Chapter 5 discusses how intensifying transpacific traffic along the Kuroshio affected Japan’s geopolitical situation in the mid nineteenth century. It argues that the so-called “opening” of Japan was a process that began at sea and crept ashore in peripheral locations such as the Yaeyama Islands of Ryukyu, where a mutiny on a “coolie” ship involved local authorities in a violent, international conflict. For decades, Japanese governments had been coping with naval incursions and weighed different strategies for defense reforms, though domestic controversies delayed these efforts. By 1853, the American quest for steam-powered access attracted new interest to land-borne coaling infrastructure across the Japanese archipelago, a pursuit that materialized with Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, Ryukyu, and the Bonin Islands. The chapter shows how the shogunate and Japanese domains competed to reverse engineer steam engines and sailing technologies, and eventually to deploy their own steam-powered facilities to reclaim the strategically located Bonin Islands.

Chapter 7 discusses the emergence of new actors in the Kuroshio frontier over the decades after the shogunate’s retreat from the Bonin Islands. It observes that pirates, state officials, and scientists formed a triangle of frontier actors. The pirate Benjamin Pease vied for state approval of his local rule in the Bonins, but eventually it was individuals like the official-botanist Tanaka Yoshio or the Bonin settler Thomas Webb who helped showcase the colonial flagship project of the young Meiji empire. The relationship of state and commercial agents, as much as the swift reconfiguration of settler identities on the ground, reflected the physical fluidity and political instability of the contested ocean frontier. Taming this frontier was a project of ideological significance for Japan. Clarifying the state’s relationship with its new subjects by testing new forms of subjecthood was central to this process. The flagship colony in the Bonin Islands became the site of state-funded agrarian experiments centered on exotic fruits and medical plants. Showcased at agricultural exhibitions, these experiments underpinned the “enlightened” character of Japanese colonialism.

The Bush administration’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was marked by unprecedented criticism of Israel’s settlement policies and a shift in US diplomatic tone. Secretary of State James Baker’s 1989 AIPAC speech, urging Israel to ‘lay aside … the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel’, signaled a turning point in US-Israel relations. The speech drew a mixed reaction from American Jews, exposing growing divisions over Israel’s territorial policies. Some welcomed it as reaffirming longstanding US positions; others saw it as unfairly demanding Israeli concessions without matching Arab commitments. The administration’s stance intersected with broader geopolitical concerns, including Soviet Jewish immigration to Israel and US loan guarantees, complicating negotiations. This chapter explores the internal and external pressures shaping US policy during the late 1980s and early 1990s, focusing on Bush-era diplomacy, Israeli responses, and evolving dynamics within the American Jewish community. It highlights a pivotal moment in US-Israel relations and its impact on the peace process.

The epilogue begins with the reversion of the Bonin Islands to Japan in 1968, after twenty-three years of US postwar occupation. Reflecting on imperial nostalgia and the meanings attributed to a rising Pacific for the future of Japan, it returns to the book’s initial question about the Pacific’s place in the archipelago’s history. It argues that the ocean today is an “unending frontier,” a cognitive mode engraved in both the promise of continued economic expansion and in the hopes for a more sustainable economy. The effects of climate change raise new questions about the origins of industrial modernity. The epilogue suggests conceptual models inspired at ocean currents to rethink diachronic historical causations and challenge teleology. With the first industrial revolution in Asia, Japan’s imperial emergence lives in the upstream of present ecological transformations. Studying the historical processes that direct state and industry interests to specific places within the dynamic seascapes of currents, habitats, and mineral deposits, embed the human relationship with the ocean in its historically grown, volumetric dimension.

Often regarded as comprehensive, impartial and authoritative works, monolingual dictionaries of the standard variety of English have never been neutral repositories of vocabulary. Instead, they have acted as vehicles for ideologies of one sort or another, transmitting societal values as well as linguistic information. All dictionary-makers make decisions on whose and which words to include and to exclude; equally all gather and process these words in ways that influence their presentation to the dictionary-user, employing editorial methods and technological means that have varied from one period to another. This chapter focuses on Johnson’s Dictionary and successive versions of the Oxford English Dictionary in an historically organised account of dictionaries to the present day, noting the under-representation in these two works of women as language-producers. It also discusses editions of the Webster dictionaries, of twentieth-century desk dictionaries before and after the introduction of corpus-based lexicography, and online dictionaries.

