Negotiating Imperialism: Murakami Naojiro's Archival Diplomacy

In this study of Japan's imperial historiography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Birgit Tremml-Werner examines the use of history to promote expansion in the Asia-Pacific region. Focussing on historian-diplomat Murakami Naojirō, she highlights the impact of the archive and translation in knowledge creation. Combining empirical examples including early modern diplomatic missions to Europe, indigenous Taiwanese history, colonial education and post-war cultural diplomacy, this work emphasizes how the past is represented in the intertwined environments of history and memory. She argues that the Japanese case also reveals wider questions around the myth-making of nation states, and the extent to which 'historiographical violence' has silenced the voices of actors, including Indigenous peoples and women, within the archival record. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction; 2. Translator historian and scholar diplomat: Murakami's life of global knowledge; 3. Formal diplomatic relations and the untranslatability of Gaikō; 4. Entangled biographies and the imperialist creation of historical knowledge; 5. Nan'yō shi: How to position Japan in Southeast Asian history; 6. From Takasago's past to Taiwan's history: Murakami between silencing and exaggerating; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Birgit Tremml-Werner is Senior Lecturer in global history at Stockholm University.

Review :
'Layering analyses of early modern history, modern historiography, and contemporary commemoration, this subtle and learned study of a Japanese historian-diplomat reveals how the writing of diplomatic history has not merely recorded and recounted but collaborated with practices of translation and with diplomacy itself in constructing the discursive space of foreign relations.' Jordan Sand, Georgetown University 'Negotiating Imperialism is a tour-de-force look at New Imperialist use of History as violent technology of empire building. Polyglot Tremml-Werner skilfully disentangles and dissects strands of choices leading to archival creations that sidelined Indigenous, colonial, and female voices, and encourages us to strive for an inclusive and equitable global History.' Lisa Yoshikawa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges