Hansong Li (Department of Political Science, Harvard University)
With the White House party changing, Mike Pompeo will also end his two-year career as secretary of state. However, the renaming of the "Indo-Pacific" command, which he supervised less than a month after taking office, remained forever.
In May 2018, the US "Pacific Command" was renamed the "Indo-Pacific Command", and with the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" raging, the US, Indian and Japanese think tank circles gradually became a trend of "talking about the Indo-Pacific". In recent years, European and American scholars have also set off a small upsurge in the study of "Indo-Pacific" theory, but many of them are not in order, and the problem of misplanting in the times is not uncommon. At first, "geopoliticalists" insisted that the "Indo-Pacific" stemmed from Shinzo Abe's "free and open Indo-Pacific" speech in August 2016. But academics soon discovered that Japan's concept of the "Indo-Pacific" did not fall out of thin air: Karl Haushofer, a German geopolitician who had a great influence on Japan's pan-Asian thought before and after World War II, wrote deutsche Kulturpolitik im indopazifischen Raum (German Cultural Politics in The Indo-Pacific Space) in 1939, in which "Indo-Pacific" was already a compound adjective. Thus, there is the argument that the "Indo-Pacific" originated from this book. However, it is a miracle to examine the origins of thought according to the title of the book. But anyone who combs through Haushofer's original book can find that as early as 1924,024, in geopolitik des Pazifischen Ozeans, Howe had proposed a full-fledged "Indo-Pacific" theory. This conception of space then entered the 1928 book Bausteine zur Geopolitik (Fundamentals of Geopolitics), which was also sporadically distributed in the Journal of Geopolitics (Zeitschrift für Geopolitik), becoming a major theoretical pillar of "marine politics". So, how did Haushofer, the founder of the "Indo-Pacific" concept, construct, argue, and advocate the "Indo-Pacific"? What is the structure, characteristics and mission of his "Indo-Pacific Strategy"? How did the Past Life of the Indo-Pacific enlighten it in this life?
First editions of Haushofer's collection: Pacific Geopolitics from 1924, German Cultural Politics in The Indo-Pacific Space from the right
The Author's Collection of Haus Horval et al. Foundations of Geopolitics (first edition 1928)
Two Journals of Geopolitics, published in 1925, edited by Haushofer
From 2016 to 2019, Japan and the United States have launched various "Indo-Pacific Strategies"
German geoscientist Karl Haushofer (1869-1946)
Haushofer merged the Pacific and Indian Oceans into the "Indo-Pacific" in order to form a "space of opposites" (Gegenraum) in contrast to another composite concept, Eur-Amerika. At that time, Germany lost all its power abroad after the Paris Peace Conference, so "anti-colonialism" was the default position of the intellectual circles of the Weimar Republic. Haushofer criticized the old colonial powers such as Britain, the United States, France, and the Netherlands with particular fierce firepower. He hoped that China, India, Southeast Asia, and the wider Indian and Pacific regions would recover politically and expel the influence of Europe and the United States through national self-determination (see "The Indo-Pacific Concept: Ideological Traceability and International Reception in a Global Context," which I will publish in World History Review).
In order to compete with the Atlantic space dominated by Britain and the United States, Howe conceived of a vast "Indo-Pacific": an ocean space from Madagascar in the west to Polynesia in the east. The hubs of this maritime space are the Straits of Malacca and Sunda. Haushofer called him Sundasee rather than a continental shelf because of its underwater undercurrents, including numerous Pleistocene land rivers, which later sank into the ocean as sea levels rose. In this way, Sunda is a natural "Indo-Pacific Mediterranean". In Howe's view, in order to dominate the oceans, the West constantly created all kinds of Mediterranean Seas - "European Mediterranean", "Central American Mediterranean", and even the "Australian Mediterranean" between Australia and New Zealand. He was extremely worried that after the United States entered the Philippines, it would replicate the Anglo-American-led maritime corridor in the Pacific, so he strongly hoped that the "Indo-Pacific" could rise independently on the ocean, break the maritime monopoly of the old maritime countries, and achieve maritime autonomy.