Chapter 6 discusses the colonization of the Bonin Islands under the Tokugawa shogunate in 1862–1863. It shows how the steamboat Kanrin-maru’s venture to the Pacific archipelago offered an opportunity to develop and display national symbols of sovereignty, progress, and power vis-à-vis the islanders, just nine years after the arrival of Perry’s black ships. The subsequent occupation of territory under the hinomaru flag and the mapping and labeling of landmarks with Japanese toponyms was an attempt at harmonizing early modern conceptions of climate, subjecthood, and benevolent governance with the exigencies of administrative control over a stateless immigrant community in a colonial competition against Western empires. The chapter argues that the Bonin Islands figured as an experimental colony through which shogunal scholars and officials encountered foreign plants, technologies, and bodies of knowledge at a formative time of Japan’s imperial reinvention. Though upended prematurely in the summer of 1863, this colonial experiment offers a rare window on the possibilities of an imperial modernity under the Tokugawa that never materialized.

The notion of original pronunciation (OP) has arisen because of interest from people who are not themselves phonologists, but who want to know how an earlier period of English sounded to add a fresh dimension to spoken or sung performance. After a discussion of the evidence available at different periods, the paper focuses on Early Modern English, reviewing five constituencies: early music, Bible translations and liturgy, heritage projects, non-dramatic poetry and (especially Shakespearean) theatre. The ways OP has been used by practitioners are described with particular reference to rhyme, wordplay, phonaesthetics and characterisation. A brief review of the history of the OP movement is followed by an illustration of the challenges of working with OP, using a case study of the options surrounding the phonetic character of /r/. Two recent projects, on Keats and Richard III, are summarised. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the extent to which OP projects can achieve authenticity.

The 1991 Gulf War placed Israel in a unique strategic position as Iraqi missiles targeted its cities while the US urged it not to retaliate. Saddam Hussein’s goal was to fracture the US-led coalition, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir showed restraint at President Bush’s request. This chapter examines the US-Israel dynamic during the war, focusing on intelligence sharing, the deployment of Patriot missile batteries, and Israeli debates over military response. Despite US assurances to strike Iraqi launch sites, tensions persisted over arms sales to Arab states and Israel’s strategic concerns. The war also intensified political strain, particularly around US loan guarantees. While Israel sought help to absorb Soviet Jewish immigrants, the Bush administration tied financial support to a freeze on settlement expansion. These developments reflected broader shifts in US-Israel relations, where strategic alignment coexisted with policy disagreements. By analyzing these interactions, the chapter sheds light on how military threats, diplomacy, and aid negotiations shaped the relationship during and after the Gulf War.

The chapter investigates the complexities of defining the human right to family planning in regards to conflicts between collective and individual rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Various perspectives from such UN organizations as the Commission on the Status of Women, UNESCO, FAO, and ECLA are analyzed regarding responsible parenthood, state intervention in family planning, and the balance between individual rights and communal well-being. The chapter further investigates the relationship between aspirations of sexual liberation and the human right to family planning, the role of the Vatican and Catholic Church, and attempts by the Population Council to establish a form of human rights utilitarianism that justified grave violations of individual reproductive rights by promises of a better future for all. The document also discusses the political conflicts at the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest, emphasizing the complex interplay between individual reproductive rights, economic development, and global justice within the framework of human rights discourse.

Humanism, conceived as a worldview concerning, among other things, how we understand ourselves and our relationships with others, and science, conceived as a family of forms of inquiry into the world, are deeply interwoven over our intellectual and cultural histories. This chapter considers their co-evolution as a prelude to the present, reviewing formative aspects of Renaissance humanism and deepening associations of values central to the Enlightenment with precursors to modern science, en route to an arguably peculiar situation today. While some past, humanist conceptions of the aim of science seem intimately connected to the idea of making a better world – one featuring better and more widespread human and planetary flourishing – contemporary thinking seems largely devoid of normative discussions of what science itself is for. This chapter offers reflections on a possible return to a humanist conception of the role and promise of science.