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

Hisamatsu Yoshinori Clip

Stepping off the boat into Hokkaido for first time in 1892, Hisamatsu Yoshinori lamented the inattention the Japanese government paid to its northern colony. Seeing the island’s vast resources squandered and fields and valleys left unpeopled, Hisamatsu argued that Hokkaido needed a grand vision of development in opening up its mining and forestry industries, in building infrastructure, and in opening ports. In this, Hokkaido-based officials would need to be handed the reins, like the Kaitakushi a decade before. Standing in the way of this ‘progress’ were Tokyo-based officials dispatched to the north, clueless to the conditions of the colony like “lone boats on a vast ocean”. Investment in Hokkaido would bring back immense revenue to the national government. And, paramount to the development of the island would be the railroads which would not only integrate Hokkaido, but connect the island to the mainland, like a spinal cord running the length of the empire.

Pointing to the Russian Empire’s development of eastern Siberia, with railroads and telegraph wires crisscrossing Eurasia, this both provided a model for Japan, but also, he stressed, positioned Hokkaido between Japan and Russia, connecting Tokyo to the capitals of Europe. Telegraph cables then being laid out across the Bering Strait would likewise, through Hokkaido, connect Tokyo to the great metropolises of America through Vancouver. Through Hokkaido, the Japanese Empire was connected to both Europe and America. And with entrepots like Otaru and Hakodate, the island’s cities grew rich through international trade. All of this would help Japan expand its influence – both economic and political – across Asia.

Should the Japanese government fail to do this, Hisamatsu suggested, Hokkaido would be better off succeeding from Japan and forming an independent nation. There – able to support a population of five or six million people – Japanese settlers from the mainland and foreign settlers from overseas would live and work side-by-side, maximizing the economic potential of the island.

Snippet: Crusoean Violence

In the 15th chapter of Daniel Defoe's classic 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe, titled "Friday's Education", the titular character describes the process by which – lacking a mutually understood verbal language – he was able to successfully communicate to the native character Friday that he was to be Crusoe's slave by threatening to murder him:

By-and-by I saw a great fowl, like a hawk, sitting upon a tree within shot; so, to let Friday understand a little what I would do, I called him to me again, pointed at the fowl, which was indeed a parrot, though I thought it had been a hawk; I say, pointing to the parrot, and to my gun, and to the ground under the parrot, to let him see I would make it fall, I made him understand that I would shoot and kill that bird; accordingly, I fired, and bade him look, and immediately he saw the parrot fall. He stood like one frightened again, notwithstanding all I had said to him; and I found he was the more amazed, because he did not see me put anything into the gun, but thought that there must be some wonderful fund of death and destruction in that thing, able to kill man, beast, bird, or anything near or far off; and the astonishment this created in him was such as could not wear off for a long time; and I believe, if I would have let him, he would have worshiped me and my gun.

This is but one of several instances where Crusoe compels Friday to watch him kill a bird or an animal in order to establish Friday as Crusoe's slave, and that he himself is the island’s sovereign. While Friday responds by kneeling down before Crusoe, it was not to worship him or his gun, as Crusoe so arrogantly assumes at first, but simply to "pray me not to kill him."

Such repeated acts of killing in the novel comes to take on an air of pageantry. And indeed, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Crusoean violence was the chosen medium in which international law, capitalist accumulation, as well as explicitly universalist European discourses of civilization and progressivism became diffuse throughout the world, just as they had on Crusoe's tiny island. James Hevia, writing about British imperialism in Qing China, refers to this mode of violent persuasion "imperial pedagogy", observing that physical and epistemic violence, the invasion of both soldiers and capital, and other "means of coercion and enticement" were inseparable in their role of, as Hevia argues in explicitly Deluzean terms, deterritorializing and reterritorializing the Qing Empire. The Chinese were to learn "how to function properly in a world dominated militarily and economically by European-based empires." [1]

Be it through the unsubtleties of gunboat diplomacy or naked threats of mass murder, it is through acts of violence that colonial subjects are produced. Demonstrations of violence, rich with semiotic value, are thus interpellative. We might recall Louis Althusser's famous example of a police officer hailing a person on the street, shouting, "Hey, you there!" Turning to look back, and thereby recognizing the authority of the police officer, the person becomes a subject. (cite) While the foundational act of violence may be brief, in the space of colonies or other zones under the hegemony of a colonizer, targets of such threats are made to feel what the historian Tomiyama Ichirō has termed a "premonition of violence" (bōryoku no yokan). Interpellated subjects become silently compelled to assume their place in colonial hierarchies through the unspoken understanding that not to do so would put them in grave danger. In this, even as treaty and law replace the spectacle of violence, peaceably normalizing the asymmetrical relationship, violating the terms of such peace can result in an immediate return to violence. 

The mutually constituting relationship between violence and the law (often thought to be the antithesis of violence) was recognized by Walter Benjamin. Benjamin observed the "primordial and paradigmatic" nature of violence in the law, with all juridical systems having been established by force and only "preserved" thereafter by the ever-present threat of violence against those who violate the rule of law. Moreover, as Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, and more recently, Giorgio Agamben have contended, the sovereign who produces the law exists outside of normal legal parameters and maintains a monopoly on the use of violence.  [2] Paradoxically, that sovereign thereby shares a liminal space with those categorically rendered the exception to the rule of law, such as pirates or legally colonizable peoples rendered 'natives'/'barbarians'/ 'savages' (both of whom Robinson Crusoe violently asserts his sovereign authority over on his island). It follows then that just as the law reflects the will of the sovereign, the rule of the sovereign is established and maintained in perpetuity through the violent enforcement of their will.

--

[1] Such violence simultaneously plays a suturing role, in that drawing in states across Africa and Asia into explicitly Eurocentric -- and yet purportedly universal -- systems of order such as international law, discourses of civilization, etc., those very systems become universalized.

[2] As Anthony Anghie has shown, this includes the ability to declare wage war. According to Anghie, as the Spanish jurist Francisco de Vitoria believed that "the power to wage war is the prerogative of sovereigns", Indigenous peoples of the Americas ("Indians"), who he argued categorically lacked sovereignty, likewise lacked the legal ability to wage war or, for that matter, resist colonization by force of arms. 

Settler colonial genocide

Still in the thick of writing, and back briefly to finish up some research. Some thoughts though: my last chapter discussed the role of Capron, Clark, Lyman, etc., in the colonization of Hokkaido. While unfinished/unpolished, the chapter fundamentally readers 'settlerness' or the ability to truly pioneer (rather than occupy) as a fundamentally white, Western possession which was bestowed upon Japan by these white American advisers. For example, Lyman's metaphor of Japan as 'sleeping beauty' and America, the handsome prince, or Capron's delight in breaking what he termed the 'virgin soil' around Tokyo.

Capron and Clark in particular served as conduits of American indigenous policy, and advised the Japanese government on the Homestead Act and the nationalization of the soil and any flora or fauna which resides upon it. Policy papers prepared at Kuroda Kiyotaka's request formed the cornerstone of policies which dispossessed the Ainu of their land and restricted them from hunting and fishing. They were forbidden from so much as cutting trees on their own land.

These laws, based on European and American equivalents, lead to famines in the 1880s. Somewhat troublingly, knowledge of these famines comes in the form of petitions and warnings to the Hokkaido and national governments, including Ainu community leaders who travelled to Tokyo. Policymakers were warned of Ainu so desperate for food that they waded into half-frozen marshes to collect molluscs or reduced to eating leather. Meanwhile, statistics show that Ainu populations were in a free fall.

I've found that the government response to this catastrophe was, in some cases, quite literally replying to members of the Ainu community who petitioned them by saying that the Ainu were simply losing the survival of the fittest, followed by a range of excuses, half-truths, and dismissals/self-apologetics. While it's a bit of a stretch, one could imagine that some bureaucrats and policy planners in the 1870s may have been unprepared for the human consequences that nationalization policies ostensibly designed to 'protect' Hokkaido's fish, its forests, and so on, would have on the Ainu. However, the subsequent state-level dismissal of warnings that large numbers of Ainu who were on the verge of starving to death as their productive land was stolen by settlers speaks to something else altogether. At some point, we have to question to what degree the famines in Ainu communities in the 1880s and 1890s were not simply conscious neglect, but the desired outcome of resource nationalization policies.

Moreover, the logic that it is the march of civilization which is naturally leading to the decline of Ainu populations and their eventually extinction as a race, besides naturalizing this larger colonial process, also renders Ainu biological life as antithetical to the very essence of civilization. Academic knowledges, spread from Europe and America to Japan from the 1860s to the 1890s, central to the 文明開化 movement of rendering Japan Westernesque and thereby 'civilized' made it its mission to observe the Ainu under the scientific gaze of the academy, and Ainu bones became the most authentic way to measure (sometimes quite literally) the worth of the Ainu. However, whether through mixed marriages, adoption, or rape, many Ainu communities were increasingly multi-racial, with many people who were raised Ainu having Japanese, or in the case of Karafuto Ainu, Russian roots. The skulls of long-dead Ainu were hunted by anthropologists, seen as a purer source of data by which the Ainu could be understood as a race than living Ainu. This was, moreover, a task seen as imperative given the imminent extinction of the Ainu as Hokkaido was settled/'civilized'. These skulls became increasingly valuable on the open market, sold to universities in Japan and overseas, especially as 'supplies' began to run out. Ainu life was rendered utterly useless, with communities left to starve to death, while the corpses of Ainu became valuable commodities.

Chapter design: October 2017

At this point, I have a nearly complete draft of my Tondenhei chapter and a working draft of my Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act chapter.

While I want to work on both of these in my 'off-time' (especially in the sense that putting chapters down for a while now and again is a good thing for the creative process), I need to better figure out what kind of work I want to do next.

I'm going to sketch out some basic ideas for chapters based on the kind of data I have.

Introduction:
A basic overview of the colonization of Hokkaido, the origins of Japanese colonialism, esp. Saga-han, Nabeshima Naomasa, Soejima Taneomi, Ōkuma Shigenobu, etc. Very particular vision of colonialism coming out of the Koga school. In addition, I want to better round out Ainu critiques of Japanese settler colonialism and better articulate my own critique of settler colonialism. More widely, I want to look at Indigenous critiques of terra nullius (especially vis-a-vis 'rape culture' where land and the link between the colonization of Indigenous land and bodies).

"Aino Indians":
Exogenous Others: Details on how the Ainu were enveloped into the transcolonial imagination as either lost Caucasians or "Aino Indians", early encounters such as ethnographers as well as people like Ranald MacDonald, the place of the Ainu between Japan and its would-be colonizers, etc. Talk about the sale of Ainu bones, especially in the transnational context and how they were eventually 'sold out'. Ezo Kyowakoku too! But also, how Hokkaido was de-territorialzed and re-territorialized by Japanese colonial officials and Oyatoi Gaikokujin (esp. Capron and Clark) practically hand in hand as an "Eastern America". How American farming was overwhelmingly preferred and why, and how American food culture was adopted and why. Matsumoto Juro and Kuroda Kiyotaka sitting down and discussing their differences over beef and beer. Also, Qing subjects registered into koseki, plans for white American colonization of Hokkaido taken seriously. Settler colonialism as transnational and multiracial in the early Meiji period. Robinson Crusoe and the opening of Japan, Oyabe Zenichiro.

