International Symposium 2025
＜Positional Paper＞
The Development Century in the Indian Ocean World
Recent studies have shown that the Indian Ocean has long been an interconnected world, with its continuous interaction of peoples, goods and ideas. While debates continue over how this interconnectedness and unity of the Indian Ocean World have transformed, it seems reasonable to argue that the waves of European colonialism with violent shift in power relations has brought about drastic changes in the way peoples interact with each other, as well as with their surrounding socio-ecological environment. Furthermore, since the 19th century, large-scale interventions in human societies and natural environments have been justified by “development” in this vast region. European nations such as Britain and France expanded into this region, establishing various institutions and infrastructure to secure its resources and markets. Meanwhile, during its imperial period, Japan advanced into Southeast Asia through its southward expansion policy, developing resources to sustain its total war efforts. After World War II, Japan became involved in the development of postcolonial Asian nations through technological assistance provided as war reparations. Additionally, the development of these nations was deeply entangled with the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War, unfolding within the competing interests of the United States and the Soviet Union.
This symposium is positioned as part of an attempt to conceptualize development not merely as a theory born in the mid-20th century in the West, but rather a broader temporal and spatial framework. Rather than rigidly defining the concept of development, our goal is to shed light on the diversity of development theories, discourses, and practices in the Indian Ocean world from local perspectives. By examining various case studies, we aim to engage in theoretical reflections on key themes such as the continuity between the colonial and postcolonial periods, the “legacies” of development, and the origins and hegemonic nature of international development. This symposium seeks to provide a platform for dialogue among scholars from different disciplines—including history, anthropology, and development studies—to explore in what sense we live in the century of development.
Program (draft)
TINDOWS International Symposium
The Development Century in the Indian Ocean World
Date: December 13 (Sat) – 14 (Sun), 2025
Venue: Auditorium, Building 18, Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo
Outline of the symposium
Recent scholarship has shown that the Indian Ocean has long been an interconnected world—a space where people, goods, and ideas have circulated for centuries. Yet the waves of European colonial expansion, with their violent reordering of power relations, transformed these networks and redefined the relations between human societies and their environments. From the nineteenth century onward, large-scale imperial interventions came to be justified in the name of “development,” establishing the moral and institutional foundations for what Macekura and Manela have called the development century—a global order structured by the promise of progress and the politics of inequality.
Although South Asia and Africa have often been studied separately, examining them through the lens of imperial science and its genealogical continuities in medicine, resource management, and postwar development aid reveals new and unexpected patterns of connection. European empires such as Britain and Germany, and later Japan, built infrastructures and institutions that linked distant regions through projects of extraction, welfare, and expertise. Japan’s trajectory—from an imperial power to a postwar donor and partner in international development—offers a distinctive window onto how knowledge, technology, and moral claims circulated across the Indian Ocean and beyond.
Revisiting the development century from this broader perspective, the symposium explores how ideas and practices of development emerged from, and reconfigured, longer histories of empire and science. By bringing together case studies from South and Southeast Asia and Africa—ranging from forestry and environmental management to pharmaceuticals, governance, and cooperation—it seeks to illuminate both the continuities and ruptures of empire, and the shifting images of “region” that take shape through Japan’s and others’ engagements in the Indian Ocean world.
Organizer: NIHU Indian Ocean World Studies Project
Co-hosted by IAGS (Institute for Advanced Global Studies, UTokyo), HSP (Graduate Program on Human Security, UTokyo), and The UTokyo Excellent Young Researcher Fund.
Program
Day 1 — Saturday, December 13
14:00 – 14:10
Opening Remarks
Prof. Yuichi Sekiya (The University of Tokyo)
Session I: Environment — The “Legacy” of Imperial Japan’s Forestry
14:10 – 14:35
Prof. Taisaku Komeie (Kyoto University)
The Ambivalent “Legacy” of Japanese Imperial Forestry in Korea
14:40 – 15:05
Prof. Koji Nakashima (Kanazawa University)
Development of Tropical Forestry: A (Post)colonial History of Japanese Empire Forestry
15:10 – 15:35
Prof. Kuang-Chi Hung (National Taiwan University)
The Legacy of Japan’s Colonial Forestry in Taiwan and Its Transformation during the Cold War
15:35 – 16:00
Comments and Replies
Commentator: Prof. Shoko Mizuno (Komazawa University)
16:00 – 16:15 Tea Break
16:15 – 17:00 Open Discussion (the end of Session I)
18:00 – Reception @ Kanran, par Lever son Verre Tokyo
Day 2 — Sunday, December 14
Session II: Medicine — Pharmaceutical Substances and Changing Forms of Governance
09:00 – 09:25
Prof. Ashok Malhotra (Queen’s University Belfast)
Establishing a Nutritional Research Institute in British India, 1925–27
09:30 – 09:55
Prof. Hiroyuki Isobe (Chuo University)
Colonial Revisionism of a Medical Nature?: Production and Distribution of the Drug “Germanin” against the African Trypanosoma, and Its Politicization in “Post-colonial” Germany during the Interwar Period
10:00 – 10:25
Prof. Ayami Umemura (Nagoya University)
Blood as Therapeutic and Political Substance: Ethnicity and Blood Donation in Sri Lanka
10:30 – 10:55
Prof. Akinori Hamada (The University of Tokyo)
Free, Promise, and Practicality: Distributing Pharmaceuticals with/out Care in Southern Ghana
10:55 – 11:30
Comments and Replies
Commentator: Prof. Takuro Furusawa (Kyoto University)
11:30 – 11:45 Tea Break
11:45 – 12:30 Open Discussion (the end of Session II)
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch Break
Session III: Development — Historicizing Japanese International Cooperation
13:30 – 13:55
Ms. Lulu Namvua Tessua (University of Nairobi)
The Dreams of Development: Three Years of a Successful Tenure and a Lifetime of Uncertainty in the Ndungu Agricultural Development Project
14:00 – 14:25
Prof. Louisa Lombard (Yale University)
Access or Culture in the Problem of Development: The Case of Kaizen
14:30 – 14:55
Ms. Naomi Hatsukano (Institute of Developing Economies)
Unrealized Development Assistance Plans in Cambodia from the Mid-1950s to Early 1960s: The Origins of Japan’s Development Assistance
15:00 – 15:25
Prof. Kaori Hatsumi (Seinan Gakuin University)
“Mannar Island for Sale”: The War, the COVID-19 Crisis, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
15:25 – 16:00
Comments and Replies
Commentator: Prof. Tatsuro Fujikura (Kyoto University)
16:00 – 16:10 Tea Break
16:10 – 16:55 Open Discussion (the end of Session III)
17:00 – 17:50 Concluding Roundtable — Reflections Across Sessions I–III
17:50 Closing Remarks