• Dr. Tracey Rizzo's Introduction: Dr. Tracey Rizzo's introduction in the Journal of World History emphasizes the importance of incorporating women's lived experiences into historical narratives to enrich the understanding of global history.

• Concept of 'Detritus': Rizzo advocates for the examination of historical 'detritus' to uncover vivid stories of women's agency and experiences, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of global white supremacy and other historical phenomena.

• Case Study: Postwar Japan: Rizzo references Robert Kramm's article on postwar Japan, highlighting the exploitation of lower-class women in the 'female floodwall' and its implications for gender and national identity.

• Case Study: Fin-de-Siècle Beirut: John Boonstra's article on early 20th-century Beirut is discussed, showcasing how gendered language and practices in colonial power dynamics are preserved in historical records, reflecting broader imperial ideologies.

• Inclusive Historical Narratives: Rizzo concludes by urging scholars to create inclusive historical narratives that consider the experiences of all genders, races, and classes, drawing inspiration from the works cited in her essay.

Dr. Tracey Rizzo is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, and her teaching interests include Gender and Empire, European Women’s History, and Environmental Feminism[1].   For the December 2017 edition of Journal of World History, Dr. Rizzo writes an introduction to the proceeding articles titled “Gender and Empire: Intimacies, Bodies, Detritus”.  She asks world historians to explore the human experience in detail, to “talk across boundaries and borders”[2] so that while studying the big picture they also remember “the subtleties, [and] the individuals”[3] and incorporate their lived experiences into narratives, especially those of women.  

In Dr. Rizzo’s view, the human story can be better intimated by analyzing the ‘detritus’ of history, to “fill in [this] mosaic with vivid stories of women’s agency, differentiated by class and rooted in material conditions, enrich[ing] the world historian’s ability to theorize about global white supremacy[e.g.] and to describe a range of experiences on the ground.”[4]  Her analysis of the articles highlights the “[comparisons]…networks, exchanges of goods…and people, [including] slaves [and] immigrants… the role of the global economy in destabilizing gender norms…[and] systems of domination”[5] that the authors emphasize in their journal entries.  Dr. Rizzo also asks the world historian to work directly with gender and women’s studies professionals to incorporate these lived experiences into their narratives.

One article Dr. Rizzo references in her introductory essay is titled “Haunted by Defeat: Imperial Sexualities, Prostitution, and the Emergence of Postwar Japan” by Robert Kramm.  Kramm details the unthinkable situation of women in the “female floodwall,”[6] a network of brothels constructed by racist Japanese officials to protect the upper- and middle-class women from American soldiers arriving imminently in post-World II Japan.  The ‘female floodwall’ consisted of lower-class women conscripted into service as prostitutes, as a buffer between the American soldiers and Japanese aristocrats.  “Gender and sexuality, mediated by Japanese women’s bodies, were key elements in this clash between the fall of the Japanese empire and the rise of the U.S. empire which forged the emergence of postwar Japanese nationalism.”[7]  Hamm notes, “prostitution as administrative practice functioned, on the one hand, as a significant interface for the mediation of certain forms of authoritarian bureaucratic governance and notions of sexuality, gender, class, and race with continuities from the prewar, wartime, and postwar periods.”[8]  And, “on the other hand, the discourse on prostitution in defeated Japan established the social and geospatial coordinates of protection from the arriving occupiers which ultimately generated a new understanding of Japan and Japanese belonging.”[9]

In effect, with the demise of the Japanese empire, the bureaucracy of the Japanese state shifted its activities to support national interests and the forthcoming integration into the new world order that would inevitably emerge.  Part of that work involved construction of the ‘female floodwall.’  Women were either forced or coerced into prostitution by a network of brothel owners working under the direction of the state.  Rizzo notes of Kramm that his article serves to “[draw] attention to the gendered content of those forces” that aimed to construct the ‘female floodwall’ and allay “fears of colonized men’s unbridled sexuality.”  Rizzo notes that “conscripting a subset of the female population to sacrifice themselves for the nation continued the enslavement of women which was constitutive of the Japanese empire.” [10]  This system of domination was cited by Rizzo in her introductory essay, and contextualized further with a reference to Kramm’s description of “seditious uncertainty” and how “we must catalog sources of uncertain knowledge alongside the only superficially more certain archived text.”[11]  For example, the “detritus” here might also include survivors’ accounts, resistance, or the LGBTQ+ experience in post-World War II Japan.

