Isaac C.K (Chun Kiang) Tan is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Japanese history. Before coming to Columbia, he was teaching history and mathematics at a public high school in Singapore. His research interests include Japanese imperialism and colonialism, history of medicine, science, and technology, Chosŏn Korea, and late imperial China. He is also interested in environmental and natural history, memory studies, and the historical conception of a/the “body” in the East Asian context. He received the 2021 AIHP Glenn Sonnedecker Prize for a manuscript on the dispensing separation issue in Japan.
More information on his academic profile can be found at https://tckisaac.wordpress.com. Address: New York
From December 1922 to February 1929, two Englishmen, Lieutenant-Colonel John Champion Faunthorpe ... more From December 1922 to February 1929, two Englishmen, Lieutenant-Colonel John Champion Faunthorpe and Arthur Stannard Vernay, led six expeditions to the Indian subcontinent to collect animal specimens for the newly refurbished American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This article argues that the Vernay-Faunthorpe Expeditions were an expression of a new form of Anglo-American relations that engaged the language of scientific knowledge in maintaining Western hegemonic influence in the early twentieth century. Inspired by genuine scientific objectives as much as by aspirations to reassert Western hegemony in a time of rising nationalism and declining imperial influence, this timely collaboration reimagined imperialism beyond territorial expansion, but in the discursive spaces of indigenous nature and wildlife exhibitions.
Situated approximately ninety miles from Fukuoka, and just thirty miles from Busan, the island of... more Situated approximately ninety miles from Fukuoka, and just thirty miles from Busan, the island of Tsushima/Taema-do has been at the crossroad of East Asian geopolitics since the time of the Chosŏn court and the Muromachi/Ashikaga bakufu. In differentiating its position between a maritime “frontier” and a “border(is)land,” this article argues how various historical agents from the island mediate the different hegemonic influences from Korea and Japan since the fifteenth century. I begin by examining Tsushima/Taema-do as a “frontier” where different influences overlapped and coexisted simultaneously. Then, I explore how the assertion of its identity as a “border(is)land” detached from the centralized political institutions empowered the island to negotiate its dealings with the respective political centers. The last section focuses on non-state actors, specifically the local population and the pirate community, in articulating their agency by forms of negotiation and violence. Hence by reconceptualizing the island as a historical agent in its own right, this article highlights the need to consider the geographical and ideological space negotiated by the island during several major historical ruptures in the early modern period as Tsushima carved out its distinctive position in East Asian geopolitics.
In 1924, the South Manchurian Railway Company adopted a system of fingerprint differentiation to ... more In 1924, the South Manchurian Railway Company adopted a system of fingerprint differentiation to regulate the influx of Chinese miners into the Fushun coal mines. From the regulation of miners to criminal differentiation, and later to the creation of a national citizenship, fingerprinting was a key part in the various stages of Japanese intervention in the territory of Manchuria. When Manchukuo was formed in 1932, fingerprint technology was transformed into an administrative tool for effective control of the indigenous populations. However, similar to the fate of other ambitious projects, a national identity founded on a fingerprinting census failed to come to fruition. This article argues how science and technology was never immune from imperialistic and nationalistic interests as seen in the example of fingerprinting where the historical development represented aspirations for scientific development, modernization, as well as political and economic progression. It shall incorporate paradigms in the history of science and technology into current historiography of the Japanese process of empire-building, to reveal how a scientific knowledge, such as fingerprinting, is positioned in the global history of labor discipline and empire-building.
This article argues that war memories of transnational ethnic groups remain relevant and expedien... more This article argues that war memories of transnational ethnic groups remain relevant and expedient in constructing modern national history in this age of globalization. In narrating the history of the overseas Chinese Nanyang Volunteers, I discuss how this particular war memory was marginalized not just by the power stakeholders but within the community as well. It was not till the 1980s when alternate war narratives began emerging in public spaces and both the Singapore state and the civil society collaborated in reconfiguring public spaces for the commemoration of the Nanyang Volunteers, framing them as part of a “globalized war memory”.
Alternative Representations of the Past: The Politics of History in Modern China, 2021
A Malayan Chinese, Dr. Robert Kho-Seng Lim (1897-1969) served under the Republican banner while C... more A Malayan Chinese, Dr. Robert Kho-Seng Lim (1897-1969) served under the Republican banner while Canadian-born Dr. Henry Norman Bethune (1890 -1939), better known as Bai Qiu’en, was among the Communist ranks since the Yan’an years. Upon Bethune’s premature death in 1939, he became a household name among the Chinese after Mao delivered his famous eulogy. As for Lim, he faded into obscurity after his departure from Taiwan in the initial years after the end of the Chinese Civil War. How then should we treat the stories of these individuals who transcended national boundaries and did not fit neatly in the modern national narratives of China and Taiwan? I argue that the “chronopolitics” of memory as shaped by the geopolitical situation of the Cold War created the conditions for the remembering, forgetting, distortion, and suppression of the memories of these transnational individuals. By examining the lives of Bethune and Lim, I emphasize the importance of micro-narratives of individuals in introducing a human dimension to global history. This chapter thus evinces the underlying discursive tensions surrounding representations of individuals in collective memory as well as the (mis)representation of individuals who do not fit neatly in both state-centric and nation-centric historical narratives of modern China.
