Japan's ocean borderlands : nature and sovereignty / Paul Kreitman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kreitman, Paul, 1983- author.

Series:

Cambridge oceanic histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japan--Environmental conditions.

Japan.

Nature conservation--Political aspects--Japan.

Nature conservation.

Birds--Japan.

Birds.

Island ecology--Japan.

Island ecology.

Islands--Japan--History.

Islands.

Borderlands--Japan--History.

Borderlands.

Japan--Colonies--Oceania.

Sovereignty.

Imperialism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 272 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Desert islands are the focus of intense geopolitical tensions in East Asia today, but they are also sites of nature conservation. In this global environmental history, Paul Kreitman shows how the politics of conservation have entangled with the politics of sovereignty since the emergence of the modern Japanese state in the mid-nineteenth century. Using case studies ranging from Hawai'i to the Bonin Islands to the Senkaku (Ch: Diaoyu) Isles to the South China Sea, he explores how bird islands on the distant margins of the Japanese archipelago and beyond transformed from sites of resource extraction to outposts of empire and from wartime battlegrounds to nature reserves. This study examines how interactions between birds, bird products, bureaucrats, speculators, sailors, soldiers, scientists and conservationists shaped ongoing claims to sovereignty over oceanic spaces. It considers what the history of desert islands shows us about imperial and post-imperial power, the web of political, economic and ecological connections between islands and oceans, and about the relationship between sovereignty, territory and environment in the modern world.

Contents:

Bonins of contention : extraterritorial empire and borderland citizenship in the nineteenth-century Pacific

The race to Marcus Island : commodities and colonisation in the north Pacific, 1885-1902

Bird and sovereignty conservation in the northwest Hawaiian Islands, 1898-1911

Sand dunes and soldiers : from phosphate mining to national defence, 1902-1939

Disaster : the abandonment of Japan's remote islands, 1902-1945

Resurrecting the Torishima Albatross : wild birds and sovereignty in post-war Japan

The nature of the Senkaku Islands : biodiversity conservation in Okinawa, 1945-2013

Epilogue : islands and oceans.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 12 Jul 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781108779241 (ebook)