This thesis explores the changing approach of the Chosŏn state to subjects with foreign lineages in the period between the Imjin War (1592-98) and the early nineteenth century. Chosŏn Korea underwent considerable upheaval during the Imjin War and the wars of the Ming-Qing transition. Many Jurchen subjects of the Chosŏn court were forced from their homes in the Tumen Valley into the banner armies of the rising Qing state, with only a remnant persisting in Chosŏn. Additionally, large numbers of Ming Chinese entered Chosŏn either with the Ming army or as refugees from war in Liaodong. Initially, the Chosŏn state responded to its Jurchen and Ming Chinese subjects primarily through pragmatic concern about the loyalty of these subjects to the Chosŏn and the burden they imposed on the agricultural economy. As a result, the Chosŏn court welcomed and even defended the Jurchen as established Chosŏn subjects but was cautious of the more alien Ming deserters and refugees. Ming migrant status did not improve during the remainder of the seventeenth century. Ming Chinese lineages were considered, along with Jurchen and Japanese, within the same invidious submitting foreigner tax category. During the same period fraudulent Ming migrants became a focus for sedition among non-elites. The eighteenth century rise of Ming Loyalist ritualism transformed the response of the Chosŏn court to such foreign lineages as Ming migrant lineages were encouraged to participate in court-sponsored Ming loyalist rituals. Along with this ritual participation Ming migrant status was transformed from that of submitting foreigners to that of imperial subjects, while Jurchen and Japanese lineages disappeared. At the same time, hagiographic biographies were written of the original Ming Chinese refugees which praised them for coming to Chosŏn because of Neo-Confucian loyalty to the Ming. The Chosŏn state responded to foreign lineages according to changing circumstances. Neo-Confucian ritualism only played a role in response to Ming lineages in the eighteenth century when earlier concerns about disloyalty and social disruption had largely passed.

My dissertation involves a critique of the concept of life or seimei as it emerged in modern use during the Meiji era (1868-1912). Specifically, I have outlined the conditions of possibility for thinking seimei at particular moments in the development of the modern, market-centered Japanese nation-state in historical and literary terms such that I can begin to use these conditions to think its impossibilities. In short, I argue that a central condition of possibility for thinking life in its modern, historical form is a process of individuation that takes hold of and shapes bodies at an ontological level. By critiquing life and its ontology of individuation, I unearth the traces of an impossible “apriori collectivism” - that is, a collectivism not merely reducible to a congregation of individuals, but originally collective – buried under the calls for individual freedom, self-help, and industrialization that were at the heart of the Meiji era’s modernization project. I track this apriori collectivism in a lineage relating (through non-relation) the mutual aid societies or mujin-kô of the Edo period to the life insurance industry of the Meiji 10s and 20s. I then use this material history of life as backdrop to my study of the literary trends in the latter decades of the Meiji era, and end with a consideration of the political and aesthetic implications seimei has for thought by taking up a study of Iwano Hômei’s Shinpiteki hanjûshugi (Mystical Demi-animalism).

Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Datsu-A Ron is a relic of Japan’s modern nationalism. Since its’ publication in the year of 1885, arguably, it had been branded as the very seed that led Japan onto the war path in the Pacific War. Yet, this rather short and dense pre-war Japanese nationalistic theory contains complex layers that may easily complicate its readers’ comprehensions. The purpose of this thesis is to decode the key words that were used in this theory and dissect the layers of this theory’s intentions to the general public for a clear and objective understanding.

In 1931, judo became a compulsory subject in middle schools throughout Japan, over forty-years after Kanō Jigorō, judo's founder, had initially recommended it to government officials as something which should be included in the schools across the country. While this simple change in middle school curriculum may seem insignificant, it was in fact a watershed marking a new stage of the creation of an able and disciplined populace in Japan. This thesis will explain the significance of the inclusion of judo in schools by investigating the history of judo up to the point of its inclusion in schools, exploring the rhetoric of judo in terms of a larger discourse on "moral education" which was prevalent during the times, and finally an analysis of school judo—in terms of its physical practice as well as the ideology and rhetoric behind it—using the Foucauldian concept of "docile bodies."

Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Datsu-A Ron is a relic of Japan’s modern nationalism. Since its’ publication in the year of 1885, arguably, it had been branded as the very seed that led Japan onto the war path in the Pacific War. Yet, this rather short and dense pre-war Japanese nationalistic theory contains complex layers that may easily complicate its readers’ comprehensions. The purpose of this thesis is to decode the key words that were used in this theory and dissect the layers of this theory’s intentions to the general public for a clear and objective understanding.

In 1931, judo became a compulsory subject in middle schools throughout Japan, over forty-years after Kanō Jigorō, judo's founder, had initially recommended it to government officials as something which should be included in the schools across the country. While this simple change in middle school curriculum may seem insignificant, it was in fact a watershed marking a new stage of the creation of an able and disciplined populace in Japan. This thesis will explain the significance of the inclusion of judo in schools by investigating the history of judo up to the point of its inclusion in schools, exploring the rhetoric of judo in terms of a larger discourse on "moral education" which was prevalent during the times, and finally an analysis of school judo—in terms of its physical practice as well as the ideology and rhetoric behind it—using the Foucauldian concept of "docile bodies."

