Global Imperial Cities of the Pacific World: 1900-2000

The history of the twentieth-century Pacific World is the history of imperialism on a global scale. And cities were both the stages and actors of this global dynamic of domination and resistance. We will examine ten cities around the Pacific Rim (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seoul, Panama, Auckland, Shanghai, Lima, Singapore, Kyoto, and Ho Chi Minh City) and explore how we can use local historical sources to study the transnational processes of empire-building and capitalism. In this class, we learn to read city plans, maps, business documents, policy documents, newspapers, photos, diaries, interviews, and landscapes to do environmental, colonial, international, social, gender, and cultural history.