Abstract
Reviewing a book with ‘occupation’ in the title for a journal focused on maritime studies may seem somewhat odd. After all, occupation regimes usually dominate terrestrial spaces. Given that a main goal of the volume, however, is to complicate understandings of ‘occupation frameworks and typologies’ (1) across a range of geographies, it does make sense. Some contributors examine foreign rule on islands and in maritime spaces, while others offer comparative land-based occupations embedded in economic and strategic networks that cross Asian seas. The ‘spatial history’ portion of the title indicates another key focus with relevance to maritime studies. All of the chapters use spatial analysis to examine how sites under foreign rule have been imagined, used, altered and contested. This careful attention to spatial history is where the collection shines.
The volume provides two general modes of inquiry. For readers interested in exploring the broad categories of occupation and colonialism, the editors’ introduction provides a useful theoretical overview of these concepts. David Baillargeon and Jeremy E. Taylor further call for greater scrutiny of the similarities and intersections of foreign power structures as they shift across time and space. For those interested in specific case studies of foreign rule in various parts of Asia, all nine chapters provide a wealth of information that relates to the editors’ concerns. Although the chapters provide complex examples of ‘occupation’ and ‘colonialism’, sometimes using the term ‘colonial occupation’, they do not actively grapple with the theoretical problematization of these categories as addressed in the introduction. This review will provide more information on the scope of the chapters and then emphasize common themes to elucidate the additional ways they connect with one another and can serve to deepen the editors’ discussion.
The contributing authors explore the historical geography of places where occupation and colonization have taken multiple forms over the course of centuries. Ranging in date from the fifteenth century to the present day, the chapters cast light on regions and groups that represent competing or multipolar interests. Together, they cover places from the capitals of East Timor, the Philippines and China to agricultural lands and tin mines in the Malay States and southern Burma, and from consulates, ocean-going ships and military bases in Indonesia and Japan to the beaches and forests of the Andaman and Okinawan Islands. These locations have been variously ruled by outsiders, including the British, Dutch, Indonesians, Americans, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese. Moreover, the mix of peoples engaged or entangled in these multilayered environments of rule – whether as labourers, indigenous inhabitants, migrants or resisters – broadens the scope of the populations affected by these regimes, as well as the local spaces where they work and live.
In relation to these populations and spaces, the authors engage with theoretical work regarding issues like modernity, collective memory and the logic of settler colonialism. They use interdisciplinary sources and methodologies such as oral interviews and the diaries of local activists, as well as the textual analysis of city plans and state diagrams. They investigate the embodied technologies of shipboard surveillance, racialized and gendered food production, and the destruction of seasonal lifeways and unique natural environments. Through this expansive range of locations, authorities, peoples and cultures, the authors prioritize the spatial dimensions of their studies, paying careful attention to local specificity.
Although these case studies are situated under conditions of foreign rule, attention to the governing typologies is secondary to their spatial understandings, manipulations and consequences. Indeed, the volume is organized by geographical category – urban spaces, inland and rural spaces, and island and maritime spaces. These divisions stress the emphasis on spatial geographies and the intentional decentring of the nation state, but are less successful at putting the chapters in direct conversation with one another or with the editors’ stated objective – that is, ‘to show how using a broad language of occupation can provide new insights into the relationship between occupation and colonial regimes across time, space and scale’ (7). This is not to say that the overlying framework is incompatible with the chapters, but that the editors’ priorities are somewhat different from each chapter's primary objectives. Reorganizing the chapters by characteristics of rule helps get closer to the heart of the editors’ interests while drawing out common themes.
Three groupings present some possibilities for revealing resonance among the chapters and with the editors’ aims. For example, a category covering the ways in which often violent ruling regimes disrupt local lifeways and generate resistance would join Chapters 1, 6 and 9. Vanessa Hearman examines the multiple displacements of the East Timorese under both Portuguese colonialism and Indonesian occupation. Vishvajit Pandya and Madhumita Mazumdar analyse the British containment of Andaman Islanders and how their terra nullis characterization led to the destruction of long-established migrations, along with attendant cultural and social relationships. Sayaka Sakuma shows how multiple forms of occupation have led to multilayered and contentious uses of a northern Okinawan forest, impacting human as well as insect and animal inhabitants.
A second assemblage juxtaposes chapters on administrators who tried to effect social engineering in occupied spaces and for audiences at home. This puts Ian Morley's Chapter 2 – on Daniel Burnham's plan to convert Manila from Spanish colonialism to American ‘modernity’ – in direct communication with Kris Alexanderson's Chapter 7 on Dutch colonial administrators’ anxieties and use of surveillance technologies (in both port cities and aboard transnational ships) to prevent an inflow of communist sympathizers and literature. In turn, these would pair well with Chapter 8, by Abhishek Nanavati, on the use of science and technology in hydroponic food production to establish racial hierarchies among rulers and ruled in the United States’ occupation of Japan.
Finally, a category dedicated to regimes in which ruling visions conflict with one another and with realities on the ground underscores congruence among Chapters 3, 4 and 5. In Chapter 3, Joanna Lee analyses British colonial authority and officials’ varying economic, social and aesthetic aspirations in the Malay States to show that they were unable to formulate a cohesive policy for either governance or land use. Yi Li, in Chapter 4, argues that despite British colonizers’ efforts to extract tin from southern Burma, this was confounded by their inability to successfully understand and reconfigure the existing ‘patchwork’ of jurisdictions and mining practices on the Malay Peninsula. Similarly, David Serfass’s Chapter 5 examines various Japanese and Chinese efforts to re-envision and redraw administrative maps of 1930s China to rule areas they occupied in accordance with their own governance structures.
Repositioning these chapters to highlight their many facets could take countless forms. The question arises, then, as to whether this volume tries to do too much in showcasing complex spatial histories of Asian regions under foreign rule while also trying to interrogate how typologies of foreign rule can be better understood and applied. Readers can naturally decide for themselves how best to interpret and utilize the well-researched, persuasively argued chapters and introduction. In the end, both the richness and the tensions in everything this volume aims to do demonstrate the growing pains inherent in pushing interdisciplinary studies in new directions and in seeding future research.