Colonisation, Development, and the Construction of "Peripheral Space" in Late-19th and Early-20th Century Sakhalin/Karafuto

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the island of Sakhalin (also known as Karafuto in Japanese) was repeatedly colonised, partitioned, and at various points incorporated into the Russian Empire, the Japanese Empire, and the Soviet Union. Political actors in all three polities were keen to capitalise on the island's rich natural resources: the forests that cover its surface, the coal and oil that lie beneath, and the fish that swim in its rivers and off its coastlines. This thesis asks: how did Russian/Soviet and Japanese political and intellectual elites assert and legitimate their rule over Sakhalin between the mid-1870s and the mid-1930s, as relations between Russia/the USSR and Japan grew increasingly turbulent? How did they situate Sakhalin into their competing narratives of colonial expansion and development? And how did they enforce or contest the position of the Russia/USSR-Japan border? To answer these questions, this thesis examines a wide range of primary sources including government documents, political pamphlets, legislative records, literature, and media reports collected through in-person and online archival research between 2021 and 2024. In doing so, it challenges the existing historiography written about Russian/Soviet and Japanese rule on Sakhalin, which often assumes that the island was seen as little more than a distant prison, a frontier outpost, or a nascent resource periphery during this time period. Instead, this thesis argues that many politicians and intellectuals tried - though often failed - to envision Sakhalin as not just a political periphery, but as something more than that. Whether that meant an extension of an imagined "nation", or a place with deep historical ties to the imperial metropole, Sakhalin's boundaries were articulated through narratives of "colonisation" and "development" that sought to extend a sense of political belonging to the island. The desire to capitalise upon Sakhalin's resources was thus deeply entangled in complex boundaries of ethnic and national belonging - yet these boundaries themselves were surprisingly fluid and fragmented.
Date of Award1 Aug 2025
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorVera Tolz-Zilitinkevic (Supervisor) & Erica Baffelli (Supervisor)

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