Transpacific Visions

Connected Histories of the Pacific across North and South

Author: Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi, Shinnosuke Takahashi, Dario Di Rosa, Danton Leary, Christine Winter, Caroline Norma, Facundo Garasino and Alexander Brown

This book highlights the significance of North–South connections as a part of transpacific history. The little-known stories it tells of such “vertical” encounters across the Pacific Ocean complicates established historical narratives which focus instead on “horizontal” connections between the United States and Asia.

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This book argues that transpacific history cannot be comprehended without including “vertical” connections; namely, those between the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere. It explores such connections by uncovering small histories of ordinary people’s attempts at événements which they undertake by means of uneven, unlevel, and multidirectional mobilities. In this way, this book goes beyond the usual notion of transpacific history as a matter of Northern Hemisphere-centric connections between the United States and Asian countries, and enables us to imagine a transpacific space as a more dynamic and multi-faceted world of human mobilities and connections. In this book, both eminent and burgeoning historians uncover the stories of little-known, myriad encounters in various parts of the Asia-Pacific region. By exploring cases whose actors include soldiers, missionaries, colonial administrators, journalists, essayists, and artists, the book highlights the significance of "vertical" perspectives in understanding complex histories of the region.

Critic Reviews

“This study of cross-hemispheric north-south connectedness presents a refreshingly new vision of the Asia-Pacific. Nine extremely well-documented and detailed micro-histories provide insight into the cacophonous and multi-layered entanglements that constitute the Transpacific as contested and alternative spatiality of the Asia-Pacific. The mobility lens is a powerful key to unlock the betwixt and between niches of transnational history, putting human encounters in science, religion, arts, military, and trade at the center of academic inquiry to capture the richness but too often unattended diversity of local responses to global dynamics. The book provides challenging questions to grand theories and will stimulate debates among scholars and students of modern history, transnationalism, mobility studies, and area studies.”

Richly researched and subtly theorized, this multidisciplinary collection provides fresh and original perspectives on Transpacific connections and relationships.

-- Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong

-- Wolfram Manzenreiter, University of Vienna

About the Author

Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi is associate professor in the College of Global Liberal Arts at Ritsumeikan University.

Shinnosuke Takahashi is lecturer in the Asian Languages and Cultures Program at Victoria University of Wellington.

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This book argues that transpacific history cannot be comprehended without including "vertical" connections; namely, those between the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere. It explores such connections by uncovering small histories of ordinary people's attempts at