Haushofer anticipated criticism for "distorting nature" for reorganizing the oceans, so it was said that the "Indo-Pacific" was originally a whole of nature, and then it was artificially cut off. He cites three sets of arguments. First, marine biology research points out that the Indian and Pacific Oceans belong to the same "life unit" (Lebenseinheit), such as many fish that travel between East Africa and the coast of Austroasiatic. Such "zoological geography" (tiergeographie) is more natural than so-called "international conventions". Howe also emphasizes borders in a purely oceanographic sense, arguing that the boundaries of "Indo-Pacific space" are determined by the westerly winds of the southern seas and the ocean currents of Antarctica, because these are "more physically acceptable." Sea breezes and currents determine the nature and scope of human navigational activities, while maritime trade, naval activities, maritime expeditions and other activities further form the boundaries of international political power. The second set of evidence comes from ethnographic studies of the time. His important ally was Leo Frobenius, who was also under Friedrich Ratzel. Focusing on Africa, Fei's approach is to trace the changes in indigenous cultures, depicting the shape of the "cultural circle" (Kulturkreise) and reconstructing the "meaning" (Sinnstiftung) from the economic structure. But his colleague Fritz Graebner focuses on Oceania's cultural circle, its cultural layer. Howe believes that the "Malay-Polynesian migration" from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age can be reconstructed by the fee and cover method, and this "nomadic phenomenon of the sea" reveals that the "Indo-Pacific" has had a political nature since the Paleolithic era, and in this long period of time, "the Atlantic Ocean has never been like this". In this way, through the marriage of "maritime politics" and "ethnology", Haushofer went so far as to "prove" the intuitive conclusion that the politics of the Indo-Pacific was "higher" than that of the Atlantic. Hau's third inspiration was linguistics. At that time, the latest anthropological, oceanographic, and linguistic achievements pointed to historical similarities between Polynesian, Oceanian, Filipino, South Asian, and East African languages, arguing that the "Austronesian" language family (also known as the "Austronesian language family") extended west to Madagascar and east to Fijian. A "South China Sea" (Südsee) consensus has gradually emerged among these oceanographic, ethnographic, and linguistic circles, arguing that the southern seas are an organic marine space that can explain cultural phenomena such as language, as well as biological, ocean currents, and geological phenomena. What Haushofer did was to pull this extraordinarily long period of natural history back to political history and use it to construct an "Indo-Pacific" vision.
Haushofer argues that the rise of "Indo-Pacific" politics presupposes a united front at the level of political consciousness. Specifically, it is necessary to resolve any conflict between the "Indian Ocean" and the "Pacific Ocean", or the tension between the Indian and Chinese cultural circles, especially in Southeast Asia, which has been intertwined with Chinese and Indian civilizations since ancient times. He argues that the way to reconcile India and China is to align the guns against colonialism. In this regard, India should learn from China's republican movement. In building the concept of the "Indo-Pacific," Haushofer had two Indian collaborators— the Hindu nationalist scholar Benoy Sarkar and the Bengali-Indian thinker Tarak Nath Das. Both were anti-British and anti-colonial fighters. In the 1920s, Sakar wanted India to emulate the Chinese Republican Revolution and overthrow British rule in South Asia. His Futurism in Young Asia is one of the key materials for Haushofer's argument for "Indo-Pacific political consciousness." Of course, Sakar praised the Nazis in the forties, so there was a lot of controversy after his death. Darth's life is even more legendary. Against the historical backdrop of Germany's active involvement in India's anti-colonial struggle, Darth was imprisoned in the United States for being implicated in the 1917 Indo-German Conspiracy. Finally released from his Kansas cell, he was full of anger and crossed the ocean to Munich, where he longed for. While in California, he wrote a new book in English, "Is Japan a Threat to Asia?" (Is Japan a menace to Asia?), prefaced by Tang Shaoyi, former prime minister of Beiyang, and compiled by Ichiro Tokufu Inoichiro, editor-in-chief of Japan's National News, was printed and published in Shanghai. After coming to Germany, Das received support from Haushofer and others to send Indian students to study in Germany. His origins came from a right-wing organization called the Aryan Society, which advocated the "Indian Aryan" racial theory. With the assistance of Darth and others, Howe set up the Indian Research Department of the German Academy. Originally built after the Swedish Academy, the German Academy changed its name and surname after World War II to get rid of nazi notoriety and became the "Goethe-Institut" that benefited countless German learners. Haushofer was very close to Sakar and Dass, admiring Tagore, and trying to absorb German Sanskrit and Sinology studies, especially the views of Max Müller and Otto Franke. All of this is a key factor and source of inspiration for the "Indo-Pacific" theory. In his vision of the "Indo-European Continent" and "Indo-Pacific Sea", China and India played an important role in shaking Anglo-French colonialism.