The Northern Gate: 
Ainu long used as human capital in Japanese territorial claims vis-a-vis Russia. This seems to have influenced the Japanese decision to essentially push the Ainu in Sakhalin to move to the mainland. But the context is also a choice between war with Russia and a peaceful settlement -- even if not exactly in Japan's favour. But we have to look at the colonization of Karafuto in context: it wasn't going well. And, more, the Kuriles better represented (as far as Enomoto is concerned) a chance to enter the north pacific fur trade and the ice trade markets using Russian American models. Strange given the Aleutians, like the Ainu in southern Karafuto, were ethnically cleansed from the north Kuriles. But Russian Aleutian policy became the basic blueprint of how to colonize the Kuriles, even if the Ainu were forcibly moved. This movement of Ainu was in violation of the Treaty of St. Petersburg, but it seems the Russians did the same thing. Why? So, what of those Sakhalin Ainu, then? Discuss their forcible movement from Soya to Tsuishikari and the conflict between Matsumoto Juro and Kuroda Kiyotaka. Especially relevant are Matsumoto's view of the Ainu as being loyal citizens and Kuroda's view that the Ainu are savages. Talk about the epidemics that devastated the Ainu in Tsuishikari.

Capitalism as Civilization:
This early chapter will discuss the early stages of capitalist developmentalism in Hokkaido and the emergence of particular discourses of liberal governmentality and land management policies based on this notion. This splits the chapter in two, where the Ainu are categorically rendered rightless and without legal personhood when Hokkaido is claimed as terra nullius. Terra nullus will be analyzed as a performative act, and Japan's early 1870s colonial aggression vis-a-vis Korea and Taiwan will be analyzed accordingly. Within this context, Ainu legal personality is nulified-- so talk about the status of Indigenous people and international law, and maybe move a Hobbesian or Lockean analysis of land rights here. Soon after the annexation of Hokkaido, the Ainu are inserted into koseki. Discuss the koseki, what they're for -- especially as a tool of (differential) inclusion -- and discuss the process of registering the Ainu. But all the same, we need to get back to developmentalism. As the Ainu are included, they are precarized wth land rights nullified and Hokkaido developed as an American-esque settler colony. The food culture of Hokkaido -- not in what was consumed as much as what was grown -- was, yes, in part for export: especially to China and Russia, but it also was self-consciously Western/American. Why? This includes limiting Ainu access to food. Discuss Ainu famines which were a result of this process of capitalist developmentalism and exclusion of the Ainu. I should maybe ruminate about whether this was done intentionally.

Source analysis: John Batchelor: The Ainu of Japan

Reflecting early Kaitakushi claims of Meiji Japanese Ainu policy as a corrective to the excesses and misdirection of the Tokugawa-backed Matsumae domain, Batchelor for his part divides the blame between pre-Meiji Japanese policies towards the Ainu, careful not to bring his critique into the present. Looking millennia into the past, Batchelor points to "wars of extermination" waged against the Ainu by the mythological Emperor Jinmu in the 7th century BC and the 8th century Shogun "Saka no ue no Tamura Naru" (likely referring to Saka-no-Ue-no-Tamuramaro) as partially responsible for the decline in the Ainu population in the year 1892, when The Ainu of Japan was first published. (pg. 284) Jumping forward centuries, Batchelor returns to the question of alcohol consumption, pointing to Matsumae officials as having "encouraged" alcohol amongst the Ainu, saying this has "undermined the Ainu constitutions, sapped their strength, and taken nearly all that is manly from their souls". (pg. 285) With their masculine vitality drained, the Ainu are now merely facing the natural consequences. However, even while pointing to settler colonial Hokkaido to argue that the Japanese government "does not recognise any land as belonging to the Ainu", Batchelor maintains a pretense of ignorance of the material effects of Japanese settler colonization on the Ainu. (pg. 287) He can only, blaming Ainu clothing and shelter, point to Ainu dying "due to exposure", and discrediting Ainu medicine to say that the sick are merely left to die. (pg. 285) And quite literally self-destructive, Batchelor blames "[p]etty wars and quarrels" amongst the Ainu as causing a decline in the Ainu population, (pg. 286) with men "murdered during sleep" and women and children "carried off as slaves to work in the gardens". (pg. 288) This is particularly true, according to Batchelor, amongst "[t]he Ainu of the Tokapchi [Jpn: Tokachi] district" as "particularly addicted to this kind of warfare" (pg. 288). Warfare and spirits, then, become the two self-destructive additive substances.  Far worse, however, these same warlike Ainu are, according to Batchelor, are known as "eaters of their own kind". For Batchelor, the final nail in the coffin is Ainu women being willingly taken as "wife or concubines of the more civilised Japanese" (pg. 289), leaving those few left in Ainu villages to engage in incestuous relationships with close cousins: marriages "not likely to increase the longevity or physical and mental strength of a people, or the diuturnity of a race or nation" (pg. 290). The Ainu, then are, for Batchelor, to blame for their own fate, rather than the actions of their colonizers.

