outreach
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2024/12/05
2024/11/30: Book chapter published in “Oceanic Japan”––Islands of the Kuroshio Froniter, or: Building the Infrastructure of an Archipelagic Empire
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2024/11/15
2025/03/14: Reimagining the Pacific Conference, University of Tokyo
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2024/11/15
2024/11/20: SJCC Celebratory Lecture: 160 Years of Swiss-Japanese Relations
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2024/09/06
2024/09/06: Reimagining the Frontier Conference, UZH Department of Geography
Jonas Ruegg
about
Welcome to my website. My name is Jonas and I’m a historian of Japan's turbulent 19th century. In my research and teaching at the University of Zürich, I specialize in maritime and environmental history, with a broader focus on maritime East Asia as a part of the Pacific World. On this website, you can find information on my research and access tools I find useful for learning and teaching. If you would like to learn more, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
ヨナス・ルエグのウェブページへようこそ。私はチューリッヒ大学で19世紀の激動に揺れたグローバル・ヒストリーを研究しています。様々なプロジェクトで、東アジア・太平洋世界の海洋環境下で日本の「近代化」の理解を深めております。海は国際貿易のハイウェイだけではなく、人々やその生活の基盤を、国家を超えて繋げる環境だと考えてきました。本ページでは、私の研究活動についての情報をご覧いただけます。ご質問等がございましたら、日本語でも対応致しますのでお気軽にご連絡ください。
Jonas Rüegg
Welcome to my website. My name is Jonas and I’m a historian of Japan's turbulent 19th century. In my research and teaching at the University of Zürich, I specialize in maritime and environmental history, with a broader focus on maritime East Asia as a part of the Pacific World. On this website, you can find information on my research and access tools I find useful for learning and teaching. If you would like to learn more, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
ヨナス・ルエグのウェブページへようこそ。私はチューリッヒ大学で19世紀の激動に揺れたグローバル・ヒストリーを研究しています。様々なプロジェクトで、東アジア・太平洋世界の海洋環境下で日本の「近代化」の理解を深めております。海は国際貿易のハイウェイだけではなく、人々やその生活の基盤を、国家を超えて繋げる環境だと考えてきました。本ページでは、私の研究活動についての情報をご覧いただけます。ご質問等がございましたら、日本語でも対応致しますのでお気軽にご連絡ください。
My projects underline that East Asian experiences of early modernity are central to understanding more recent reconfigurations of culture, ecology and international politics. In my forthcoming book The Kuroshio Frontier: Empire and Environment in the Making of Japan’s Pacific, (Cambridge University Press, exp. 2024) I explore how maritime environments mattered in the making of modern Japan, and how Japan mattered in the making of the modern Pacific. The Kuroshio Current is an ecosystem which connects Japan, East Asia, and the Pacific, my book investigates how the pursuit of oceanic resources throughout the region shaped industries, ideologies, and local communities over the past four centuries.
Embedding national economies in global environmental contexts means to expand the scope of “history” to places beyond the immediate human habitat. My methods are based on quantitative and qualitative analyses, provide ways to overcome ahistorical units imposed by national geography and periodization, and instead, to center locations that reveal the environmental and social cost of modern life. Similar ecocritical interests also drive my ongoing investigations in the history of terraqueous fertilizer resources in the Japanese archipelago, or my research on the role of South Sea colonies in the imperial metabolism. These longue-durée studies of Japan’s oceanic frontiers therefore underline how neo-materialist analyses of engineered environments since the early modern period are essential to understanding the ecological rifts of the Anthropocene.