On Wednesday, September 2, 2015, a book review of two recent works by Prof. Alessandro Stanziani (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences/École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris) was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. The review consisted of sessions in which both of Prof. Stanziani’s works were reviewed by members of the GHC University of Tokyo site, with the author providing answers to questions. An open discussion session followed.

The first session addressed Sailors, Slaves, and Immigrants: Bondage in the Indian Ocean World, 1750–1914 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), which investigates labor in the Indian Ocean in the modern age. To begin the session, Prof. Hideaki Suzuki (Nagasaki University), who specializes in the history of the western Indian Ocean and served as the organizer of this book review, gave his presentation based on his shared concern with the author on the Indian Ocean within a global context. Prof. Suzuki mentioned three areas of special significance: problems contained in the concept of the “Indian Ocean World”, the extent to which the individual micro-historical examples abstracted in this work are to be incorporated, and whether it is appropriate to consider universal the significance and value of terms of “labor” and “coercion”. Prof. Atsushi Ota of Hiroshima University added individual comments regarding each chapter of the book. Importantly, with regard to his question about piracy that whether it should be considered as a form of resistance by non-Europeans against Europeans, Prof. Stanziani’s response suggested that we should not consider piracy as a unilateral act by non-European against European and that the territorial “sovereignty” and piracy had developed together. Three points raised by Prof. Suzuki obviously did not result in a simple conclusion, but the author’s answers and the related open discussion were meaningful.

In the second session, we discussed how After Oriental Despotism: Eurasian Growth in a Global Perspective (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)—which reconsiders the state of labor in society—compares Russia to Western Europe in tackling the issue of perceived economic backwardness in present-day Russia. At the beginning of the session, Dr. Naofumi Abe (University of Tokyo) summarized the content of the book and reviewed some of its idiosyncrasies. Subsequently, as an expert in the history of present-day Iran, he pointed out that originally, Russia was not portrayed as backwards by neighboring Asian polities at that time. Dr. Birgit Tremml-Werner of the University of Tokyo, who specializes in early modern East and Southeast Asia, then offered her impressions of Russia and Central Eurasia as an outsider, suggesting the implications for the global historical research provided by the book. Moreover, she mentioned some issues that global historical research should consider. Prof. Akihito Kudo, whose research area is the same as the subjugated area of modern empires covered by the book (the French Algeria), provided commentary that included citations on each chapter of the book, after which he called for a discussion regarding the concept of “empire” which the book described as a “heuristic notion”. Similarly to the first session, this session also did not produce a conclusion that addressed all the questions raised. However, when carrying out global historical research written in English, as Prof. Masashi Haneda of the University of Tokyo called for at the end of the session, we should be conscious of that many of abstractive terms and concepts used for analysis contain the connotations originated in histories of and historiography in Britain or Europe. Accordingly, we should not only pay the closest attention to the selection of terminology but also redefine the significance of each term boldly, if it is required. The all participants can be in agreement on this point.

(Shizuo Katakura)