Notes: Miscellaneous topics related to the Tondenhei (2)

In the long pause since the last entry, I've moved back to Canada and took about three weeks off of research. While there are still plenty of online resources available, and plenty of books available in Canada containing primary and secondary resources, I'm cut off from archives in Japan and easy book-buying. This creates a situation where my dissertation is, at least for the time being, limited to what I have and I may find the resources I've collected insufficient for the type of writing I eventually want to produce.

For now, though, I've jumped into reading on the Tondenhei, which will make up for a full chapter of my dissertation, as well as provide critical details on daily life in early colonial Hokkaido. This comes largely from interviews conducted in the early to mid 20th century of Tondenhei veterans and their family members.

While most Tondenhei resources available in public archives in Japan relate to the troops themselves, and a lot of it is quite bureaucratic at that, I've been much more focused on gender and family structure as it relates to Tondenhei villages. In particular, the militarized nature of the villages, which required daily inspections and constant military drills was inseparable from domestic life in which soldiers were by law the heads of the household. Their wives and children were not Tondenhei themselves, but were to an uncertain degree integrated into the system. They were inspected in the mornings along with their husbands. If the head of the household dies, the eldest son -- if of age -- would by law be forced to take over as a Tondenhei soldier. Moreover, due to the constant drilling, women and children were largely the breadwinners, farming in place of their husbands.

It was a life of poverty. There is a great deal of evidence that, like 'protection' policy for the Ainu, there was poor planning on part of the state and both housing and arable farmland were insufficient. People escaped poverty by, often, leaving Tondenhei villages as day labourers (and most certainly leaving for good in many cases after their term of service ended). Foodstuffs consisted of the most basic of staples: flax or, eventually, potatoes, which many people reported as insufficient after the three year period of food aid expired. The houses were frequently drafty, which sent snow in through the roofs during winter storms, though not well ventilated enough to let smoke from hearths escape, leaving many people in smoky, frigid houses. At least some of these houses were built by prison labour. While this is outside my scope of knowledge at the moment, it seems likely that the Tondenhei system was supported by prison labour clearing roads, building houses, helping transport the military settlers, etc. Similarly, while not formalized, accounts by family members (though not the men themselves) frequently reference Ainu. Either to suggest that they were forced off the land which the Tondenhei settled early enough that Ainu religious paraphernalia were still scattered about, or in direct reference to everyday interactions with resident Ainu such as Ainu teaching settlers how to make proper clothing for the winter (as settlers were not provided with any). Others reported forming friendships with local Ainu. And, moreover, it seems quite likely that later Ainu 'protection' policy was based on Tondenhei policy, with the latter providing a tentative model to transform the former into would-be settlers on their own colonized land.

Another topic which comes up frequently, perhaps most frequently, in these accounts is dialect. It wasn't until the late 19th century that something resembling a national language even started to form, largely through state efforts to erase local dialects in favour of a universal Japanese language. As scholars have noted, it was in large part through classrooms and military barracks that this happened. But through the Tondenhei, we see this process play out. Second and third waves of Tondenhei were recruited from across the country and represented dozens of local dialects which were in some cases not mutually distinguishable. While some recalled this fondly, thinking of funny stories about miscommunications, this left others despondent. It seems that women were particularly effected by this. As men were often training together, they would quickly be forced to learn how to communicate with one another. One would imagine school-aged children would be no different. Women and other adult dependents, however, would be farming individuated plots and would have fewer chances to interact with each other. Some Tondenhei men reported that their wives were extremely lonely. Some women themselves expressed great relief at finding some people in their villages that they could understand, with some referring to the particularly troublesome Tohoku dialects in particular, saying things along the lines of "They weren't from Tohoku so I could understand them." Of Tohoku Tondenhei in particular, one person suggested that they were mixed in with Tondenhei from other regions specifically because they were experienced with colder northern climates and, in particular, agriculture in the upper extremes of the temperate climate of Japan and could act as teachers for the others. This difficult interaction seems to have been a major feature of communal life in Tondenhei villages.

