Historian Discusses Pacific Ocean Territorial Disputes

Spurred by a desire to control Pacific Ocean territory, some east Asian countries are laying claim to disputed islands far off their coasts, said historian Alexis Dudden at a seminar Tuesday evening.

Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut, spoke about what she calls “ocean imperialism,” the race to become a maritime power. The seminar, entitled “Japan’s Trouble With Islands: Law, Territory, and History,” drew an audience of about 60 people to the CGIS-Knafel building.

Alexis B. Dudden speaks at CGIS about the history of Japan and its surrounding islands on Tuesday afternoon. The event was sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International affairs and the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Korea Institute. By Matthew W DeShaw

“A new era of ocean imperialism is transforming islands everywhere into objects that contain the seas, rather than the other way around,” she said. According to Dudden, China, Japan, and South Korea are hoping to find resources on the seafloor surrounding their island territories.

The conflict is a fairly recent development. According to Dudden, territorial disputes were rare before 2006, as most ocean floor explorations were conducted jointly. Taiwan, she said, was the only island that incited a sovereignty debate at the time.

New ocean laws, however, now allow countries to lay claim to the ocean floor beneath their territory. The possibility of controlling the seabed beneath the islands in the East China Sea has ignited territorial conflicts. Moreover, democratization in China, Japan, and South Korea has helped spark widespread interest for these issues among everyday citizens, rather than politicians alone, Dudden said.

The islands, she added, have a contested history. The Senkaku Islands, for example, have appeared on both Japanese and Chinese maps, and recently became a focal point of territorial conflict between China and Japan. According to Dudden, Japan, despite its claims on the islands, has a weak historical case for owning them.

Some audience members contested her arguments. Tsutomu Himeno, consul general of Japan in Boston, posed a question, suggesting that the debate over the islands is not about imperialism but about protecting Japanese territory.

“We are making sure our territories, according to international law and history, are recognized,” he said.