Doctoral course students From Berlin Free University and EHESS Paris have just arrived. In this occasion, the Workshop of Junior/Visiting Members was held on November 8th Saturday.

First, the leader of this project, Professor Haneda Masasshi provided an overview of the project and introduced the memebrs to the new arrivals.

At the workshop, the first speaker, Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus presented his paper entitled “Entangled Asia: Korean Students and Japanese Protestantism, 1900 -1920”. He analyzes how the interaction between Japanese Protestants and Korean exchange students during the Meiji and Taishō eras contributed to the emergence of an ‘Asian identity’ among Japanese Protestants. Drawing on recent scholarship in Global History, he focuses on the networks of Protestant Korean students and Japanese teachers that emerged within the context of church communities, the YMCA and the indigenous Japanese Christian non-church movement.  So far, historians have widely ignored the complex and conflicting dynamics between Japanese Protestantism and Japan’s imperial project. Moreover, previous research tended to subordinate Korean colonial history to the main narratives of Japanese imperial history leaving little room for the agency of the colonized. Therefore, He aims at overcoming the national history paradigm and the top-down approach to imperial history. Furthermore, he challenges the assumption that the emergence of Protestantism in East Asia was a mere byproduct of Western-style modernization. Instead, his project is centered on Korean and Japanese actors in order to adopt a multi-layered perspective on Japan’s regional entanglements that goes beyond Euro-centric models of modernization.

Second speaker, Lisa Hellman from Stockholm University, discussed "Living in the foreign quarters of Canton: The case of the Swedish East India Company in the long 18th century". Her presentation treats her thesis on the social life in the foreign quarters of Canton and Macao 1730–1830. As a case study, she focuses on the employees of the Swedish East India Company, and their relations to Chinese traders, as well as other foreigners. The Swedes worked as go-betweens, demonstrating how multi-ethnic and complex this environment was, as well as the need to also study small companies from non-colonial countries. She studies social relations in five case studies: first an analysis of the group formation and gender relations in the foreign quarters, second a spatial analysis of the parts of China the foreigners moved in, third a description of their everyday life, fourth an analysis of how the Swedes communicated with others, and finally how intercultural trust was established and lost. Through these five cases, she demonstrates firstly how one must include both gender and class perspective on this world to understand the historical continuity and change of this multiethnic and complex environment. Secondly, she argues for the need of a social perspective on the history Canton during the long 18th century, in order to analyse how its power relations were constructed, and changed.

The third speaker, Michael Facius’s paper was “The multiple faces of the 'Early Modern' in 20th century Japan”. This paper presents central ideas of a new post-doc project on the multiple faces of the ‘Early Modern’ in 20th century Japan. The project aims to contribute to a reevaluation of concepts of “modernity” by interrogating the ways in which Japanese actors apprehended the characteristics, spatiality and temporality of the Early Modern period and its relationship to the present. The project situates itself in relation to recent conceptual debates in global history about “early modernities” and a growing interest in the representations of temporality in history. It probes into the complex dynamics between academic and non-academic ways of relating to the past and looks beyond the common conceptualization of the Edo period as primarily a reservoir for the construction of national memory and consciousness.

The project is comprised of four case studies that illuminate different arenas, periods and intersections of national and imperial, regional and global spaces: (1) Concepts of the Early Modern and kinsei and in academic historiography, (2) representations of the Korean/Taiwanese “Early Modern” in Japanese tourism, (3) uses of the concept of the “closed country” (sakoku) in public discourse, and (4) exhibitions about the 17th century Sino-Japanese cultural mediators Yinyuan and Zhu Shunshui.

Next speaker, Natalia Pashkeeva dealt with her dissertation about the “Russian Work” of the American Y.M.C.A. evolved in St. Petersburg at the end of 19th century. It was developed in Russian Empire (1900-1917) and mainly with Russian émigrés after the revolution of 1917. The regular but not really successful attempts aimed at extension of “Work” in Soviet Union. The main purpose of her PhD research is to study the transnational interaction between the “secretaries of international work” of the American Y.M.C.A and the representatives of Russian political, economic, intellectual and ecclesiastical elites. Firstly, we consider the elaboration of one model of social organization by the « national » American movement of Y.M.C.A. on the basis of Christian Protestant rhetoric with the concepts of Leader, Organized Work and Good Citizen. Secondly, we observe the transformation of the American Y.M.C.A. from a primarily religious organization into an institution whose activity served to the transnational transfer of political, economic, social, moral and, of course, spiritual values. Finally, we also consider how the Y.M.C.A. used religious discourse to further essentially geopolitical goals and to act as soft power in the foreign policy of its own State. An important field for this final task is the international information gathering and distribution system, established on basis of the cooperation of the Y.M.C.A. secretaries and Russian actors of the work.

Fifth speaker, Andera discussed his dissertation investigating the relationship between the British East India Company (EIC) and the British State in the XVIII century. The EIC was a major player in the British economy for more than two centuries and thus its link with the State provides an excellent example of the development of relevant intellectual categories within the British economy and society as well as in the Empire. In order to interpret this relationship, a conceptual framework centered around the financial reforms of the late XVII century is built. The establishment of the Bank of England (1694), together with the rise of financial markets and the transformation in the nature of the Public Debt, which becomes perpetual, emphasize a dependence of the State from the privileged Companies - and viceversa - which is rooted in the foundation of the post-Glorious Revolution British State. The thin red line between the State and the “merchant” seems to disappear when State’s fiscal stability becomes dependent on the speculative expectations of the investors in the financial market. This interpretation is also coherent with the idea that colonialism and the development of the Empire were critical for the sustainment of the Public Debt.

Last speaker, Shim Jaekyom introduced his doctoral thesis aiming to connect the production and regulation of popular music in postwar Japan and postcolonial Korea with the nation-building project and reconstruction of subjectivities in the global context of Cold War. The production and regulation of popular culture, including popular music, was aimed for not only securing cultural dominance of nationalism in domestic industries and market, but also emotional regulation and management against national subject, and production of culture, which contains national uniqueness, cultural difference, and historical tradition. Especially, he approached this theme with the framework of “vulgarity(低俗)” and “healthiness(健全)” as a main keyword. The politics of “vulgarity” and “healthiness” was no more than to promote ‘healthy’ subject and exclude a certain kind of subjectivity, regarded as ‘vulgar.’ In other

words, it was to produce specific desirable subjectivities and edify‘demoralized’ body and unsophisticated mind by the legal punishment, social exclusion, and moral consensus against ‘vulgarity.’ In so doing, he elucidates how the discursive and institutional practices on popular music reflected and contributed to the production of nationalist knowledge, modern subject of labor, and Cold War subjectivities from the perspective of global history.