BAJS Workshop: Meiji Japan in Global History

The 2017 BAJS Workshop ‘Meiji Japan in Global History’ will feature intensive critical discussion of six pre-circulated essays on Meiji Japan during which the authors and audience members will explore in greater depth topics presented by the collected essays.

The workshop will begin with the idea that Meiji signifies a moment of global connectivity and asks how this twenty-first century starting point stimulates new questions and offers ways to re-conceptualize Japanese engagement with the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century world. Moreover, it asks what obstacles remain—including the nation-state itself and the imperialism in which its formation was embedded—and how they might help us distinguish our views from those our sources provide.

Contributors include scholars from Europe, the United States, and East Asia who are engaged in thinking about Meiji in global perspective.

The workshop is open to the UK and EU scholarly communities, and focuses on developing each article for publication. Articles will be completed in advance of the workshop and distributed to all participants, and registered members of the gallery audience, in order to best facilitate critical, constructive discussions.