Korean history specialist Mark Caprio, professor at Rikkyo University in Japan, will present a lecture on Wednesday, Sept. 8, at 7 p.m. in 201 Riley Hall at Linfield College.
His talk, “Integrating Alien Peoples into Expanding Empires: Western Influence on Japanese Assimilation Policy, 1870-1945,” will explore the colonial policy of assimilation in the early 1870s.
Caprio will discuss the evolution of colonial assimilation in Japan’s modern history during the bakumatsu period (1854-1868) and reign of the Meiji Emperor (1868-1910) and the influence of the Western example on Japan’s administrative decisions. He will also explore the question of assimilation’s postwar legacy and consider the coincidence that three of the bloodiest post-World War II battlegrounds – Korea, Algeria and Vietnam – were territories that endured intrusive assimilation policies over their decades of colonial rule. Caprio is the author of “Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945.”
The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Linfield International Programs Office, 503-883-2222.
