Paul Barclay

Special interests: Japanese empire; East Asian history; Indigenous Studies; Easton history

Select publications: Kondo the Barbarian: A Japanese Adventurer and Indigenous Taiwan’s Bloodiest Uprising. Manchester: Eastbridge Books Press, 2023. link

“Imperial Japan’s Forever War, 1895-1945.” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 19, no. 18 (September 15, 2021). link

“Japanese Empire in Taiwan.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Oxford University Press. Article published June 2020. link

“Fascism Carved in Stone: Monuments to Loyal Spirits in Wartime Manchukuo.” In Visualizing Fascism: The Twentieth-Century Rise of the Global Right. Edited by Julia Adeney Thomas and Geoff Eley. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020, pp. 44-68.

Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874-1945. Oakland: University of California Press, digital 2017; paperback 2018. link

YouTube: “Unburying the Past.” Lehigh Valley Live. May 7, 2023. link

“Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s ‘Savage’ Border.” Podcast What is Asia? Hosted by Nakota DiFonzo. February 6, 2023. link

Honors: Lafayette College Advisor of the Year; Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Research Fellowship; Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award; Visiting Scholar at Kyoto University Center for Integrated Areas Studies; National Endowment for the Humanities Sabbatical Year Fellowship; Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellow.

Biography: Paul D. Barclay is Professor of History at Lafayette College, where he teaches East Asian, world, and local history, in addition to historical methods. He is the general editor of the East Asia Image Collection and author of Kondo the Barbarian: A Japanese Adventurer and Taiwan’s Bloodiest Indigenous Uprising (Eastbridge Books, 2023) and Outcasts of Empire: Japanese Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border” 1874-1945 (University of California Press, 2018). Barclay’s research has received support from the National Endowment from the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Japanese Council for the Promotion of Science, and the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He earned a Ph.D. in History at the University of Minnesota.

Barclay is a native of Zion, Illinois. Before matriculating at the University of Wisconsin, where he received his B.S. in Secondary Education, he was the night manager of a Mexican-food restaurant, a diesel-truck fuel attendant, apprentice bricklayer, and electric guitarist. On hiatus from university, Barclay tutored the Kuwaiti ambassador to Morocco’s children, and backpacked across Europe. After obtaining his teacher’s license, he worked as an English instructor in Chiba, Japan. In graduate school, his research on Japanese imperialism brought him to libraries, archives, classrooms, and informal gathering places throughout Taiwan and Japan. He lives with his wife Naoko Ikegami in Easton, Pennsylvania, at the fork of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers.