Crossing Empire's Edge: Foreign Ministry Police and Japanese Expansionism in Northeast Asia (The World of East Asia)

For more than half a century, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Gaimusho) possessed an independent police force that operated within the space of Japan’s informal empire on the Asian continent. Charged with "protecting and controlling" local Japanese communities first in Korea and later in China, these consular police played a critical role in facilitating Japanese imperial expansion during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Remarkably, however, this police force remains largely unknown. __Crossing Empire’s Edge__ is the first book in English to reveal its complex history. Based on extensive analysis of both archival and recently published Japanese sources, Erik Esselstrom describes how the Gaimusho police became deeply involved in the surveillance and suppression of the Korean independence movement in exile throughout Chinese treaty ports and the Manchurian frontier during the 1920s and 1930s. It had in fact evolved over the years from a relatively benign public security organization into a full-fledged political intelligence apparatus devoted to apprehending purveyors of "dangerous thought" throughout the empire. Furthermore, the history of consular police operations indicates that ideological crime was a borderless security problem; Gaimusho police worked closely with colonial and metropolitan Japanese police forces to target Chinese, Korean, and Japanese suspects alike from Shanghai to Seoul to Tokyo. Esselstrom thus offers a nuanced interpretation of Japanese expansionism by highlighting the transnational links between consular, colonial, and metropolitan policing of subversive political movements during the prewar and wartime eras. In addition, by illuminating the fervor with which consular police often pressed for unilateral solutions to Japan’s political security crises on the continent, he challenges orthodox understandings of the relationship between civil and military institutions within the imperial Japanese state. While historians often still depict the Gaimusho as an inhibitor of unilateral military expansionism during the first half of the twentieth century, Esselstrom’s exposé on the activities and ideology of the consular police dramatically challenges this narrative. Revealing a far greater complexity of motivation behind the Japanese colonial mission, __Crossing Empire’s Edge__ boldly illustrates how the imperial Japanese state viewed political security at home as inextricably connected to political security abroad from as early as 1919—nearly a decade before overt military aggression began—and approaches northeast Asia as a region of intricate and dynamic social, economic, and political forces. In doing so, __Crossing Empire’s Edge__ inspires new ways of thinking about both modern Japanese history and the modern history of Japan in East Asia. For more than half a century, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Gaimusho) possessed an independent police force that operated within the space of Japan's informal empire on the Asian continent. Charged with protecting and controlling local Japanese communities first in Korea and later in China, these consular police played a critical role in facilitating Japanese imperial expansion during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Remarkably, however, this police force remains largely unknown. Crossing Empire's Edge is the first book in English to reveal its complex history. Based on extensive analysis of both archival and recently published Japanese sources, Erik Esselstrom describes how the Gaimusho police became deeply involved in the surveillance and suppression of the Korean independence movement in exile throughout Chinese treaty ports and the Manchurian frontier during the 1920s and 1930s. It had in fact evolved over the years from a relatively benign public security organization into a full-fledged political intelligence apparatus devoted to apprehending purveyors of dangerous thought throughout the empire. Furthermore, the history of consular police operations indicates that ideological crime was a borderless security problem; Gaimusho police worked closely with colonial and metropolitan Japanese police forces to target Chinese, Korean, and Japanese suspects alike from Shanghai to Seoul to Tokyo. Esselstrom thus offers a nuanced interpretation of Japanese expansionism by highlighting the transnational links between consular, colonial, and metropolitan policing of subversive political movements during the prewar and wartime eras. In addition, by illuminating the fervor with which consular police often pressed for unilateral solutions to Japan's political security crises on the continent, he challenges orthodox understandings of the relationship between civil and military institutions within the imperial Japanese state. While historians often still depict the Gaimusho as an inhibitor of unilateral military expansionism during the first half of the twentieth century, Esselstrom's expose on the activities and ideology of the consular police dramatically challenges this narrative. Revealing a far greater complexity of motivation behind the Japanese colonial mission, Crossing Empire's Edge boldly illustrates how the imperial Japanese state viewed political security at home as inextricably connected to political security abroad from as early as 1919--nearly a decade before overt military aggression began--and approaches northeast Asia as a region of intricate and dynamic social, economic, and political forces. In doing so, Crossing Empire's Edge inspires new ways of thinking about both modern Japanese history and the modern history of Japan in East Asia. "For more than half a century, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Gaimusho) possessed an independent police force that operated within the space of Japan's informal empire on the Asian continent. Charged with "protecting and controlling" local Japanese communities first in Korea and later in China, these consular police played a critical role in facilitating Japanese imperial expansion during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Remarkably, however, this police force remains largely unknown. Crossing Empire's Edge is the first book in English to reveal its complex history." "Based on extensive analysis of both archival and recently published Japanese sources, Erik Esselstrom describes how the Gaimusho police became deeply involved in the surveillance and suppression of the Korean independence movement in exile throughout Chinese treaty ports and the Manchurian frontier during the 1920s and 1930s. Esselstrom thus offers a nuanced interpretation of Japanese expansionism by highlighting the transnational links between consular, colonial, and metropolitan policing of subversive political movements during the prewar and wartime eras. In addition, by illuminating the fervor with which consular police often pressed for unilateral solutions to Japan's political security crises on the continent, he challenges orthodox understandings of the relationship between civil and military institutions within the imperial Japanese state." "While historians often still depict the Gaimusho as an inhibitor of unilateral military expansionism during the first half of the twentieth century, Esselstrom's expose on the activities and ideology of the consular police dramatically challenges this narrative. Revealing a far greater complexity of motivation behind the Japanese colonial mission, Crossing Empire's Edge boldly illustrates how the imperial Japanese state viewed political security at home as inextricably connected to political security abroad from as early as 1919 - nearly a decade before overt military aggression began - and approaches northeast Asia as a region of intricate and dynamic social, economic, and political forces. In doing so, Crossing Empire's Edge inspires new ways of thinking about both modern Japanese history and the modern history of Japan in East Asia."--Jacket

