Call for abstracts for an edited volume ‘Eastern Asia and the Great War’

We are inviting the submission of abstracts for a chapter in a new edited volume on ‘Eastern Asia and the Great War’. East Asia is often omitted from academic analysis of the First World War, not just in Western historiography, but also in Chinese and Japanese accounts of the First World War, which was for example in China was often just called the ‘Ouzhou Dazhan’ = Great European War or in Japan even reduced to the ‘nichi-doku sensô’ = Japanese German War. The German historiography of the Great War in East Asia was so far limited largely to the occupation of the German colony at Qingdao and the German and Austrian POW in Japan. Yet, if the First World War is to be truly understood as a ‘World War’, it has to be seen in its global context and events on the East Asian Theatre or developments related to it have to be looked at and analyzed accordingly.

We invite chapters that relate to the following broad topics and regions:

· Japan’s colonial and imperial policy in the context of the political development since the Meiji Restoration up to her involvement in the Great War in relationship with the Western Powers;

· China as the colonial ‘arena’ of the Western Powers and Japan and China’s engagement in the First World War;

· Western Powers relationships in and on Eastern Asia, the Great War and the treaty ports, Eastern Asia in Western war planning;

· Special focus on Germany and Austria and their participation in the war in East Asia, German and Austrian-Hungarian POW in Japan and China, German civilians in Eastern Asia during and after the war.

These topics give the outline of the planned volume, the editors are open to ideas and suggestions on additional contributions.

Editors are Dr Sandra Barkhof, Plymouth University, Dr Cord Eberspächer, Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Düsseldorf and Christian Bormann, PhD candidate of the University of Bonn. Abstracts by final year PhD students and post-docs are welcome.

Abstracts should not exceed 400 words and should be submitted to Sandra.barkhof@plymouth.ac.uk by 30 July 2012. Abstracts can be written in English, German, Chinese or Japanese, the articles will have to be in English. Participants will receive note until the end of August. The articles should have a length of about 7-9000 words, deadline will be 30 November 2012.