The Forgotten Battles of Imperial Japan

This talk makes the argument for Japanese military history as a neglected field of opportunity for academic historians. It argues that military histories of Imperial Japan’s so-called “small wars,” analyzed with due attention to battle spaces, geography, and institutions, are central to the empire’s social, cultural, and environmental histories. In addition, small wars fought by Japan’s Imperial Army, Navy, and colonial police forces, against Tonghak Rebels, Taiwanese millenarians, Korean Righteous Armies, and Taiwan Indigenous Peoples sustained Japan’s military bureaucracy during the intervals between more celebrated and large-scale wars.

Paul D. Barclay is Professor of History at Lafayette College. He is author of the books Kondo the Barbarian: A Japanese Adventurer and Indigenous Taiwan’s Bloodiest Uprising and Outcasts of Empire: Japanese Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border” 1874-1945, in addition to numerous scholarly articles, essays, and book-chapters. Barclay is the general editor of the East Asia Image Collection, an open-access digital archive featuring thousands of postcards and documents related to Japanese imperialism and military history. Barclay’s research has received support from the National Endowment from the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Japanese Council for the Promotion of Science, and the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.