In the early 1800s thousands of American and European traders arrived in Hawai‘i to lay in supplies for the long trip east or to take on Hawaiian sandalwood, which commanded a high price in China. In response, Russia expanded its trading outposts as far as western Kaua‘i and together with Kaua‘i chiefs began planning the construction of Fort Elisabeth in Waimea in 1816. A year later, the structure was abandoned by the Russians, but, as Peter Mills argues convincingly, a long and significant history of the fort remains to be told, even after its Russian one had ended. Seeking to redress the imbalance that exists between the colonized and the colonizers in Pacific historiography, Mills examines the fort and its place in the history of Kaua‘i under paramount chief Kaumuali‘i and in relation to the expanding kingdom of Kamehameha and his successors. His work exposes how Hawaiians have been ignored in their own history and challenges commonly held assumptions such as Kamehameha's unification of the Islands in 1810 and the victimization of Kaumuali‘i by representatives of the Russian-American Company.

Using hundreds of firsthand accounts in combination with field archaeology, Mills shows that the fort was originally built and used by Hawaiians as a heiau (ritual temple). After the Russians' departure, Hawaiians continued to use the fort but in ways that reflected an ongoing transformation of cultural values provoked by contact with outsiders and the development of multiethnic communities in Waimea and other port settlements throughout the Hawaiian chain.

This book overturns many popular myths and perceptions about the fort at Waimea and about European and Hawaiian interaction in the first half of the nineteenth century while delving into some of the central issues in historical anthropology, colonialism, and the development of global networks.

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Patterns of Police Work in Late Chosõn Korea 2 A Disputed Presence in Late Qing and Early Republican China 3 Policing Resistance to the Imperial State 4 Opposition, Escalation, and Integration 5 The Struggle for Security in Occupied China Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index Patterns of police work late Chosön Korea A disputed presence in late Qing and early Republican China Policing resistance to the imperial state Opposition, escalation and integration The struggle for security in occupied China.