Laureate Centre for History and Population,
22 & 23 Oct 2025 (Part 1) – 11 Nov 2025 (Part 2)
Wilderness and waste, desert and empty space. Across the modern world, empires and nation-states have mobilised the idea of “wastelands” to claim territory, manage populations, and fuel economic growth: from the Qing empire to nineteenth century Australasia, from Hokkaido to the Russian steppe, from Progressive Era America to postwar Taiwan. What explains the global resonance of this idea? And how did its meaning transform across the 19th and 20th centuries – from underused land awaiting improvement to overused land destroyed by it?
This workshop brings together scholars of East Asia and the Anglo-world to work towards a history of modern wastelands. What does waste signify when attached to land? How does bringing East Asia and the Anglo-world into dialogue advance our understanding of global wastelands? What does the history of apparently empty spaces reveal about the modern territorial state? Where are wastelands in histories of global capitalism? And what about humans: the people who are pushed off, replaced, and confined to marginal spaces?
Drawing together intellectual history, imperial history, and environmental history, this workshop explores the possibilities that emerge when we place wastelands at the centre of modern world history.
