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Title details for Pacific Pioneers by John E. Van Sant - Available

Pacific Pioneers

by John E. Van Sant
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Shipwrecked sailors, samurai seeking a material and sometimes spiritual education, and laborers seeking to better their economic situation: these early Japanese travelers to the West occupy a little-known corner of Asian American studies. Pacific Pioneers profiles the first Japanese who resided in the United States or the Kingdom of Hawaii for a substantial period of time and the Westerners who influenced their experiences.

Although Japanese immigrants did not start arriving in substantial numbers in the West until after 1880, in the previous thirty years a handful of key encounters helped shape relations between Japan and the United States. John E. Van Sant explores the motivations and accomplishments of these resourceful, sometimes visionary individuals who made important inroads into a culture quite different from their own and paved the way for the Issei and Nisei.

Pacific Pioneers presents detailed biographical sketches of Japanese such as Joseph Heco, Niijima Jo, and the converts to the Brotherhood of the New Life and introduces the American benefactors, such as William Griffis, David Murray, and Thomas Lake Harris, who built relationships with their foreign visitors. Van Sant also examines the uneasy relations between Japanese laborers and sugar cane plantation magnates in Hawaii during this period and the shortlived Wakamatsu colony of Japanese tea and silk producers in California.

A valuable addition to the literature, Pacific Pioneers brings to life a cast of colorful, long-forgotten characters while forging a critical link between Asian and Asian American studies.
| Cover Title page Copyright CONTENTS Foreword, by Roger Daniels Acknowledgments Introduction: Transnational History, Transitions, and Worldviews One: Joseph Heco, a Castaway in America Two: Ryugakusel, Rutgers, and the American Experience Three: Niijima Jo, Japanese Puritan Four: From Satsuma to Utopia Five: The Gannenmono, Eugene Van Reed, and the Emergence of Japan-Hawaii-U.S. Relations Six: From Aizu to Gold Hill Epilogue: Japan and the United States, 1880-1924 Notes Bibliography Index Back cover |"This excellent study of the first Japanese sojourners to America and Hawaii places them within the context of national developments on both sides of the Pacific. . . . Van Sant wonderfully narrates and analyzes their engaging stories, those of ship-wrecked sailors, college students, workers, and even some utopians."—Choice
"Van Sant has the language skills to do archival work, coupled with a solid grasp of Japanese history. He has produced a small but important work."—Paul Spickard, American Historical Review
"A solid, well-written study. Featuring splendid biographical profiles, it provides excellent insight into Japan's modernization and the origins of Japanese immigration to the United States."—Robert D. Parmet, International Migration Review
|John E. Van Sant is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is a coeditor of Far East, Down South: Asians in the American South.

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  • English