The next meeting of the Japan History Group (JHG) at the Institute of Social Science (ISS), University of Tokyo, will be held on Wednesday,
11 December, at 6:00 PM in Conference Room No.1(Dai-Ichi Kaigishitsu) of the Institute of Social Science main Building.

Presenter: Alexandre Roy (JSPS Fellow, INALCO)

Title: 'The Expansion of the Japanese Coal Exports at the Eve of the 20th Century:
The Formation of a First "Japanese Eastern Asia" ?'

Discussant: Shinya Sugiyama (Professor, Keio
University)

Abstract:
The image of the Japanese Power expanding over the whole Eastern Asia is ordinarily limited to the military dimension of the Second World War. But before this, Japan already owned an economical "informal empire" and few know that it could be dated as far back to the 1890s. By 1900, the Japanese Coal Trade had already succeeded in dominating the Eastern Asia's coal market, from Shanghai to Singapore, including Hong Kong, with a share amounting to the three quarters of the whole demand. The historiography has explained this as the result of the growth of the Japanese coal industry stimulated by the intensification of the Imperialistic actions against China (so the Sino-Japanese War has been interpreted as the key-moment of the Expansion), suggesting that the competitors, English and Australian coals, have been "forced to move out from Asia". We will challenge this view in explaining the Japanese advance with regards to the global movements of the coal markets in the World at this time. Our work lead us to state that the Japanese advance has not faced fierce competition. but has rather benefited from the sudden absence of competitors in Eastern Asia: the English and Australian coals have actually fled away from this market to answer the huge growth demand in Europe and South America - marking the end of the Great Depression (1873-1893). Moreover, we will see that despite this opportunity, Japanese coals have been unable to expand toward India or across the Pacific. because of the growth of regional coal markets there too. Then the formation of the Japanese coal "Empire" in Eastern Asia then appears not as an isolate and unilateral phenomenon, but as a part of a global dynamic: a wide-scale regionalization of the coal markets in the World Economy related with the start of a new global Growth Cycle at the Eve of the Twentieth Century.

--
-------------------------------------------
Dr. Naofumi NAKAMURA
Professor of Business History
Institute of Social Science,
The University of Tokyo
naofumin[at]iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp