Nitrogen Sovereignty: A Colonia Story of Manka
Speaker: Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota
Moderator: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
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Manchuria Chemical Industries Company (Manka) was one of the largest manufacturers of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer in the Japanese empire. Unlike its competitor Chosen Chisso, however, Manka’s story is little known. This presentation locates Manka in Japan’s pursuit for nitrogen sovereignty and examines its role in the agricultural and industrial economy of the Japanese empire in the 1930s and wartime.
About our speaker: Hiromi Mizuno is Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan(2008) and coeditor (with Aaron S. Moore and John DiMoia) of Engineering Asia: Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order(2018). Her current project is The Age of Nitrogen, a book about fertilizer, agricultural and soil sciences, and global trade in the 20th century.