Event: The “Lock on the Northern Gate”: Militarized Settler Colonialism on the Russo-Japanese Borderland

Please join a lunch time talk  "The “Lock on the Northern Gate”: Militarized Settler Colonialism on the Russo-Japanese Borderland" presented by  Dr. Michael Roellinghoff.

Dr. Michael Roellinghoff is a historian specializing in Indigeneity, settler colonialism, and race in modern Japan. He is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Alberta and an Associate at the University of Toronto Asian Institute. 

In this presentation, Michael Roellinghoff examines the lives of Japanese Tondenhei farmer-soldiers and their civilian family members in late 19th century Hokkaido. An occupying army, the Tondenhei both enforced Japanese claims to the unceded territories of the Ainu – Hokkaido’s Indigenous people – and protected these claims against the supposed machinations of the neighbouring Russian Empire. On this settler colonial borderland, Tondenhei villages became liminal spaces where distinctions between public/private, civilian/military, Indigenous/exogenous, and foreign/domestic were blurred.

All are welcome. 
Refreshments will be served.

Register here

Please RSVP by 8 Feb.