Manila Hemp Paper Workshop with Jun Uchida

Please join Fiber Optics, a new Stanford Humanities Center research workshop in honor of John Bender dedicated to building the field of critical fiber studies, for a working paper workshop over lunch with Jun Uchida, Professor of History at Stanford, specializing in the history of Japanese empire and diaspora.  This event is co-sponsored with the Transpacific Studies Working Group.

We will be workshopping a draft of Prof. Uchida’s new article, introduced as follows:

This article reexamines the transpacific engagement between the United States and Japan as empires, focusing on the case study of the abaca industry in the colonial Philippines. Also known as Manila hemp, abaca was used for producing marine cordage and meeting other strategic needs of an industrial empire. The majority of abaca before 1945 was cultivated on plantations in Davao, primarily controlled by Japanese migrants. This paper attempts to explain how and why members of a rival power came to dominate so vital a colonial industry under the American flag. In addressing this puzzle, the article proposes to provide a fresh perspective on U.S.-Japan relations, conceptualizing them as  “cooperative empires.” Additionally, it contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on global commodities, capitalism, and Transpacific History. 

Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and made possible by support from an anonymous donor honoring the Directorship of former SHC Director John Bender, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities