The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism

Sidney Xu Lu is Assistant Professor of History at Michigan State University.

• Introduction: Malthusian expansion and settler colonialism; Part I. Emergence, 1868–1894: 1. From Hokkaido to California: the birth of Malthusian expansionism in modern Japan; 2. Population and racial struggle: the South Seas, Hawaiʻi, and Latin America; Part II. Transformation, 1894–1924: 3. Commoners of empire: labor migration to the United States; 4. Farming rice in Texas: the paradigm shift; 5. 'Carrying the white man's burden': the rise of farmer migration to Brazil; Part III. Culmination, 1924–1945: 6. Making the migration state: Malthusian expansionism and agrarianism; 7. The illusion of coexistence and coprosperity: settler colonialism in Brazil and Manchuria; Part IV. Resurgence, 1945–1961: 8. The birth of a 'small' Japan: postwar migration to South America; Conclusion: rethinking migration and settler colonialism in the modern world.

'Brilliantly researched and conceptually sophisticated, this book offers a new interpretation of Malthusianism and will have a huge impact on the way we think about Japanese migration while complicating the divide between studies of the Japanese empire and Japanese immigration to the US, Hawaii, Latin America and other locations in Asia-Pacific.' Takashi Fujitani, University of Toronto