On 26 January 2017, the First Winter Institute on Global History between Princeton and UTokyo was held at the at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Tokyo. Funded by the mutual partnership of the University of Tokyo and Princeton University, this winter institute is the first project of a recently launched series of programs between the two universities. Professor  HANEDA Masashi and Zhong Yijian from UTokyo, and Professor Jeremy Adelman, Professor Sheldon Garon, Professor Federico Marcon from Princeton were present, and GHC members including Professor SHIMADA Ryuto, Professor SUGIURA miki, Lisa Hellman, Claire Cooper and TOMOMATSU Yuka also participated as advisors. There are eight participants, four Ph.D. students from UTokyo and four from Princeton. The one day winter institute began with an opening address by Professor Haneda regarding the aim of the school, followed by a short self-introduction by each one of the participants as well as all the advisors.

The winter institute consists of four panels, each of them including two presentations. Professor Haneda was the chair for the morning panels. Lillian Tsay (University of Tokyo) made a research presentation entitled “Sweetness under the Empire’s Sun: Symbolic Relations in Sweets Consumption in Modern Japan.” This research project is mainly about how sugar and sweet products were circulated within the Japanese Empire from both the perspectives of production and consumption. In the general discussion following the presentation, there were suggestions to reconsider some basic concepts and arguments, in order to work further on how people thought of sweets in the prewar period from the history of medicine and nutrition. In addition, applying a more diverse methodology, such as interviewing people from factories or adapt data from corporate archives was also raised as an advice for future work on the project.

The second presentation in this panel was by Elisa Prosperetti (Princeton University), one entitled “From Bottling the Sea to Broadcasting It: Conservative Côte d’Ivoire’s Radical Educational Television Reform (1968-1983).” This paper focused on the multi-lateral development of a national television education program in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1970s.

The general discussion focused on how to frame the work on West Africa as a global story. During the discussion, other participants urged Ms. Prosperetti to investigate how her themes of education, decolonization and state-building resonated elsewhere, such as in Scandinavia, Indonesia and India.

Second Panel began with the presentation by KATO Shinsaku (University of Tokyo) entitled “Gujarat and the Indian Ocean Trade in the Eighteenth Century.” His paper aims to investigate maritime trade in Surat and changes of its structure during the early eighteenth century. One focus of the general discussion is on the sources and how to use them. One should always examines the credibility of the data and the various historical background against which they were created. Participants advised Mr. Kato to examine data concerning indigenous merchants extracted from European sources more carefully.

The next presentation was by Sarah Carson (Princeton University) and the title was “Evading the Whirlwinds: Cyclone Science in British India, 1864-1930.” The discussion about this paper helped Ms. Carson to think through the directions in developing the first draft to a dissertation chapter. The most important comments focused on the ways to expand the understanding of maritime weather knowledges and perspectives, by looking at sailors' writings, the insurance archives at Lloyd's in London, and Marine Department records in India. Other suggestions including moving the discussion of the project farther away from the scientists themselves and into the larger world of groups concerned about storms, through interpretive frameworks of technology, humanitarianism, or risk.

(Wang Wenlu)

The third panel began with Wenlu Wang from University of Tokyo’s presentation of the outline of her dissertation, “Christian Doctrines Localized: A study on Chinese Catholic Catechisms of the 17th Century.” The paper focused on the research framework and methodologies of her dissertation. She stated that since the materials of this research were mainly books, approaches adopted in research on book history can serve as a reference. Through examining how these catechisms circulated, and how they were read along with other books, she hoped to achieve a clearer image of people’s reception of these books. She noted that professor Adelman’s suggestion was helpful that she should bring the global counter-reformation movements as well as Ming’s regulations on religion into account when considering the missionaries’ work in China.

Kasper Pucek from Princeton presented “Russia’s Path Dependent Economic Transition: The Russian Aluminum Industry and the Political Economy of Post-Communism” which focused on the Russian economic transition in the post Soviet era through a historical analysis of aluminum industry since the early 1990s to the present. He argued that while the so called radical and gradual reformers debate focused on how the market economy was to be created, the Soviet-era institutional and industrial legacies were key factors in the transition path. His paper brought up the question of the importance of institutions and agencies and how to analyze them historically.

The forth panel began with KANAKHARA Noriko from the University of Chicago and Tokyo on her dissertation outline, tentatively called “What is the Marker of Difference?: The case of Tatar migration to Japan.” The proposal claimed to examine the Japanese perception of both Islam as a foreign religion, and Muslim Tatars from central Asia who were escaping conflicts in the post Russian Revolution 1920s. Suggestions were made on her struggle to incorporate ethnographic research material with the archival sources. Global comparison of the emergence of “minority” as a category was suggested by professor Adelman.

Abigail Kret from Princeton presented a dissertation chapter, “The Brandt Commission: Development, and Independence.” She stated that her project used “the North-South Dialogue as a means for understanding competing visions for structural change and development in the 1970s.” Her paper, “focused on the Brandt Commission, examined in the institutional matrix that facilitated the North-South Dialogue, along with the salient intellectual currents that informed the debate on development and global order in the 1970s and 1980s.” For her, the question of scale struck her and helped her think of social democracy at the national level as well as the international level.

While the theme and time periods differed widely, the presenters gained insightful comments from professors and colleagues from Princeton and Todai, crossing epistemological traditions and fields. The students and professors socialized after the workshop at karaoke and excursions in the city.

（KANAHARA Noriko）