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Since the last decade of the nineteenth century, Japanese empire started to build the meteorological network throughout East Asia as its territory was expanding through two wars: Sino-Japanese war in 1894 and Russo-Japanese war in 1904. This paper examines how Japanese empire built the meteorological network in East Asia and how it did function in Japanese colonial empire. Meteorological observatories were built at the strategic points in Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and Sakhalin because of the strategic value of weather information for warfare, and after the wars, observatories, wholly managed by Japanese meteorologists, had important role for colonial administration. Taiwan and Korea was recognized as the basement for advancing to the southern Pacific and the China continent, the observatories in Taipei and Inc’hön functioned as the colonial centers in south and north parts of imperial meteorological network respectively. Taipei and Inc’hön observatory collected weather data from local observatories in newly occupied area and were regulated to send them to the Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo. The structure of imperial meteorological network was thoroughly Tokyo-centered system. The Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo made weather forecast which covered the entire empire based on data sent from local observatories; most of meteorologists were educated in CMO and sent from Tokyo to observatories in colonies; meteorological society, in charge of meteorological knowledge production, was managed in CMO in actuality.

This paper examined botanical practices by To Pong-Sup(1904~?), Tokyo-trained Korean botanist in colonial Korea, to highlight an understudied part in colonial history of science. Historians of science have successfully revealed the ‘imperial’ nature of scientific practices in colonial peripheries, utilized as practical and ideological tools of empire. However, they did not pay enough attention to scientific practices conducted by the colonized themselves. By focusing on the agency of To in carving out botanical practices that were not the absorption of imperial science but the independent production of local, “Korean” science, this paper attempted three things. Firstly, it showed that what used to be seen as the acceptance of “imperial science,” thus that of “the civilizing mission,” could be a very anti-imperial search for differentiated knowledge practice. Secondly, by tracing his nationalism in the making, it sought to highlight complex opportunities that nationalism brought to many people at the age of imperialism. His sensible choice of “Korean” botany under colonial restraints on his career development was much less indicative of his self-sacrificing commitment than of the creative agency that the colonized could devise in overcoming insurmountable power of empire governing their lives. Lastly, it enriched our understanding of colonial science biased to science at the center by showing a local botany in the periphery, concurrently being made by the initiative of the colonized.

The Japanese Government-General of Korea established the Central Research Laboratory in Seoul in order to invigorate traditional industries immediately after the forceful annexation of Korea. Unlike previous studies that only saw the Central Research Laboratory as a simple colonial apparatus, this paper would reveal active negotiations by the colonial technocrats in it within the wider context of Japanese imperialism. It examines research activities and industrial policies of the technocrats in the Central Research Laboratory in the 1910s while considering not only the ruling strategies of the Government-General but also a wide range of industrial policies in imperial Japan. In doing so, this paper explains the two seemingly contradictory strategies of industralization promoted by the technocrats in Korea. One was the industrialization of colonial Korea, aiming at trade balance between Korea and Japan by import-substitution and the other was promoting Korean raw materials for the ‘self-sufficiency’ of the Japanese chemical industry. These seeming contradictions only reflected the dual positions that the technocrats had negotiated for their institution, one as a ‘peripheral’ industrial research station within imperial Japan and the other as the only ‘central’ industrial research institute in colonial Korea. After all, their two policy lines were not just unintended contradictory strategies, but a deliberate attempt by the technocrats. Being marginalized within the Japanese bureaucratic system, these technocrats sought to increase their status and to gain more outside supports with these dual positioning of their research laboratory.

Eric Hobsbawm is a famous marxist historian who has sustained his own belief since the fall of socialist bloc. He realized through Marx that he should learn history in order to understand the appearance happened in this world and that he had a belief which history could be comprehended and analysed as a coherent whole. At the same time he thought that what Marx tried to seek law in history was only the vestige of old positivism. He has tried to develop position of Marx in history through seeking structures and patterns in changing history of human society. But he refused simple economic determinism as vulgar marxism. He has tried to overcome ‘economic determinism between superstructure and basis’ and has sought ‘history from below’ and has made a great contribution to ‘theory of class determination.’ He had a positive attitude to accept various non-marxist methodology. Although he criticized basically post-modern history, he has tried to synthesize macro-analysis and micro-analysis. He wanted to appreciate simultaneously various aspects of society: economy, politics, culture, religion etc. This positive attitude to see whole history was well expressed in ‘the history of society’ that he himself elaborated. This historical approach of Hobsbawm can be recognized as representative of attempt to see history in totality. The history of society has more merit than model of F. Braudel and Wallerstein. Hobsbawm takes serious view of social relation of production and reduces never human experience into economic or political-economic thing. So historical method of Hobsbawm can be estimated superior than other method and also can be suggested as an alternative against ‘post-modern’ history.

Eric J. Hobsbawm, a world-famous leftist historian, did not give up his own Marxist faith until the end of his life. But, he saw the peasant insurgency as a pre-political and backward movement lacking of programme, organization and political aim. For him, the peasant had always to be enlightened outside by the politically modern subjects whom the capitalist modernity gave birth to. Moreover, he praise Industrial Revolution because it made “the take off into self-sustained growth” of humanity possible and he named the period from the end of the Second World War to 1970s “the Golden Age” in that the unexpected and stable growth of capitalist economy was achieved. He blamed ‘68 May’ and ‘new left’ for ignoring the political revolution like Russian Revolution and proliferating selfish individualism. He also criticized Althusser’s Marxism as a kind of structural functionalism in which Marxist theory was lost its practical potential. Hobsbawm’s interpretations of those events and figures, in a sense, were connected with his historicist view of progress in history. He argued that the historical progress evolving on a singular and linear time referred to the growth of human control over nature and of rational exploitation by means of the technology and science, which was a cause and result of the development of productive power. For him, modern capitalist society, though he thought we should go to socialist society by way of it, showed the highest stage of productive power and therefore the advanced capacity of human reason. This means that his Marxism was on a logic of capitalist modernity and, therefore, he was a stubborn modernist and an enlightening elitist, before being a Marxist.