Another theme that is repeated again and again in men's testimony are reasons for enlisting. Perhaps half reported believing nationalist propaganda about the 'northern gate', while others escaped poverty or, in some cases, personal tragedies. The former in particular seem to have been almost instantly dispossessed of their sense of patriotic duty as they saw the actual conditions that they would live in. They frequently describe carrying children or the elderly out of the port town of Otaru and into narrower and rougher paths into the bush until they find small clearings, sometimes dark during the brightest time of day due to the thick forests surrounding them. It seems to have been almost universal for family members to break down in tears upon arrival. Many of these family members were forced against their wills to go, sometimes without having been informed until the last minute. They would often leave behind loved ones. Some Tondenhei family members describe a particular member of their group as having pushed the others into enlisting and becoming something of family pariahs upon arrival due to the sense of betrayal for putting the others into such conditions. Particularly the second and third wave Tondenhei were recruited from Kyushu or southern Honshu who would neither be prepared for the radically different climate and would have no realistic notions of seeing friends or loved ones from their home regions again.

Finally, there is a clear division of class within the Tondenhei. Early waves were divided into officers (from Satsuma) and general staff (from Tohoku). Later waves gave priority for advancement to graduates of Sapporo Agricultural College. Importantly, officers were given more land to farm, which would give them a better chance of gaining self-sufficiency or even making a profit. They would gain more land if they were able to use up their allotted land: a privilege not given to regular soldiers.

More later.

Notes: Miscellaneous topics related to the Tondenhei

I'm currently in the early phases of research for a chapter on the Tondenhei. It's quickly becoming clear that it will be more difficult than I'd thought simply because of the lack of available sources. This is simply because my main focus is not the typical romantic settler narrative repeated ad nauseam, nor am I interested in the military history of the Tondenhei soldiers. I'm interested, rather, in the domestic life of Tondenhei (ie. the family structures which were integrated into the military) and the place of the Tondenhei in developing discourses of nationalism and citizenship. In both cases, subjectivity becomes a key theme, as do gender roles (soldiering as 'masculine', 'patriotic', etc.).

Why samurai?

From its establishment in 1874 to 1890, the Tondenhei exclusively recruited samurai/ex-samurai, primarily from the five loyalist prefectures of northern Honshu. What's the reason for recruiting only samurai at first, and then heavily favouring them?

• They were trained soldiers with, especially directly after the Meiji Restoration, combat experience.
• Simple classism: prejudice against commoners, commoners were not trusted as soliders.
• They were entrusted with national defence, and the right to kill was largely the exclusive domain of the samurai, and only slowly was expanded with the draft.
• Moving Aizu, etc., samurai to Hokkaido reduced the samurai population in Tohoku.
• It rehabilitated these Tokugawa loyalists as patriots.

Gender:

The Tondenhei also played a role in redefining family structures in the samurai class, by promoting gender roles more typical of nuclear families. Documents refer to the Tondenhei as 'manly' in defending his nation, while women would be effectively working for the Tondenhei as the subordinates. There's almost nothing, in fact, on Tondenhei women, and it's not clear how they were enveloped by this system except as the dutiful wives of soldiers. It would be fascinating to learn more, but there doesn't seem to be much out there. Male children, however, were indirectly subject to the Tondenhei system in that, by law, if their fathers die while still in the 20 year period of service, 'suitable' male children are to take over in their father's place. While totally antithetical to the spirit of civilian militaries, it's consistent with the samurai class as it operated in the Tokugawa period. But here too, there's a dearth of detailed information, but this could be a fascinating topic.