Haushofer's Indian friend Darth Das publishes Is Japan a Threat to Asia? Tang Shaoyi wrote the preface
Indian scholar and anti-colonial activist Benoy Sarkar (1887–1949)
Tarak Nath Das (1884-1958)
Howe's personal relations with Chinese scholars are not deep, but China occupies a pivotal position in his land and sea politics ideas. This is not only reflected in his view of the Chinese Republican Revolution as a model of the autonomy of the "Indo-Pacific" people, but even in an exaggerated form of Orientalism. For example, he asserted that European and American thought was inferior to Chinese political philosophy, and even borrowed the history of China's maritime trade to criticize the European and American maritime powers. He dismissed the seafaring achievements from Phoenicia to Rome, from Iberia to France, "more of a 'coastal' than of the ocean." He deliberately disparaged the achievements of the Romans in the Golden Age of Navigation, and naturally the criterion was not the level of navigation in germany in the early modern period, but the peak of navigation in East and West Asia. He said that Arabs and Chinese often "met in their 'Indian Ocean region'", a phrase that, according to the German syntax of the early twentieth century, "theirs" should mean "Chinese". Interestingly, the originator of the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" gave China the right to control the seas. In fact, Haushofer is probably referring to the maritime trade between China and Arabia since the Tang and Song dynasties. In addition, the route of Zheng He's fleet also happened to span South Asia and Arabia, which was more in line with Howe's "Indo-Pacific space" range compared with the Western, Portuguese, British, Dutch, and French routes. For him, the "Indo-Pacific countries" sailed in their own "Indo-Pacific space", and their achievements overshadowed Europe and the United States, which also shook the historical foundation of Western Europe's "maritime domination" and "cross-sea colonization". Howe's use of Oriental history was aimed at erasing the historical legitimacy and operativeness of its German rivals, in order to unite the "Indo-Pacific" indigenous political culture to curb the global expansion of Western Europe.
But compared to Japan, Haushofer's acceptance in China is extremely limited. His only copy of The Geography of National Defense (1932), translated into Chinese by the German scholar Zhou Guangda, was published in Chongqing in 1945 by the Commercial Press.
Zhou Guangda's translation of Hows Haushofer's Geography of National Defense was published by the Commercial Press in Chongqing during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression
In contrast, Haushofer's doctrine has been disseminated, accepted, and evolved, which has caused great repercussions in the Japanese academic circles before and after World War II, and even took root in different places and reincarnated. Howe's paper on East Asia published in the Journal of Geopolitics, although not re-edited and published in German, was excerpted by Japanese scholars, compiled and translated and published, and the profound title of "Greater East Asian Geopolitics" was installed. As a result, Haushofer unwittingly intervened in the "pan-Asiaticist" debate, and its influence spread widely, including the pan-Asian thinker Masamichi Ashyama, who advocated "East Asian synergy", his colleague at the Showa Research Association, the militarist Asiatic philosopher Shikako Kimotonobu, and the left-wing pacifist Yoshitaro Hirano. At the same time, the "geopolitical fever" gave birth to a generation of "Greater Asia" research: the traveler Jiro Matsukawa, the Manchurian expert Masanaki Kawanishi, and the geographer Shigeru Komaki all published a concentrated work on the topic of Greater Asia Minor's geopolitics in 1942. These works, which are ill-defined in terms of "geography" and "land politics", intersect with other pan-Asianist currents, such as Kiyoshi Miki, the second generation of the Kyoto School, and eventually flow into the "co-prosperity circle" theory in a broad sense. In the Geography Department of Kyoto University, Mitsuhiro Komaki is committed to the "Japaneseization of geopolitics", absorbing Haushofer on the one hand and resisting the copying of German geopolitics from an ethnic point of view. This delicate reception of Haushofer coexisted simultaneously with the Kyoto School of Philosophy, which met on the campus of Kyoto University at the same time, forming a situation of parallelism, convection, and confrontation between the "two Kyoto schools". These two groups of people also expressed their own views on Japan's military and political diplomacy strategy. In 1929, the campus of Kyoto University was the site of the meeting of the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the controversy in Japanese geopolitics was even more prominent. Given the intricate relationships of the characters, the classification is always not rigorous. But in general, the Kyoto scholars of the "Haushofer school" were closer to the Imperial Army. The Kyotoites, who had Heidegger as their spiritual mentor, were close to the Japanese Navy.
