Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria

by Joseph A. Seeley, Albert L. Park (Foreword by)

Overview

Border of Water and Ice explores the significance of the Yalu River as a strategic border between Korea and Manchuria (Northeast China) during a period of Japanese imperial expansion into the region. The Yalu's seasonal patterns of freezing, thawing, and flooding shaped colonial efforts to control who and what could cross the border. Joseph A. Seeley shows how the unpredictable movements of water, ice, timber-cutters, anti-Japanese guerrillas, smugglers, and other borderland actors also spilled outside the bounds set by Japanese colonizers, even as imperial border-making reinforced Japan's wider political and economic power.

Drawing on archival sources in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and English, Seeley tells the story of the river and the imperial border haphazardly imposed on its surface from 1905 to 1945 to show how rivers and other nonhuman actors play an active role in border creation and maintenance. Emphasizing the tenuous, environmentally contingent nature of imperial border governance, Border of Water and Ice argues for the importance of understanding history across the different seasons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501777387
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2024
Series:	The Environments of East Asia
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Joseph A. Seeley is Assistant Professor in the Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia. He specializes in the histories of Korea, the Japanese Empire, and East Asian environments and borderlands.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Albert L. Park
Introduction
1. Reeds, Fish, Timber, and Defining the Yalu Border
2. Bridging the Yalu
3. Seasons of Yalu River Border Policing
4. Environments of Yalu River Smuggling
5. Dam Construction and "Manchurian-Korean Unity"
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Micah Muscolino

In rich detail, Border of Water and Ice demonstrates the tenuous and environmentally contingent nature of Japanese imperial governance of the Yalu River and shows how the fluid and seasonal movement of people and goods across the river exposed the limits of imperial authority.

Philip C. Brown

Border of Water and Ice distinguishes itself through its multilingual breadth and nuanced analysis of the interactions of environment, economic exchange, and individual and state action in a complex border region. This book is a welcome addition to the body of sophisticated East Asian environmental history scholarship.

Editorial Reviews

Seeley's work examines a specific period in the Yalu River's history, when the Empire of Japan decided to bend the river to its will and reshape its flow.. . Border of Water and Ice is an innovative and imaginative work.

Studies in Intelligence