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As part of the Jones Faculty Lecture series, Paul Barclay, associate professor of history, will present “The Imperial Centrifuge: Japan’s Colonial Subalterns and the Indigenous People of Taiwan, 1873-1930” 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 1 in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights room 104.
A reception will follow the lecture. The event is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by the Thomas Roy and Lura Forest Jones Faculty Lecture and Awards Fund, established in 1966 to recognize superior teaching and scholarship at Lafayette.
Barclay’s lecture will explore several conflicting perspectives on the indigenous peoples of Taiwan based on the histories of Japanese colonialism that have flourished since the lifting of martial law on the island in the 1980s. He notes that these histories alternately portray the indigenous people as the “most unfortunate victims of Japanese aggression, as pristine avatars of Taiwanese cultural diversity, and as symbols of the island’s savage condition before Chinese immigration.”
“As an outsider with no stake in these controversial – and contradictory – perspectives, I have mined the newly emerging and vast archive of Japanese-Aborigine relations for stories that might shed light on our modern condition as global citizens,” Barclay explains. “Through the eyes of an Aborigine-language interpreter known to history as Kondô ‘the Barbarian,’ I trace the antecedents of the bloody 1930 Wushe Rebellion through a series of Japanese bureaucratic bungles.”
Barclay argues that from the perspective of locally placed men like Kondô, the Wushe Rebellion was both preventable and predictable. Taking the warnings of these lower-ranking Japanese officials seriously, he asserts that the chasm between Japan’s field-grade functionaries and its leading officials reflects structurally conditioned miscommunication between policy-makers in national capitals and the “men-on-the-spot” at the peripheries of territorially ambitious states.
“‘The Imperial Centrifuge’ is thus a cautionary tale for the visionaries, administrators, and intellectuals who believe the peoples of the world can be managed, handled, and enlightened from a centrally located apex of control and direction,” says Barclay.
Barclay has supervised Lafayette students in several research projects relating to colonialism in Taiwan. Last year, he conducted EXCEL research with Haotian Wu ’07 (Jiangsu, China) on life in Taiwan and Imperial Japan in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries. They studied the rule of the Chinese Qing Dynasty and history of Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples. Their results appeared in Journal of Asian Studies and through Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
In 2004, Barclay collaborated with Neil Englehart, assistant professor of government and law; Joshua Sanborn, associate professor of history; Brian Geraghty ’05, a history and religious studies graduate; Sandamali Wijeratne ’06, anEnglish and international affairs graduate; Vijay Krishnan ’07 (Karnataka, India), an international affairs and economics & business double major; and Milos Jovanovic ’07 (Belgrade, Yugoslavia), a history and international affairs double major, through the Community of Scholars program. They worked to create the most comprehensive and searchable database about the characteristics of empires and colonies throughout the course of history.
Barclay, who has published and presented in both Japanese and English, has traveled extensively to Japan for research on Japanese colonialism in Taiwan. He has published articles in Journal of Asian Studies, Social Science Japan Journal, Education About Asia, Japanese Studies, Taiwan Genjûmin Kenkyû (Studies of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples), History and Anthropology, and Ethics, Place, Environment. He also has authored chapters in several books, including “Nihon Shokuminchisha to Genjûmin no Kôryû Mondai: Taiwan no ‘Bankai’ ni Okeru Tsûji to Tsûyaku o Megutte” (“The Problem of Communications between Japanese Colonists and Aborigines: The Interpreters and Translators on Taiwan’s ‘Savage Border’”) in Jinbunchi no Aratana Sôgô ni Mukete: 21 Seiki COE Puroguramu (Facing the New Liberal Arts: Humanistic Study in the Era of Globalization) and “‘They Have for the Coast Dwellers a Traditional Hatred’: Governing Igorots in Northern Luzon and Central Taiwan, 1895-1915” in The American Colonial State of the Philippines: Global Perspectives.
He has presented at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Mid-Atlantic Region Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Modern Japan Seminar hosted by Columbia University, and American Historical Association Conference. Barclay has been a guest lecturer at the Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology in Taiwan, Duke University, Keio University in Tokyo, Pace University, and Columbia University.
He is a manuscript reviewer for Journal of Asian Studies, Japanese Studies, The Historian, and University of Hawaii Press.
His special interests include the history of Japan and East Asia, early modern and modern global history, and comparative colonial studies. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in history from University of Minnesota and a B.S. in secondary education and history from University of Wisconsin-Madison.