This Emmy Noether project proposal is a global environmental history of the Japanese Alps and the following colonization of East Asian mountain regions (here called the “Japanese Alpine Empire”). The aim of the project is to understand the role “alpine” knowledge played in changing and transforming fragile mountain ecosystems in East Asia and what consequences these had for the mountain communities. In this way, the project takes both a comparative intellectual history approach, by highlighting the similarities and differences with (colonial) European mountain conceptions, and a longue durée environmental history approach, by following the development of East Asian mountains over the course of the second half of the Little Ice Age (1550-1850), the Age of Imperialism (1850-1950) and the Anthropocene (1950-present).
DFG Programme
Emmy Noether Independent Junior Research Groups
International Connection
Japan, Switzerland, USA