This thesis explores the changing approach of the Chosŏn state to subjects with foreign lineages in the period between the Imjin War (1592-98) and the early nineteenth century. Chosŏn Korea underwent considerable upheaval during the Imjin War and the wars of the Ming-Qing transition. Many Jurchen subjects of the Chosŏn court were forced from their homes in the Tumen Valley into the banner armies of the rising Qing state, with only a remnant persisting in Chosŏn. Additionally, large numbers of Ming Chinese entered Chosŏn either with the Ming army or as refugees from war in Liaodong. Initially, the Chosŏn state responded to its Jurchen and Ming Chinese subjects primarily through pragmatic concern about the loyalty of these subjects to the Chosŏn and the burden they imposed on the agricultural economy. As a result, the Chosŏn court welcomed and even defended the Jurchen as established Chosŏn subjects but was cautious of the more alien Ming deserters and refugees. Ming migrant status did not improve during the remainder of the seventeenth century. Ming Chinese lineages were considered, along with Jurchen and Japanese, within the same invidious submitting foreigner tax category. During the same period fraudulent Ming migrants became a focus for sedition among non-elites. The eighteenth century rise of Ming Loyalist ritualism transformed the response of the Chosŏn court to such foreign lineages as Ming migrant lineages were encouraged to participate in court-sponsored Ming loyalist rituals. Along with this ritual participation Ming migrant status was transformed from that of submitting foreigners to that of imperial subjects, while Jurchen and Japanese lineages disappeared. At the same time, hagiographic biographies were written of the original Ming Chinese refugees which praised them for coming to Chosŏn because of Neo-Confucian loyalty to the Ming. The Chosŏn state responded to foreign lineages according to changing circumstances. Neo-Confucian ritualism only played a role in response to Ming lineages in the eighteenth century when earlier concerns about disloyalty and social disruption had largely passed.

This thesis traces the history of Conscientious Objection and draft evasion from the introduction of the Universal Male Conscription system in 1949 to the end of the authoritarian dictatorship period in 1993. I especially focus on the persecution and stigmatization of religious Conscientious Objector groups such as the South Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists. The negative labeling of these Conscientious Objectors as social deviants is part of an initiative led by the South Korean state to solidify Universal Male Conscription as a social norm. This process was supported by the implementation of a national surveillance system as well as the intensification of a nation-wide crackdown on draft evasion, which was viewed indifferently from Conscientious Objection. Thus, this project reveals the ostracization of Conscientious Objection as well as the normalization of Universal Male Conscription as an interconnected issue that came to be perpetuated throughout South Korean History.

This thesis traces the history of Conscientious Objection and draft evasion from the introduction of the Universal Male Conscription system in 1949 to the end of the authoritarian dictatorship period in 1993. I especially focus on the persecution and stigmatization of religious Conscientious Objector groups such as the South Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists. The negative labeling of these Conscientious Objectors as social deviants is part of an initiative led by the South Korean state to solidify Universal Male Conscription as a social norm. This process was supported by the implementation of a national surveillance system as well as the intensification of a nation-wide crackdown on draft evasion, which was viewed indifferently from Conscientious Objection. Thus, this project reveals the ostracization of Conscientious Objection as well as the normalization of Universal Male Conscription as an interconnected issue that came to be perpetuated throughout South Korean History.

My dissertation, Making Imperial Futures: Concepts of Empire in the Anglo-Spanish Sphere, 1763-71, engages the grand narrative of exploration at the point at which that very concept was reaching the point of exhaustion and argues that the rough completion of European cartographical knowledge of the world had a profound impact on the evolution of the imperial experience. I examine the evolving concept of empire within a context of cross-imperial knowledge and rivalry, Enlightenment ideals and the changing ways in which Europeans related to the concept of a progressive future. Furthermore, I challenge the historiographically dominant notion that the British and Spanish experiences of empire are best categorized and isolated as distinct historical subjects. The first section shows that British successes in the Seven Years’ War energised the British imperial imagination, generating a broad-based debate on how best to exploit the situation and opening up the opportunity to put more than one approach into action when Britain and Spain went to war in 1762. But the Peace of Paris brought discord, and a perceived need for the government to discipline the imperial imagination and to establish an approved pathway for the future of empire in the Atlantic world. The second part looks at how the Spanish government applied state power in direct pursuit of the pan-Atlantic imperial project. In particular, it re-examines the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish empire in 1767 and makes the argument that the expulsion was a response to the perceived Jesuit threat to pan-Atlantic imperial norms. My third section suggests that the experimental burst of modern, state-centric imperialism that began in the wake of the Seven Years’ War suffered a reversal during the Falklands Crisis of 1770-1, during the general historical moment in which Europeans finished constructing their shared cartographical conception of the world. Although the growth of state power and impetus was temporarily reversed to some extent in the 1770s, this period helps prefigure the more extensive shift from empires primarily based on exploration and tenuous consolidation to empires that depended on dense, active exploitation to lend validity to their ontological claims.