From December 1922 to February 1929, two Englishmen, Lieutenant-Colonel John Champion Faunthorpe ... more From December 1922 to February 1929, two Englishmen, Lieutenant-Colonel John Champion Faunthorpe and Arthur Stannard Vernay, led six expeditions to the Indian subcontinent to collect animal specimens for the newly refurbished American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This article argues that the Vernay-Faunthorpe Expeditions were an expression of a new form of Anglo-American relations that engaged the language of scientific knowledge in maintaining Western hegemonic influence in the early twentieth century. Inspired by genuine scientific objectives as much as by aspirations to reassert Western hegemony in a time of rising nationalism and declining imperial influence, this timely collaboration reimagined imperialism beyond territorial expansion, but in the discursive spaces of indigenous nature and wildlife exhibitions.
Situated approximately ninety miles from Fukuoka, and just thirty miles from Busan, the island of... more Situated approximately ninety miles from Fukuoka, and just thirty miles from Busan, the island of Tsushima/Taema-do has been at the crossroad of East Asian geopolitics since the time of the Chosŏn court and the Muromachi/Ashikaga bakufu. In differentiating its position between a maritime “frontier” and a “border(is)land,” this article argues how various historical agents from the island mediate the different hegemonic influences from Korea and Japan since the fifteenth century. I begin by examining Tsushima/Taema-do as a “frontier” where different influences overlapped and coexisted simultaneously. Then, I explore how the assertion of its identity as a “border(is)land” detached from the centralized political institutions empowered the island to negotiate its dealings with the respective political centers. The last section focuses on non-state actors, specifically the local population and the pirate community, in articulating their agency by forms of negotiation and violence. Hence by reconceptualizing the island as a historical agent in its own right, this article highlights the need to consider the geographical and ideological space negotiated by the island during several major historical ruptures in the early modern period as Tsushima carved out its distinctive position in East Asian geopolitics.
In 1924, the South Manchurian Railway Company adopted a system of fingerprint differentiation to ... more In 1924, the South Manchurian Railway Company adopted a system of fingerprint differentiation to regulate the influx of Chinese miners into the Fushun coal mines. From the regulation of miners to criminal differentiation, and later to the creation of a national citizenship, fingerprinting was a key part in the various stages of Japanese intervention in the territory of Manchuria. When Manchukuo was formed in 1932, fingerprint technology was transformed into an administrative tool for effective control of the indigenous populations. However, similar to the fate of other ambitious projects, a national identity founded on a fingerprinting census failed to come to fruition. This article argues how science and technology was never immune from imperialistic and nationalistic interests as seen in the example of fingerprinting where the historical development represented aspirations for scientific development, modernization, as well as political and economic progression. It shall incorporate paradigms in the history of science and technology into current historiography of the Japanese process of empire-building, to reveal how a scientific knowledge, such as fingerprinting, is positioned in the global history of labor discipline and empire-building.
This article argues that war memories of transnational ethnic groups remain relevant and expedien... more This article argues that war memories of transnational ethnic groups remain relevant and expedient in constructing modern national history in this age of globalization. In narrating the history of the overseas Chinese Nanyang Volunteers, I discuss how this particular war memory was marginalized not just by the power stakeholders but within the community as well. It was not till the 1980s when alternate war narratives began emerging in public spaces and both the Singapore state and the civil society collaborated in reconfiguring public spaces for the commemoration of the Nanyang Volunteers, framing them as part of a “globalized war memory”.
Alternative Representations of the Past: The Politics of History in Modern China, 2021
A Malayan Chinese, Dr. Robert Kho-Seng Lim (1897-1969) served under the Republican banner while C... more A Malayan Chinese, Dr. Robert Kho-Seng Lim (1897-1969) served under the Republican banner while Canadian-born Dr. Henry Norman Bethune (1890 -1939), better known as Bai Qiu’en, was among the Communist ranks since the Yan’an years. Upon Bethune’s premature death in 1939, he became a household name among the Chinese after Mao delivered his famous eulogy. As for Lim, he faded into obscurity after his departure from Taiwan in the initial years after the end of the Chinese Civil War. How then should we treat the stories of these individuals who transcended national boundaries and did not fit neatly in the modern national narratives of China and Taiwan? I argue that the “chronopolitics” of memory as shaped by the geopolitical situation of the Cold War created the conditions for the remembering, forgetting, distortion, and suppression of the memories of these transnational individuals. By examining the lives of Bethune and Lim, I emphasize the importance of micro-narratives of individuals in introducing a human dimension to global history. This chapter thus evinces the underlying discursive tensions surrounding representations of individuals in collective memory as well as the (mis)representation of individuals who do not fit neatly in both state-centric and nation-centric historical narratives of modern China.
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