Kyoto University Library Old Photograph (Kyoto University Photo Archive)
In April 1941, the Sea of Japan 军调查库应为洈为泽泽为泽泽汨尔尔 (Yasuharu Fujioka, "Navy Shojo Shojo Takagi- Naval Ministry Investigation Division and Interman Brain Group" Mitsutosha, 1986, Makitosha, 1986.
As early as 1941, Kenneth W. Colegrove, an American scholar of Japan's "New East Asian Order," had already smelled that under German influence, Japan was brewing a major explosion of political science. Even so, Howe's concept of the "Indo-Pacific" is just one of the many opinions. It is difficult to prove whether it was Haushofer's "Indo-Pacific" theory, or The Japaneseized geopolitics, or the voices of pan-Asiaticism that was entirely indigenous, Japanese "native" and "western" philosophers and economists, or even the Japanese version of the "Monroe Doctrine" (who firmly believed that Asia and Southeast Asia were "Japan's South America") – played a decisive role. Perhaps it is precisely on the plains of the convergence and repeated erosion of these ideological currents, intentional or unintentional, that the rationalization of Japan's "Greater Asia" ideology has arisen like a vast expanse.
During the two world wars, Haushofer's Pacific Geopolitics has been circulated in Japanese academic circles. However, in 1940, the Japanese translation of the book (Pacific Geopolitics: A Study of the Interrelationships of Geographical History) was printed and published in Tokyo, and translated by the Research Department of the Japan Youth Foreign Affairs Association. The same team produced a Pacific Reader (Pacific Reader, 1941) and a series of German works between 1939 and 1944: Revolution der Erziehung by Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth. Reden aus den Jahren des Aufbaus, 1938); "Military Education of German Youth" (Die Wehrerziehung der deutschen Jugend, 1936) by Nazi propagandist Helmut Stellrecht and Wehrhafte Wirtschaft (Wehrhafte Wirtschaft, 1936) by The Nazi economist Hugo Richarz 1938）。 The Youth Diplomacy Association also published Wang Jingwei's "China's Problems and Their Solutions" (1940).
Shoichiro Sato's Commentary on Pacific Geopolitics by Haushofer, published in Showa 19 (1944).
But Haushofer's acceptance and enthusiasm in Japan are unmatched by other German writers. Part of the reason is that he stayed in Japan for 18 months and established some connections. But more importantly, his "maritime political space" has undoubtedly touched the nerves of excitement among Japanese intellectuals who are already racing to grab Germany's latest works and quickly translate them. In 1942, the translator, Hayashi Wakai, introduced Haushofer's Dai Nihon: Betrachtungen über Groß-Japans Wehrkraft, Weltstellung und Zukunft, 1913) and Raumüberwindende Mächte (1934) to Japanese scholars. Haushofer wrote two other monographs on Japan, which were also published in Japanese translations. Among them, "Japan Builds Its Empire" was published in Japanese only two years after the original German book was published. This speed of dissemination reflects not only Haushofer's position in Japan, but also the sense of urgency and anxiety shown by the Japanese translation community in the enthusiastic promotion of "maritime politics" and the eager absorption of space theory. The Japanese translator of another monograph, Japan, was published in 1943 by the famous First Shogunate, a film critic and scholar of nazi culture. The publisher published a standard Japanese translation of Mein Kampf three years ago by the pan-Asian thinker Fuku takanobu Muro. Murofumi's pan-Asianism was not the same as Haushofer's "Indo-Pacific" vision, but both advocated the rise of Asian politics against established colonial powers such as Britain and France.
