My Publications
The local is global. My projects explore local historical experiences as embedded in a web of social and environmental connections across Asia and the Pacific. Here, you may find a list of publications representative of my palette of interests, reaching from cartography, science and Orientalism to geopolitics and postcolonial theory.
Publications
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Oceanic Japan––Islands of the Kuroshio Froniter, or: Building the Infrastructure of an Archipelagic Empire
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“Oceanic Knowledge and National Space-Time in Pacific History,” in: Verge: Studies in Global Asias 10, no. 2 (2024): 111–37.
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Uhren und Kanonen für ein Reich um Umbruch, in: NZZ Geschichte 51 (2024), 68–77.
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What Japan’s Past Disasters Can Teach about the Age of Climate Change
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Early Modern Japan and the Problem of “Drugs”
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The Kuroshio Frontier: Business, State and Environment in the Making of Japan’s Pacific
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2021/11/14 Download “Ruegg_Yougaku shi kenkyuu jiten” Ruegg2021c.pdf – Downloaded 2754 times – 248.78 KB小笠原諸島探検と近代科学 [The Exploration of the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands and Modern Science] -
2021/09/03 Download “Rüegg 2021 NON-CITABLE version.” 90d35885ef6157b1a09de834ed01d292.pdf – Downloaded 2751 times – 1.83 MBCurrents and Oceanic Geographies of Japan’s Unending Frontier -
Adventures on the Maritime Frontier: Minamoto no Tametomo on the Island of Women
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2019/07/21 Download “publications-Mapping the Forgotten Colony” ruegg.pdf – Downloaded 3518 times – 3.29 MBMapping the Forgotten Colony: the Ogasawara Islands and the Tokugawa Pivot to the Pacific -
2018/06/21 Download “Rüegg-2018_Geneve.pdf” Rüegg-2018_Geneve_web.pdf – Downloaded 2918 times – 622.28 KB2018/06 幕末、明治：19世紀ジュネーヴに於ける日本研究 [Bakumatsu, Meiji: Japanese Studies in Geneva in the Late 19th Century] -
Aimé Humbert: Wertvorstellungen eines Bourgeois und das Japan der Bakumatsu-Zeit [Aimé Humbert, Value Concepts of a Bourgeois and Bakumatsu Japan]
MJHA 12 Questions
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Modern Japan History Association inaugural dissertation prize lecture: "12 Questions for Jonas Rüegg: Japan and Oceanic History (with Paul Kreitman)"
In light of a broader "oceanic turn" in historiography, Jonas Rüegg (University of Zurich) and Paul Kreitman (Columbia University) discuss Japan's place within this broader historiography with reference to Jonas Rüegg's dissertation The Kuroshio Frontier: Business, State and Environment in the Making of Japan’s Pacific (Harvard University, 2022), winner of the inaugural Modern Japan History Association Dissertation Prize, and Professor Kreitman's new book Japan's Ocean Borderlands: Nature and Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 2023).This presentation was made possible by support from the Japan Foundation, and was originally held on May 6, 2024.
Asia Society 2024
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Asia Society of Switzerland 'Talk at the Library' series talk on the question "What Japan's Past Disasters Can Teach About the Age of Climate Change," 21 March 2024.
How can Japan’s long history of coping with disaster help understand the challenges of living in a world of shifting environmental risks? How will climate change reshape landscapes and economies? And why is a multi-disciplinary approach that puts scientific inquiry in a conversation with the humanities, essential for navigating the challenges of shifting environments? A historian's reflections on past experiences with future problems.
Talk EAJS 2021
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2021 EAJS Conference Talk “The Idea of Oceanic History and its Conceptual Implications for Modern Japan”
This talk introduces the idea of oceanic history and its applications to modern Japan. It argues that the ocean was not only a place of historical encounters off shore, but an ecosystem with a geography of its own within which Japan’s modern froniters developed. These ideas are discussed in more detail in my article “Currents and Oceanic Geographies of Japan’s Unending Frontier” in the Journal of Pacific History (3/2021).