Class:

The Tondenhei represented a very 'safe' option for anyone who would want to immigrate to Hokkaido. They would have two years of generous material support, including a home and land, and would be placed into a high social position in settler society. For poor samurai, this would represent a second chance. In the 1890s and until the system as abolished with the coming of universal conscription in 1905, this would also be a significant step up in the world for many commoners. Interestingly, though, a short history of Tondenhei of local lineage published online by Aichi Prefecture mentions that high ranking samurai applied, and groups of retainers for the same lord applied together as a group. Here too, getting to the heart of this sort of dynamic would be interesting.

The same Aichi Prefecture essay discusses, un-self-consciously reflecting settler narratives, a literal fight against nature as the "conquest of the soul" for young, brave Tondenhei pioneers. Getting into this sort of discourse from the period would be interesting, especially as it relates larger settler myths.

Tondenhei and Ainu:

One frustrating thing is it's still entirely unclear how the Tondenhei were historically related to the Ainu, other than simply as settling land stolen from the latter. The only time I've seen these two groups overlap in scholarship is Shinya Gyō's description of the Tondenhei as driving Ainu off their land at gunpoint. While they certainly occupied Ainu land, and as Michele Mason pointed out, while they were tantamount to a military occupation of colonized Ainu land, I've not seen any evidence besides Shinya's unsourced claim that the Tokdenhei had anything to do with the Ainu at all. It seems to have been the prefectural police who were more directly connected to issues of oppression and relocation of the Ainu. But, the fact that the Ainu and Tondenhei are otherwise never talked about together is itself a bit suspicious.

References to look into:

明治18年屯田 兵条例
明治20年屯田 兵徴募手続き
明治26年11月 29日官報 (new orders for prefectures regarding Tondenhei recruitment)
明治41年３月 移住者成績調査 (from the Hokkaido 道庁)
屯田兵顧録

Comment: "homo homini lupus" and the "survival of the fittest"

Presenting the Ainu as naturally fading before the shining light of Japanese civilization, like a fog burning off the forest in the morning sun, Japanese protectionists discourses evoke John Gast’s famous 1872 painting “American Progress” showing white male settlers, wagons, and trains led by an armed frontiersman extending westward across the prairies.

This procession is led by a gigantic Goddess of Liberty, herself holding a string of telegraph wires in one hand and a tome entitled “School Book” in the other. The light emanating from the east sends half-naked, feathered Indians run fleeing, their heads turned back to watch in horror, together with buffalo, bears, and foxes. These beasts alongside the Native Americans at once serve to animalize their human companions while also celebrating the frontier practice, still quite common in the 1870s, of murdering any Indigenous people or native fauna alike which might interfere with white settlement. 

This image and what it is meant to represent – the marriage of civilization and enterprise, the corrosive effect this naturally has on inert, childlike primitives, and the triumph of the white race – would be familiar to anyone in the United States in the late 19^th century. 

These discourses migrated across the Pacific with white settlers replaced by the Japanese and Native Americans replaced by the Ainu. A powerfully normalizing discourse rooted in the time of the earliest Spanish colonialism of the ‘New World’, it is one that also fits comfortably with what in the late 19^th century was cutting edge Darwinist evolutionary theory. Darwin himself, writing from the H.M.S. Beagle as it circumnavigated the globe, stopping at European colonies in Africa, South America, Australia, and India, reflected the dominant discourses of the European colonial world in his work, with mass slaughter and inhumane oppression justified by a view of humanity as, by its very nature, wolf-like, cruel, and fiercely competitive. 

Those European colonizers understood as ‘natives’, ‘primitives’, ‘savages’, or ‘aborigines’, by definition, lacked the capacity for sovereignty, both in terms of territorial sovereignty as nations as well as personal sovereignty as sovereign subjects. Simply put, non-Europeans were imagined as having no right to defend themselves. It was an easy step from there to imagine Indigenous peoples as deserving, if not inviting, this violence, due to their purported inferiority.