The Possibilities of the Nonhuman in Transimperial History

Empires, as political entities, have consistently sought to dictate the demarcation of time and space. The growth of inter-imperial and transimperial history in the last two decades have become as critical tools for transcending imperial legacies and unveiling new spatial and temporal dimensions for historical analysis. Nevertheless, functioning as human-build systems and institutions of power, imperial polities and politics not only governed human subjects but also exerted control over numerous non-human living beings coexisting with humans. This paper delves into the transimperial as a methodological framework in writing environmental history. It explores how ocean currents, whales, and sugarcane shaped and contributed to the transimperial actor-network between the Japanese and U.S. empires in the Pacific during the second half of the 19th century. By shifting the focus to the non-human and more-than-human, the paper aims to scrutinize the potentials and constraints of the transimperial framework and the ways in which transimperial history can offer insights into non-anthropocentric narratives of time and space.