In the recent decades, history has experienced 'international, global, trans-national, trans-imperial’ turns. Meanwhile, the disciplines of International Relations (IR) and International Law have undergone a significant ‘historical’ turn. Although there are great differences in methodologies, pedagogical knowledge, and approaches among these sub-fields of these disciplines, collaborative projects across them have been emerging. All recognise that such inter-disciplinary efforts are crucial for tackling the challenges to the foundations not only of the respective disciplinary knowledge, but also of what we have understood as the ‘liberal international order’ since the mid-19th century. This seminar is based on the recent author's brief article ‘IR, history, and the Japanese Empire: a spiral move from the ‘Edges’ to the ‘Centres’', based on her presentation at last July's international symposium, 'Do we need a different IR?’. Although the article is focused on the intellectual and institutional development in Australia, it stresses the global context and hopes to be relevant to the developments in Europe, the Americas, and beyond. While the presenter’s case is the Japanese empire, it also may be relevant to the cases of the other empires and polities. The article calls for further collaborative actions and integrating the views from the edges into the ‘centres’ of these disciplines with a few points for discussion.
The article is available until the end of March 2025: Akami, T., ‘IR, history, and the Japanese Empire: A spiral move from the ‘edges’ to the ‘centres’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 79 (1) (2025): 32-38.
Speaker:
Tomoko Akami is a 2024-25 Jean Monnet fellow at the EUI and from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. She works on the history of international organisations in Asia, the Pacific, and Japan’s diplomatic and political history. She currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for Historical Publication, DFAT. Her publications include Internationalizing the Pacific (2002), Japan’s News Propaganda (2012), Soft Power of Japan’s Total War State (2014), and her more recent works on the League of Nations have been published in the Journal of Global History, the International History Review, the Journal of History of International Law, and various edited books, including The Historicity of International Politics (2023).
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