Lezing '(De)colonizing transimperial waters? Horizontal and vertical expansion in the Pacific '

This talk explores the entangled histories of horizontal and vertical expansion in the Pacific, focusing on the 20th Century.  It argues that a transimperial approach helps to understand how the region's resource extraction, colonial expansion, and sovereignty disputes are linked.

The Pacific is seen as a transimperial “hotspot” where various transimperial actors  – ranging from colonial settlers, labor migrants, or colonial experts to entrepreneurs and companies – participated in an intensifying scramble for both resources and territoriality. Transimperial capitalism, so the thesis, was not only structuring resource extraction in the first half of the 20th Century but also influenced extraction modes during the era of decolonization and the Cold War.

Nadin Heé is professor of Modern Japanese History in Global Perspective at Leipzig University. Previously, she was chair for Global History at Osaka University and Junior Professor for Global History of Knowledge at Free University Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Her work can be situated at the intersection of Empire Studies, History of Knowledge, and Environmental History. She is currently writing a book on why tuna became a global commons. An edited volume “Oceanic Japan” (Hawaii UP) and a co-authored book “What is transimperial History?” (Columbia UP) are forthcoming.