De-constructing Boundaries in History: The Transnational History of Nationalism as seen through the interaction between Japan and the World of Islam

Whether ancient or modern, people have been party to  historical processes that have frequently taken place beyond the boundaries of national and imperial states.  Yet transnational inter-connections have frequently remained outside of the scope of historical attention that has taken the political boundaries of states as its platform of analysis. The transnational interconnectedness between peoples and regions provides the spatial and temporal setting for developing the global perspective in history.

A case in point would be the history of modern Japan`s relations to  those  countries and societies which were part of the  world of Islam in Asia which  can only  be best understood from the perspective of  transnational history. The Japanese government had no formal treaty relations with Muslim polities such as Turkey, Egypt, or Iran  for many decades into the twentieth century.  Furthermore, Japanese relations with Muslims in Western colonial empires or China had to take place within informal transnational connections.  Japanese Pan –Asianism and Pan-Islamist intellectuals in Russia, Turkey, or, Indonesia, had a transnational intellectual interaction long before there was government to government relations between the two worlds. Yet  even though these topics are part of Japanese international history  they are not included  in the history of  the  diplomatic treaty-based historical narrative of modern Japanese history or Japanese intellectual interaction with the West.  

The transnational aspects in the history of nationalism are frequently omitted. Much of the formative history of nineteenth and twentieth century history of nationalism actually began as transnational activities of exiled and diasporic actors forced to live in countries and cities away from  the homeland, especially when the perceived territory of the nation was located into an indigenous dynastic polity with rooted claims to multiple ethno-national populations -as in Qing China or Ottoman Turkey  or one of the  colonial empires of the West such as in British India or Dutch Indies. The study of nationalist currents in a transnational geopolitical context also reveals how many a twentieth century nationalism is interlaced with intelligence strategies and clandestine politics of world powers that interact on a global scale. This vantage point provides  the necessary real-politic  context  to  recent discussions of nationalism at the level of imagined discourse.. Then just like today, diaspora intellectuals and political actors  who shared the same intellectual discourse or ideological motives with the representatives of world powers could also rationalize collaboration against common enemies in a transnational geography of exile.

The  transnational perspective of Japanese history in the world of Islam, for example,   is corrective of the slant in the field of Japanese studies that invariably posits itself within the binary opposites of Japan and the West, and thus only reveals the West-oriented portrait of Modern Japan. Studies of Japan`s international relations remain focused on Japan`s treaty relations with the Western powers, hence non-treaty “inter-state” and “inter-national” relations such as that of Japanese-Muslim relations in West Asia or elsewhere  remain outside of the scope. In addition to national boundaries, civilization  boundaries and area-studies boundaries have conspired to elude historical relations that cut across such geographic and political boundaries. With some exceptions, for example, Japanese scholars of the Middle East are ambivalent on Japanese “informal” connections to  various ethno-nationalities as Arabs, Turks and Iranians. Japanese historians of Islam and  the Middle East have been quite hesitant in pursuing the topic of Japan’s relations with the region. Commentators suggest this is because of the odious reputation that Japanese interest in Islamic Studies gained, due to its intimate connection with militarist policies of 1930s Japan. Ironically, it was the Japanese military more than any other pre-War institution that supported the development of Japanese studies of Islamic culture and languages primarily because of their strategic and political interest in Muslim societies. Post-war Japanese historians of kindai shi have primarily focused on Japanese relations with the West and or China, while topics concerning Japanese relations with Asia or the world of Islam have received hesitant attention until recently. Most important, recent Japanese scholarship on the relations of Japan with Muslims has stemmed from Japanese historians who originally majored in Central Asian, Middle Eastern and or Islamic Studies, rather than Japanese kindai shi or Japanese modern history. Besides, they were encouraged to deal with the topic primarily in cooperation with non-Japanese scholars, and by non Japanese path breaking publications on the subject. However, recent publications on the topic promise that both in Japan and abroad, new research in modern Japanese history is more open to transnational perspectives that breach the boundaries of Japanese studies, in Japan and in the United States.  

 Transnational topics in Japanese history thus opens a window onto an alternative arena of relations between the so-called Non-Western regions in modern history, parallel to the interstate relations forged by the formal treaties and diplomacy dominated by the Western powers. Yet these connections were significant in the formulation of the ideas and policies throughout the twentieth century, especially as the colonized sought to emancipate themselves from Western imperialist domination with Japan`s help as a world power. For example, Japanese connections to  Pan-Islamist actors from Tatar Russia, Turkey, Egypt, India, and China who chose to collaborate with Japan makes it possible to appraise the transnational fabric of Japanese nationalism and imperial policies. The ambivalent level of “informal diplomacy” that took place between Japan and the “less” powerful countries in the periphery of world power helps  provide a well-rounded picture of Japanese attitudes to the outside world.

 An  example would be the study of the trip of Ambassador Yoshida Masaharu,  who led  the first official mission of Meiji Japan to West Asia and the court of   Shah Nasreddin, the ruler of Qacar Iran, in 1880. The Yoshida mission is the “alternative Iwakura mission” in  Meiji history. This mission, with a briefto study the conditions of the contemporary  Middle East, took place a decade after the early Iwakura Mission of 1871, which aimed to revise the treaties with the Western powers and study the conditions of  modern Western civilization. The Yoshida  event, which falls into the category of “informal diplomacy” provides a valuable alternate window to understand how the Meiji Japanese authorities envisioned economic and political relations in the Middle East as a potential market, to capture a more complete picture of  Meiji  modernist vision,  and to assess the the primacy of Iran in  Japanese foreign policy  until today - although it would take Japan decades to enter into formal diplomatic relations with Iran. In sum, the study of Japan`s history with Muslim countries and societies enlarges the scope of modern Japanese history by pursuing the transnational themes in Japanese  international relations with a nuanced perspective.

 In conclusion, the exciting topic of Japanese relations with the world of Islam is one example of topics that would remain invisible if national or civilization boundaries (, i. e. between the Muslim world and that of East Asia) had framed the investigation. The West/Japan framework which has until recently formed the basis of training and research in the field of Japanese studies would have kept the investigator unaware of this zone of Japanese relations with the outside world. The investigation of Japanese relations to the world outside of the main scope of Western treaty powers, and the subject of inter-state and inter-society relations between different cultural and demographic populations in the globe require the training of historians in such a way that they can look at history from the vantage of at least two archival worlds, two languages and two historiographical cultures, in order to capture and record the inter-action across national and political boundaries. Is this a new field of history? Perhaps yes: the ability to appraise transnational links and flows places the emphasis on diaspora, émigrés, inter-state political actors, intelligence, global finance and trade, smuggling, and other topics that enhance the importance of world historical processes. Perhaps no: it can also be seen as a revamped version of old fashioned diplomatic history or overseas history, provided the latter did embark onto multisided research in more than one national archive. But, in any case, new or different spaces for research are needed to pursue human behavior across national boundaries, across cultural frontiers, and across assumptions of area studies canonical definitions. This should provide for the ability to pursue historical aspects that had remained unnoticed for the most part.                  

Selçuk Esenbel is professor of history in the Department of History, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. her research interests are in the history of the interactions  between Japan and the World of Islam, Japanese Pan Asianism, and Western Culture in Meiji Japan and Ottoman Turkey. Her publications include “ Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power 1900-1945”, American Historical Review October 2004, 1140-1170. She is currently at work on a book about Japan and the Islamic world.