work now only fills in a major gap in our understanding but helps us reconsider the colonial structures of Hokkaido.
3. In all of this, it also becomes clear to me how I should revise my dissertation. While I'm happy with most of the individual chapters, some of them read like an exposé of previously unknown knowledge rather than a strong, clear supporting argument towards my larger argument. For that, too, I need to completely revise my introduction, and reframe my work more soundly within current academic debates regarding the colonization of Hokkaido. 
4. I need to get AAS finalized, and consider a proposal for AAS in Asia. I would like to maybe fill my resume with some other conferences as well. How would I ago about presenting in Japan? What are my options, here? Is it worthwhile to try to go overseas well (keeping in mind that my research budget could go fast on plane tickets).

And now, in basically random order, some scattered ideas for conferences/papers/even future blog posts:

1. Orientalism and settler colonialism
2. Imperial narcosis
3. The case for Hokkaido as a colony/"Kaitaku" discourse as colonialism
4. The relationship between history and colonialism/the passage of history and capital accumulation
5. Ainu protection and racial hygiene
6. The disavowal of colonialism in Hokkaido
7. The origins of Japanese bone theft/current debates regarding the returns of Ainu bones
8. Conceptualizing trans-colonialism