Another article that Rizzo treats in her introductory essay is John Boonstra’s “Scandal in Fin-de-Siècle Beirut”.  In this journal article, Boonstra deconstructs correspondence between the citizenry and the authorities in early 20th-century Beirut, Lebanon.  Both sets of correspondence involved the General Counsel of the French quasi-protectorate of Beirut, where one set came from a local involved in a dispute with a French colonist (who also corresponded), causing a stir, and the other arrived from a recent immigrant to the colony from France looking to be emancipated from her new engagement.  Both women appellants, and the colonist and General Counsel, employed ‘gendered language’ appropriate to the era and place that hinged on “ideals of benevolence and justice central to French imperial mythology.”[12]  These correspondences “also reveal how gendered standards of conduct functioned as grounds for scandal on different scales of interaction, implicating patriarchal authority and prestige in a single home as well as an entire realm of the French imperial imagination.”[13] 

As noted, these events were scandalous for the French authorities, so these robust correspondences survive today in the archives, and serve as compelling examples of what Rizzo referred to as ‘detritus’.  Boonstra describes this ‘detritus’ from Fin-de-Siècle Beirut as presenting “gendered languages and practices of colonial power…[that] transcended the political boundaries of empire, as they were formed and mediated at micro-sites of individual encounter”[14]  and used to deploy an intimate and original historical narrative. 

These narratives are oftentimes the only thing we have left from a particular place and time, and they represent the ‘historical memory’ that Rizzo detailed in her work.  “[People]…their movements, the displacements those movements occasioned, and the backlash against them [were] thus the intersection between the city and the archive: cities as cultural and administrative headquarters, generators and warehousers of knowledge, extracted from the intimate sphere, bureaucratized, dedicated to containing that which escapes containment. Scholars have expanded the definition of the archive to include historical memory.”[15]  Even those most intimate moments that might otherwise be overlooked in the record help flesh out our history and become a permanent record in the archive.

In closing, Rizzo notes that “as we aspire to write that universal history—thoroughly inclusive of men and women, of gender and race and class and age, we can take inspiration from all of the works cited in this essay.”[16]  This perfectly encapsulates the work left for scholars as they sift the ‘detritus’ of human history.  For all the voices that have been heard, a substantial number still have gone unheard, and only by weaving their stories and own histories into our collective historical studies and research can we hope to achieve a more gendered, broadly fashioned story of us.

Bibliography

 BOONSTRA, JOHN. “Scandal in Fin-de-Siècle Beirut: Gender, Morality, and Imperial Prestige between France and Lebanon.” Journal of World History 28, no. 3/4 (2017): 371–93.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537616.

 KRAMM, ROBERT. “Haunted by Defeat: Imperial Sexualities, Prostitution, and the Emergence of Postwar Japan.” Journal of World History 28, no. 3/4 (2017): 587–614. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537623.

RIZZO, TRACEY. “Gender and Empire: Intimacies, Bodies, Detritus.” Journal of World History 28, no. 3/4 (2017): 313–39. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537614.

Footnotes

[1] University of North Carolina Asheville.  Person.  March 10, 2022.  https://www.unca.edu/person/tracey-rizzo-ph-d/.

[2] Rizzo, Tracey. “Gender and Empire: Intimacies, Bodies, Detritus.” Journal of World History

28, no. 3/4 (2017). p. 314. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537614.

[3] Rizzo, Tracey. “Gender and Empire” p. 314.

[4] Rizzo, Tracey. “Gender and Empire” p. 331.

[5] Rizzo, Tracey. “Gender and Empire” p. 337.

[6] Kramm, Robert. “Haunted by Defeat: Imperial Sexualities, Prostitution, and the Emergence of Postwar Japan.” Journal of World History 28, no. 3/4 (2017): p. 587. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537623.

[7] Kramm, Robert, “Haunted” p. 587

[8] Kramm, Robert, “Haunted” p. 588.

[9] Kramm, Robert, “Haunted” p. 589.

[10] Rizzo, Tracey. “Gender and Empire: Intimacies, Bodies, Detritus.” Journal of World History

28, no. 3/4 (2017). p. 321. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537614.

[11] Rizzo, Tracy. “Gender and Empire” p. 328.

[12] Boonstra, John. “Scandal in Fin-de-Siècle Beirut: Gender, Morality, and Imperial Prestige between France and Lebanon.” Journal of World History 28, no. 3/4 (2017): 377. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537616.

[13] Boonstra, John. “Scandal” p. 371.

[14] Boonstra, John. “Scandal” p. 373.

[15] Rizzo, Tracey. “Gender and Empire: Intimacies, Bodies, Detritus.” Journal of World History

28, no. 3/4 (2017). p. 327. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537614.

[16] Rizzo, Tracey. “Gender and Empire” p. 328.