Mooring the Global Archive
A Japanese Ship and its Migrant Histories

Tracing a Japanese steamship's journeys in the 1880s-90s, this is the first analysis of archival methodologies in writing global history.

Martin Dusinberre (Author)

9781009346511, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 October 2023

328 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.62 kg

'I have not encountered any other work like it. The book is both a study of a ship and its voyages and a close account of Dusinberre's own journey through a wide variety of archival sites, as he painstakingly reconstructs the lives and experiences of the migrants and other people connected to the Yamashiromaru both on board and ashore. The sources that he uses range from letters, diaries, and government documents to gravestones, photographs, maps, and paintings. The author makes a case for self-reflective and imaginative historical research and writing, urging scholars to pay close attention to colonial contexts and Indigenous perspectives and to 'the brackish spaces … between physical and digitized archives' that challenge accepted methodologies and interpretations.' Steven J. Ericson, American Historical Review

Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship across Asian and Pacific waters in an innovative history of Japan's engagement with the outside world in the late-nineteenth century. His compelling in-depth analysis reconstructs the lives of some of the thousands of male and female migrants who left Japan for work in Hawai'i, Southeast Asia and Australia. These stories bring together transpacific historiographies of settler colonialism, labour history and resource extraction in new ways. Drawing on an unconventional and deeply material archive, from gravestones to government files, paintings to song, and from digitized records to the very earth itself, Dusinberre addresses key questions of method and authorial positionality in the writing of global history. This engaging investigation into archival practice asks, what is the global archive, where is it cited, and who are 'we' as we cite it? This title is also available as Open Access.

Note on the Text
Preface
1. Archival traps
2. Between the archives
3. Outside the archive
4. Archival country, counter claims
5. The archive and I
6. The burned archive
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]