Engineering Asia

Engineering Asia traces the history of the economic development of post–World War II Asia. While conventional approaches to this history tend to employ the nation-state as a basic unit of analysis and focus on each nation’s specific conditions, this book is critical of this type of “nation-based miracle narrative” (1) and calls for the incorporation of regional and global factors within the historical contexts of both colonialism and the Cold War into our analysis. The images of postwar Asia’s economic development that the authors of Engineering Asia construct are intriguing in that they underline the immense role that colonialism played, thereby critiquing the widely received historical view that identifies a major break between the period of Japanese empire—until August 1945—and the period of independence, decolonization, and nation-building thereafter.Engineering Asia consists of nine chapters. In the introduction, Hiromi Mizuno, one of the editors, articulates the conceptual frameworks for the analysis of postwar Asia’s development. One of the most interesting contributions here is that she urges us to understand this development using the analogy of a “kula ring”—the exchange network of ceremonial gifts among local leaders on the islands in the Massim region in the Pacific. In this network, exchanged gifts are not expected to generate profit, but their values rest on their ability to enhance “the relationship of indebtedness and trust” (27). Mizuno claims that Japan’s war-reparations aid functioned in a similar manner, reinforcing the bond between the donor country/companies and Southeast Asian countries/peoples, arguing that this bond was required by both sides for their economic reconstruction and growth.The following eight chapters are divided into three parts. Part 1 (chapters 2 and 3) deals with the formation of postwar Japan’s domestic infrastructure, in terms of both institutions and knowledge, for economic cooperation in Asia. Part 2 (chapters 4–6) discusses concrete cases of Japan’s attempts to build and reinforce economic ties with the rest of Asia: dam construction in Burma, the extraction of petroleum in Indonesia, and a rice engineering project in Taiwan. Part 3 (chapters 7–9) draws our attention to South Korea’s attempts to secure its own autonomy in Asia, relative to both Japan and the United States, in the realms of scientific and technological research, agriculture, and industrialization. The chapters in part 3 allow us to observe striking similarities between Japan’s transwar efforts at economic development and South Korea’s postliberation efforts for the same purpose.In the field of Asian area studies in North America, modernization theory, designed to explain (and prescribe) the possible courses of economic development for non-Western countries in the Cold War era, still retains powerful influence and dictates how we conceptualize and narrate the historical experiences of Asia. Within this framework, the nation-state is a given, a stable category that one need not question. The arguments made in the nine chapters of Engineering Asia are novel and groundbreaking precisely because they force us to reconsider this conventional thinking and help us recognize the centrality of transnational and postcolonial perspectives to this subject. They successfully provide the reader with a comprehensive picture of the intricate economic network in East and Southeast Asia in the colonial era and its reorganization in the Cold War era. This is an extensive and ambitious research project made possible only by the collaborative work of these nine researchers, with their variety of specializations and geographical interests. They present a simply astonishing variety of empirical data in order to demonstrate the historical transformation of this network.Another fascinating point highlighted by Engineering Asia is the continuity in developmental ideology and practice from imperial Japan to postwar Japan. As the authors explain in detail, contradicting common wisdom, if we are to understand the history of Japan’s international aid, it is imperative to take into consideration the evolution from colonial development to postwar reparations to the full-fledged institutionalization of Official Development Assistance (ODA). One important implication of this argument is that postwar Japan has not been essentially different from imperial Japan, in that both are variations within the capitalist economic system. Postwar Japan’s government and corporations, just like those in imperial Japan, are characterized by a drive for profit accumulation, which by definition exceeds national borders, and this drive has shaped the country’s fundamental economic and diplomatic policies. This is a powerful critique of the postwar Japanese regime, which is often viewed as pacifist and whose economic aid is presented in terms of benevolent international cooperation. Furthermore, if we expand this point, it will also become possible to critique effectively the economic and humanitarian assistance provided to developing countries by developed nations—often former colonial powers—and international organizations such as the World Bank. In doing so we can identify the colonial nature, however subtle, of such support.The discussions in Engineering Asia stimulate our intellectual curiosity and draw our attention to many issues that are not directly addressed by the book but seem highly relevant. One such issue is colonial modernity. This concept was introduced to the field of Asian studies in the 1990s by the book Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, edited by Tani Barlow. Since then, many researchers have actively articulated the concept and applied it to the examination of the diverse colonial experiences of East Asia, in both China and Korea. At first glance, colonialism and modernity may appear contradictory: the former is about violence, domination, and suppression, whereas the latter is about progress, rationality, and freedom. But the concept of colonial modernity encourages us to consider the simultaneity of these two phenomena as manifestations of the massive transformation of the material conditions in East Asia since the nineteenth century, namely, the expansion of industrial capitalism. Reading Engineering Asia made me think about the applicability of this concept to not only East Asian but also Southeast Asian contexts. The book, particularly part 2, demonstrates how Japan’s postwar economic cooperation in Southeast Asia can be traced back to the prewar era, indicating the Japanese Empire’s crucial role in building the foundations for capitalist development in the region. If this is indeed the case, then I would be eager to learn more about the ideas and practices around modernity this economic change brought about during and after the war. A comparative analysis of colonial modernity between East and Southeast Asia would be an extremely exciting topic to explore. The cases explored in Engineering Asia seem to present an interesting opportunity to examine the theoretical validity of this concept.The other issue is that of violence. Engineering Asia tells us stories of various relations of domination and subordination. These include not only Japanese colonialism in East Asia and its occupation of Southeast Asia during World War II but also America’s geopolitical control over Japan and Korea, Japan’s continued economic domination in Southeast Asia, and Korea’s desire for economic expansion into Southeast Asia during the Cold War. While the book’s focus is on the trans–World War II economic network built in Asia, the authors are aware that this network structurally produced many instances of violence. In the introduction, Mizuno states, “Accepting the ‘miracle’ narrative commits violence twice: first, the physical violence that victims went through; and second, the symbolic violence by celebrating the kula ring elites of international development, thereby silencing the victims behind the ‘miracle’” (33). She follows this statement with several examples of these victims, such as Korean comfort women and Vietnamese civilians massacred by Korean soldiers during the Vietnam War. Later chapters comment on Japanese responsibility for strengthening the military regime in Burma (chapter 4) and the “ecological imperialism” pursued by imperial Japan and the Cold War United States (chapter 5), but the question of the violence immanent to the kula ring in Cold War Asia, especially that inflicted by US forces, does not seem fully addressed. On the one hand, this is understandable, since the book’s purpose is to clarify not the manifestation of each case of violence but the larger structure that generated those cases. And yet, I could not help going back to the question of violence while reading the book, since the postwar history of East and Southeast Asia is exactly the history in which the United States has built its empire in the region in the aftermath of Japanese empire, backed by its massive military and economic power. This question of the violence of American empire seems to me absolutely essential to the formation and maintenance of the economic network in Asia, and therefore I feel that it calls for further, more organized elaboration.These two points I have made concerning colonial modernity and violence are by no means meant as criticisms. I understand that one book cannot do everything. My aim here has been not to point out the shortcomings of the book but to highlight its relevance within the field of Asian studies and to identify possible directions for future study. In sum, Engineering Asia is an exciting study of the trans–World War II development of the economic network in East and Southeast Asia and should be read widely by researchers and students interested in the economic, political, geopolitical, and intellectual history of the region

Ancient history · Colonialism · Decolonization · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Literature · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · World War II · Asian Industrial and Economic Development · History · Law

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  Alvin Khiêm Bùi•Asiascape Digital Asia•2023

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