The study of the Siraya Indigenous People’s houses in Formosa (now Taiwan) has long been shaped by the perspectives of colonial powers, including Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese scholars. Scholarly research on Sirayan house often reflects the colonial imprint in their terminology and approach, as the available sources on indigenous architecture, such as Dutch missionary reports and Chinese travellers, are predominantly authored by outsiders. Consequently, the perspectives of the Siraya people, the first indigenous group encountered by the Dutch in Formosa, remain marginalized. The difficulty of transmitting the Siraya’s oral traditions further exacerbates this issue, making it essential to address the absence of indigenous voices in architectural history research.
This paper critically examines the colonial bias inherent in the research on Sirayan houses by comparing Dutch and Chinese accounts of Siraya domestic spaces during Dutch colonization (1624–1662) and after. Through this analysis, I compare the views of the Siraya’s habitation and how these differing Western and Eastern perspectives reflect broader prejudices regarding indigenous society, domesticity, and material culture.
To counterbalance the colonial narratives, this paper also incorporates material evidence from recent archaeological excavations of Sirayan settlements (2022–present). By collaborating with archaeologists working on the Sirayan heritage sites, I trace the use of artifacts and their cultural significance, providing a more nuanced understanding of Sirayan life from an indigenous perspective. This approach highlights the importance of integrating indigenous methodologies and voices into the study of their own architectural history, thereby challenging the dominant colonial narratives that have shaped previous research.

In the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, dozens of European and American scientists became fascinated by the racial origins of the Ainu, a Northeast Asian people Indigenous to Hokkaido and the surrounding area. There was a widespread view that the Ainu were a “white” or “Aryan” people, in contrast to neighboring “yellow” or “Mongoloid” peoples like the Japanese. Far from being a mere scientific curiosity, however, these racial classifications were imbued with great geopolitical significance, as Japan’s colonial subjugation of the Ainu was seen as carrying important implications for what was believed to be a coming global race war. This paper will explore how the idea of Ainu “Aryanness” was strategically employed to different political ends by various actors, both Western and non-Western, in a variety of contexts. From the writings of American William Elliot Griffis, who believed that the Ainu were the missing link that explained how the Japanese could so quickly become “civilized,” to the attempts by American lawyer John Wigmore to justify the naturalization of Japanese immigrants on racial grounds rather than their exclusion as “non-white,” to the interest in the Ainu as Indo-Europeans by Indian archaeologist Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay Banerji, this paper will follow the ripple effects of the notion of Ainu “Aryanness” across the globe.

Albazino, a historical village on the Amur River, holds significant meaning in both Russian and Chinese historiographies. It marks the Russian Tsardom's first foothold in the Amur Basin in the seventeenth century. For China, it symbolizes both the Qing Empire's successful defense against Russian Cossacks and the later, the more humiliating loss of Outer Manchuria to Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. This paper examines the discursive construction of Albazino in the 20th century, drawing on Russian, Chinese, and English sources. I explore how historians, archeologists, and museum curators from the Russian Far East and Manchuria/Northeast China created different, often conflicting narratives around Albazino’s history. The paper investigates how these narratives were aligned with state-approved historiographies from Moscow and Beijing, particularly regarding imperial legacies. I pay special attention to how Soviet and Chinese scholars framed and justified the Russian and Qing colonial encounters with indigenous peoples in Northeast Asia. Two key threads run through this paper. The first examines how the discursive construction of a remote borderland site like Albazino reflects the nature of historical knowledge production in modern Eurasian states with complex colonial legacies, such as Russia and China. It also shows how these constructed histories of Albazino contributed to the justification and solidification of Soviet and Chinese state-building in the 20th century. The second thread explores how Albazino’s historical narratives influenced Soviet, Russian, and Chinese discourses on nationhood and shaped public perceptions of cultural heritage, social belonging, and political sovereignty, all within contested, complex post-imperial frameworks.

This paper examines the management of otherness and the construction of Swedishness in works by Swedish natural scientists in the 18th century. Despite living during the decline of the Swedish Empire, these scientists can still be viewed as colonial actors who viewed Sápmi with “imperial eyes” (Pratt, 2007), seeking to gain knowledge of the region to increase resource extraction. The strategies employed to integrate Sápmi, and its indigenous Sámi inhabitants, were similar to those used by other contemporary empires, such as the Russian Empire’s conquest of the Steppe, and the British colonial project in the Scottish Highlands. Through an analysis of scientific travel writings, including those of Olof Rudbeck the Younger and Carl Linnaeus, as well as publications from the Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien, this paper shows how depictions of Sápmi as an “empty”, “unknown” and “unused” space played an important role in justifying scientific exploration and, ultimately, increased incorporation of the region into the Swedish Empire. The development of scientific knowledge across Europe frequently served to advance colonial ambitions, and I argue that Sweden was no exception. By examining these sources and drawing parallels with other, more recognised empires, this paper highlights the relationship between scientific research and imperial expansion in the northern Sápmi region, contributing to a broader understanding of how knowledge production was used to facilitate imperialism.