BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//pretalx//pretalx.com//wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026//speaker//WKR W9F BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:KST BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20000101T000000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=1 TZNAME:KST TZOFFSETFROM:+0900 TZOFFSETTO:+0900 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:pretalx-wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026-TGGT88@pretalx.com DTSTART;TZID=KST:20260626T083000 DTEND;TZID=KST:20260626T100000 DESCRIPTION:During the interwar years\, British East Africa and Japan becam e linked through a set of commercial\, informational\, and cultural entang lements that unfolded with remarkable speed. Within a decade\, Japanese tr ading companies opened direct shipping lines to Mombasa\, entered regional distribution networks\, and transformed everyday material life: East Afri cans adopted Japanese shoes\, clothing\, enamelware\, and other household goods. By the early 1930s\, Japanese manufacturers were displacing British products across the region\, unsettling established commercial hierarchie s and prompting British officials to reassess the security of imperial mar kets.\n\nScholarship has largely approached this encounter through British archives\, which portray Japan as a threatening intruder into “protecte d” imperial space. Yet Japanese sources—trade journals\, consular repo rts\, industrial surveys\, and exporters’ writings—reveal a far more c omplex set of relationships. They illuminate how Japanese actors interpret ed African societies\, evaluated British colonial rule\, and positioned th emselves within a global order characterized by shifting imperial rivalrie s and intensifying South–South connections.\n\nThis panel asks how Japan ’s presence reshaped British East Africa—and\, equally\, how East Afri ca reshaped Japanese understandings of empire\, markets\, and civilization al hierarchy. Taking Japan not simply as a competitor but as a trans-imper ial actor operating within the British imperial economy while remaining ou tside its governing structures\, the panel interrogates the multiple roles Japan occupied: competitor\, collaborator\, interpreter\, and catalyst. C ollectively\, the papers argue that Japanese activities exposed vulnerabil ities within the British Empire\, generated new forms of knowledge about A frican markets\, and opened spaces for East African consumer agency.\n\nBy foregrounding the reciprocal production of information\, the civilizing d iscourses embedded in manufactured goods\, and the co-creation of new mate rial cultures\, the panel contributes to emerging debates in world and imp erial history on trans-imperialism\, global commodity circuits\, and the r ole of non-Western empires in shaping African colonial economies. DTSTAMP:20260412T123931Z LOCATION:Room 403 PC Desk (Seats 30) SUMMARY:Trans-Imperial Entanglements: British East Africa and Japan in th e Interwar World - Miki Sugiura\, Robert Fletcher\, Hideaki Suzuki URL:https://pretalx.com/wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026/talk/TGGT88/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR