IR, history, and the Japanese empire: a spiral move from the ‘edges’ to the ‘centres’

The institutional and intellectual setting of the IR Department of the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP) was closely connected to the broader knowledge-making process which had begun in the inter-war period. There, various social scientific methodologies and framings were deployed to deepen the understanding of the region and regional affairs as a part of global affairs. As the disciplinary boundaries developed, these interactive dynamics were pushed to the edges of the respective disciplines. The more the views from these edges were to be incorporated into the ‘centres’ of the IR discipline, the more meaningful and inclusive its disciplinary knowledge would become. Not a simple back-to-the-origin of the CAP IR, which was inevitably laden with colonial, racial, and gender biases of the time, but a spiral progression to its origin may lead us to a ‘different IR’.