Konrad Lawson (St Andrews): Perpetual Peace and Great Harmony: Utopian Visions of World Unity in Occupation Japan
Abstract
The immediate aftermath of the Second World War brought to a climax the efforts of the most ambitious cosmopolitans to gather support for the establishment of some form of world state or federation that would subject national sovereignty to unprecedented limits. After setting a global context for a resurgence in globalist ambitions in the early postwar period, this talk will explore the way Japanese intellectuals, politicians, and activists of sometimes very differing backgrounds adapted some of their pre-war and wartime visions to a new postwar environment.
Konrad M. Lawson is a Lecturer in Modern History and co-director of the Institute for Transnational and Spatial History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is currently revising his manuscript, Wartime Atrocities and the Politics of Treason in the Ruins of the Japanese Empire, 1937-1953 explores the relationship between war crimes and treason in retribution against the military and police collaborators who helped maintain Japan’s wartime occupations until its defeat in 1945.
Time and Place
Thursday, November 29 2018, 6pm-8-pm
Oettingstr. 67, Room 161
Downloads
- GIH Talk Poster Konrad Lawson (2 MByte)