Report: Cambridge workshop ‘Mapping the end of empire: coming to terms with the Pacific War’ – by Jiayi Tao
The twentieth century has seen unprecedented violence, not only on the battlefields in Europe and Asia, but also against civilians who suffered large-scale deportation and forced migration in both European and Asian theatres of the Second World War. Many members of the ERC GLORE team presented at the workshop ‘Mapping the end of empire: coming to terms with the Pacific War’, held at the University of Cambridge on 10 September 2024. Focusing on Shanghai as a hub of displacement and departure in the 1940s, this workshop scrutinised the global connections which linked ex-Nazi Germany (today Germany and Austria) to Asia, and the uncertainties that refugees and international organisations encountered during the episode of post-WWII resettlement. Aware that Shanghai, politically divided during the colonial era (until 1943), had a pre-war and wartime history of offering protection to Asian and European refugees, we pay attention to the racialised categorisation, the evolution of infrastructure that sustained global resettlement, the fragility of and limitations of refugees who wished to exert agency, and in a longer timeframe, their lives after departure from Shanghai. The workshop was generously funded by the DAAD Cambridge hub, co-convened by Kerstin von Lingen (Vienna) and Barak Kushner (Cambridge).
This fruitful workshop was joined by scholars on refugee histories and historians specialising in China, Japan, and Russia. Jiayi Tao highlighted the intersection of various refugee groups’ histories in Shanghai and the radicalisation of ethnic tension at the post-war moment. Robert Bickers, in his comments, reminded us of the long existence of colonial hierarchy in China’s foreign concessions. By examining the post-WWII resettlement of Eurasian orphans from Shanghai, Raphaela Bollwein stressed race as a crucial dimension in forming new national belongings. Yujie Zhu was impressed by the key tension between individual and institutional agencies in this case. Gender was central to Franziska Lamp’s research on the experience of single women among the Shanghai repatriates. Johannes Glack brought our attention to the elderly Jewish refugees from Shanghai and a hybrid of motivations that shaped the IRO’s corresponding resettlement schemes. These stimulating presentations sparked dialogues on the agency of refugees, and as Jessica Reinisch highlighted, their lack of agency in various circumstances.
A diversity of approaches was exploited to explore global connections. Lena Christoph presented her findings through interviews with Russian immigrants who had been Shanghai residents and now lived in San Francisco, which was followed by heated discussion around the critical use of oral interviews. Dominic Lieven pointed out the particularities of the group of political refugees of ‘white Russians’ after the Bolshevik revolution, and their transit to Asia, especially to Harbin and Shanghai. Elisabeth Czerniak investigated the life trajectory of a Viennese doctor who struggled to find new homes after Shanghai. In his comments, Xin Fan suggested using imagination and focusing on decision-making moments when information was limited. Using digital humanities methodologies, Konstantin Schischka revealed that US pilot veterans continued to be mobilised after Japan’s surrender, sustaining the establishment of charter airlines for refugees. Dominic Lieven then suggested the potential to connect this episode with that of the repatriation of Japanese to Japan.
All the papers showed a strong interest in exploring how experiences of resettlement varied by gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, and age. Peter Gatrell rightly reminded us of the complexity of emotions. Displacement did not always indicate a sense of estrangement, but it could also render individuals a sense of satisfaction about them being capable of determining their own futures. Some of the papers will be developed into a chapter of the PhD projects or a journal article. We look forward to transforming inspiring discussions in Cambridge into future publications.
