Global Thinkers Series. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2020. ix, 236pp. (Maps, illustrations.) US$55.00, paper. ISBN 978160463694.
Historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s recent book, On the Frontiers of History, brings a potent combination of anthropological questioning toward the study of history and areas in East Asia and beyond. The strength and intrigue of the book are in its focus on the arbitrariness of boundary formation and especially its careful nuance and discussion of peripheral peoples. The narrative gives cultural voice to these historic actors and processes marginalized from territorialization and therefore conventional approaches to the concept of “region.” In the introduction, Morris-Suzuki proposes the model of what she calls anti-area studies, which is steeped in some of the methodologies of area studies, but eschews accepting the established territory as the economic or social unit thus projected back in time, as nation-states are wont to do. As Morris-Suzuki rightly observes, in order to question spatial frontiers, we also must question those frontiers that we draw in time (3).
In addition to an introduction and conclusion, On the Frontiers of History consists of eight chapters: 1. Anti-Area Studies Revisited; 2. Mapping Time and Space; 3. ‘Tartary’ in the Reshaping of Historical Thought; 4. Unthinking Civilisation: An Imbricated History of the Okhotsk Region; 5. The Telescope and the Tinderbox: Rediscovering La Pérouse in the North Pacific; 6. Lines in the Snow: The Making of the Russo-Japanese Frontier; 7. Indigeneity and Modernity in Colonial Karafuto; and finally, 8. Japan and its Region: From Tartary to the Emergence of the New Area Studies. A unifying theme across these chapters is the connection between border delineation and how this has ongoing effects in cultural life. Here, I am reminded of Thai historian Thongchai Winichakul’s work Siam Mapped, and his observation that anthropologists such as Edmund Leach have demonstrated both the arbitrariness and recent origin of boundaries, but the constructivists (according to Thongchai) have seldom considered the positive role of the border as a creator of nationhood (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994, 17). Morris-Suzuki takes both sides of this border coin, its arbitrariness as well as its formative power, into her considerations, but also asks rigorous questions regarding the framing of history—indeed, its periodization is a form of measurement and boundary making as well. As the author rightly points out, borders and maps can occlude more than they indicate.
While the early chapters take to task the issues of territory and mapping during earlier centuries, in later chapters the Cold War discourses of area studies come into focus. According to Euro-American area studies institutions, there has been a colonial or imperial impetus behind the projects although their actual practitioners may focus on cultural, musical, or philological aspects of the places and cultures of interest; area studies, while set up with strategic interests in mind, is not automatically in service of those strategic goals. As Morris-Suzuki quotes American anthropologist Julian Steward, the project of area studies is four-fold: provide knowledge of practical value about world areas; give students and scholars an awareness of cultural relativity; provide an understanding of social and cultural wholes as they exist in areas; and further the development of a universal social science (7).
One of the many strengths of the book is the breadth of its case studies and the ways in which processes in distant parts of the world reverberate with the project to challenge how we think about East Asian borders. For example, chapter 2 explores the relationship between Enlightenment philosophy and the so-called Age of Exploration, and how techne and practices of mapping not only induced a new paradigm for understanding the frontier as a discrete two-dimensional line on a map, but also indexed new ways of thinking about time and space. Finally, these atlases also imposed representations and classifications of “types” and “races” according to these mapped territories, creating a powerful heuristic device for understanding difference, on the one hand, but also for considering the (relative) homogeneity within a locale, as it were. The book artfully traces through and considers the arbitrary ways in which these paradigms for understanding territories became powerful, and are defended. As a result, we can on the one hand discover the powerful processes that established these sovereignties, but on the other, explore the gaps, fissures, and contradictions that survive in the present, living on in memory and in practice. For example, one of these moments is beautifully illustrated by Morris-Suzuki in her opening vignette, meeting families as they travel to Sakhalin, as Karafuto had been occupied by Japan in the early decades of the twentieth century.
In sum, On the Frontiers of History is an exciting and readable foray into East Asian borderlands from local historical perspectives, and in relation to area studies. It will be of interest to students and scholars of the region and well beyond.
Jane M. Ferguson
The Australian National University, Canberra