Among the Japanese interpreters of Haushofer's "maritime politics" ideas, two are particularly worth investigating. It was previously mentioned that Howe and his colleague Otto Maull co-authored The Fundamentals of Geopolitics was translated into Japanese and published in 1941 by the famous Japanese political scientist Tamagi Zhao. Tsukashiro was a historian of Japanese cultural and economic history, family and education history, social sciences, and social systems, so later scholars mostly underestimated his enthusiasm for international politics. He has carefully selected translations of overseas works, including General Perry who opened the door to Japan, Townsend Harris, the first U.S. minister to Japan, and Professor Haus Horver, the protagonist of this article. Of the three, Howe did not fire a single shot or hand over a copy of the national letter, and was the only space theorist. But from another perspective, as a maritime thinker, is it not meaningful that he is juxtaposed with Perry and Harris? In addition, although Haushofer did not directly affect Japanese diplomacy, its indirect influence cannot be ignored. In April 1943, Yoshimichi Katsui (1892-1949) published a Japanese translation of Oceans and World Powers. Trained in law in Germany and Japan, He served four consecutive terms in the House of Representatives before joining the Okada Cabinet under Keisuke Okada as a naval adviser. He has formed a society advocating that Japan should increase its efforts to fish in the Yellow Sea. His extensive experience in marine military and "ocean governance" is closely related to the theme of "sea" and "land" in Haushofer's maritime geopolitics. Whether the translator chooses the translated work or the translator "chooses" the translator, it is of far-reaching significance. As an "amphibious policymaker", Katsui was later elected to the cabinet of Kantaro Suzuki, rising to the rank of Vice Minister of Internal Affairs. He was also assigned to accompany Matsuoka on a visit to Europe to consolidate Japan's alliance with Germany and Italy. Historians study the actual influence of Haushofer on Japanese foreign policy, and there is little conclusive evidence, although such indirect clues are not detectable. In Post-World War II Japan, commentaries, dissertations, and books on Haushofer's geopolitics and maritime politics continued to this day.
"Geopolitics of Greater East Asia", translated by Eiji Ishijima and Taro Kimura, Showa 16 (1941)
Today, the ghost of Haushofer still floats over Japan. In this way, the best illustration is not a list of difficult academic papers, but an examination of the subtle image of Haushofer in the comic book Fullmetal Alchemist. In the final episode of the first season, the protagonist Eric sacrifices himself in order to restore his brother from the soul-attached robot to human form, and travels to Munich in 1921. On the streets of the Weimar Republic, his father, van Hohenheim, passed by a fruit stall complaining about inflation that the next apple had risen to 12 mark marks. He turned his head and talked to Professor Haushof about the secrets of the Thule-Gesellschaft .d., or Far North. Back at home, he saw his son Edward packing up, carrying a copy of Robert Goddard's A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes (1919) and preparing to take a train to Transylvania to learn rocket science from Hermann Oberth. This scene leads to the sequel to the manga, Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shambhala. Among them, a Jewish businessman showed Eric Haushofer's monograph Japan and the Japanese. Immediately after, the protagonist rushes to the Nazi rocket command center, trying to prevent a murderous female version of Dietrich Eckart like Lady Macbeth from firing a manned rocket at Shambhala, the land of eternal life, on the day of Hitler's beer hall coup on November 8, to truly reshape space. In the play, although Haushofer stands on the "wrong side of history", he is meticulous and calm-headed, and has repeatedly persuaded Eckart, who has a stronger ideological flavor, not to try to transcend the impossibility of space and hurt the innocent, but unfortunately it has not been successful. This is probably the second home of Haushofer's academic thought, the highest tribute that the political space theorist could have done in reimagining the marsch auf die Feldherrnhalle (March to the Hall of Commanders).
In Fullmetal Alchemist, the Jewish merchant Fritz Lang presents the protagonist with a copy of Haushofer's book
Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shambhala poster, at the top of which is the female version of Ekate, the bearded man is Haushofer
From the land of Central Europe to the coasts of East Asia, from anti-colonial strategies to containment policies, the afterlife and reincarnation of the "Indo-Pacific", this life and the next life, seem to have very different meanings, but they are inextricably linked. The third reich Chinese of the "Indo-Pacific" is not unimportant, but it is not enough to link the "Indo-Pacific" with the history of the Nazis. Compared with the ancient and modern "Indo-Pacific", "the rise of the Indo-Asia-Pacific region and the breaking of maritime colonization" and "the united States, Japan, and India have joined forces to contain China's forces" seem to be new and old, but introspection under the magnifying glass of history, the past life of the Indo-Pacific concept has more political theoretical implications than this life. Today, the precise correspondence between the natural environment and social culture is still challenging, defining the yardstick of the humanistic marine space: the tension between geology and the ocean, language and history is more prominent than ever. Above all, vast areas of South, South and East Asia remain shrouded in the shadow of the post-colonial era. At a time when everything seems to be settled and everything is undecided, the "Indo-Pacific" as a theory of marine space may be more enlightening than the "Indo-Pacific" as a word game of the great power game.
Editor-in-Charge: Yu Shujuan
Proofreader: Liu Wei