Global Capitalism, Migrations, and the Creation of the "Asia"/"Pacific World": 1850-1970

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Offering a long chronological perspective—from the 1850s to the 1950s—this panel examines how capitalist transformations reordered the social and political space of Asia and the Pacific. Informed by the theories of critical geographers, the papers on this panel treat territories not as fixed containers of historical agency—or sites where history “takes place”—but as dynamic products of political action. The historical interpretations this panel puts forth treat the “globalization” of capitalism not as a phenomena onto itself, or a homogenous process absent of identifiable historical agents, but instead a transnational social, political, and economic project that was constantly challenged, refined, and reinvented by a multitude of historical actors.

Furthermore, in historicizing the spatial politics of capitalism in Asia and the Pacific, each presenter demonstrates the centrality of empire and imperial social formations in the workings of capitalism. As militaries, merchants, and laborers engaged in the system of capitalism they had to grapple with existing race, class, and imperial structures. In other words, while policymakers and business interests on both sides of the Pacific sought to integrate people and places in the region into the world of global trade and imagined the region as one endowed with plentiful resources and abundant labor, they were forced to continually negotiate a spatial terrain engrained with preexisting forms of social relations—ranging from the agrarian economy of colonial Korea to segregated boarding houses of New York City’s seaports.

Ultimately, this panel will contribute to ongoing conversations among historians, geographers, and scholars interested in capitalist expansion in Asia by examining how historical actors in different historical moments have reshaped space on multiple scales.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Colleen Woods, University of Maryland

Chair

• Colleen Woods, University of Maryland

Individual Presentations

• The Chinese Seamen of New York: Building Networks of Community under Empire, 1842-1882 - Heather Ruth Lee, NYU Shanghai

• Answering Rural Insurgency: The Southern Philippines as a Terrain for Postcolonial Promise - Karen Miller, Laguardia Community College

• Idaho to Apra: Filipino Migrant Labor and the U.S. Military’s Sea of Bases - Colleen Woods, University of Maryland

• From Supply-Lines to Supply-Chains: The U.S. Military and the Origins of South Korea’s Export Boom - Patrick Chung, Brown University

Discussant

• Moon-Ho Jung, University of Washington