ABSTRACT
In the course of modern history, exchanges across the Pacific Ocean have been frequent and substantial. Nevertheless, while the flows tethering both sides of the ocean (and the countries within) are extremely important for millions of people, the academic studies of the phenomena have been rather scarce. As Immanuel Wallerstein has succinctly explained, the emergence during the Cold War of academic divisions under the rubric of “area of studies” encouraged the study of specific regions, and not necessarily the interconnections between two or more of them (Wallerstein 1997, 195). Far Eastern Studies, Latin American Studies and African Studies were the regional capsules for which social scientists could find generous financial support to conduct their research at home; thus, the scholarly division of areas, initially developed in the US and later adopted by other nations such as Japan, became a firewall to the examination of movements of ideas, goods and people within an inter-area context (Karashima 2015). The historical exchanges of people, goods and ideas between Asia and the Americas—the Pacific as a place of encounters and as a realm of transnational flows—was substantially obscured during most of the Cold War era.
