Collaborative Settler Colonialism

Though Japanese migration to Brazil started only at the turn of the twentieth century, Brazil is now the country with the largest ethnic Japanese population outside Japan. Collaborative Settler Colonialism examines this history as a central chapter of both Brazil’s and Japan’s processes of nation and empire building and, crucially, as a convergence of their settler colonial projects. Inspired by American colonialism and the final conquest of the U.S. Western frontier, Brazilian and Japanese empire builders collaborated to bring Japanese migrants to Brazil, which had the outcome of simultaneously dispossessing Indigenous Brazilians of their land and furthering the expansion of Japanese land and resource possession abroad. Bringing discourses of Latin American and Japanese settler colonialism into rare dialogue with each other, this book offers new insight into the Japanese empire, the history of immigration to Brazil and Latin America, and the past and present of settler colonialism.

“Sidney Xu Lu’s riveting account of Japanese emigration to Brazil is a brilliant portrait of two states and their intersecting projects of racialized nationalism and settler colonialism.” — Louise Young, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin–Madison

“An invaluable contribution to our understanding of Japan’s expansionism in Brazil and an essential resource for students and researchers.” — Martin Dusinberre, author of Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories

“Lu’s innovative new book brings a fresh understanding to the global dynamics behind Japanese emigration to Brazil and transnational studies of migration, diaspora, and colonialism.” — Jeffrey Lesser, author of Living and Dying in São Paulo: Immigrants, Health, and the Built Environment in Brazil

Sidney Xu Lu is Associate Professor and Annette and Hugh Gragg Chair of Transnational Asian Studies at Rice University.