Erik Esselstrom’s first monograph Crossing Empire’s Edge, published in 2009, fits within trends exploring the margins of Great Power empires and how this space defined the metropolitan government and society. Perhaps no institution physically personifies the “Modern State” more than the police. Police forces tangibly translate and execute state policy into systems of population control defining societal norms. In the context of empires, from the British, French, and American to the more autocratic Russian, Ottoman, and German, police forces have exhibited “extraterritorial” power on the imperial peripheries in the name of protecting colonial populations and exercising de facto sovereignty over territory ruled by others. Japan was no exception, but significantly less has been written about the functionaries of this empire.

As such, Esselstrom utilizes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Gaimusho) and their consular police force as a foil to explore multiple theses. At its core, Crossing Empire’s Edge chronologically follows the development and expansion of these foreign police organs from their inception at the beginning of the 1900s to the end in 1945. In deliberately broad sketches, Esselstrom draws the reader’s attention to the extra-legal functions the consular police took on and their implications, making a series of historiographical interventions and starting points for future research (10). Primarily, Crossing Empire’s Edge argues that the Japanese Empire’s civilian government organs were not the passive and subservient institutions to the military that is commonly portrayed, but rather active and independent bodies which aggressively fought to establish the empire abroad. Esselstrom explores how consular police worked to physically extend state power legally and extra-legally into the borderlands and peripheries as they attempted to not only control external enemies of the state like Korean anarchists and anti-Japanese Chinese, but also the influence these groups reflected on the metropole as they often met with Japanese left and right wing groups aimed at overthrowing the Japanese government (150).

Secondly, Esselstrom refutes that Chinese and Japanese populations were also submissive bodies but were instead collaborators (in the case of the Chinese) or the most vocal voices that lobbied the government for expansion of Japanese influence in foreign territory (in the case of Japanese colonists). These everyday colons who migrated from the metropole, like colonial populations across the Great Powers, actively requested increases in Japanese police presence, worked ardently to subvert and punish local anti-Japanese populations and sought to participate in the “defense of Japan.” Their voices allowed the Japanese government to finesse and outmaneuver their Chinese counterparts with very loose interpretations of the Unequal Treaties which—quite naturally—increased Sino-Japanese tensions. Collaboration with Chinese and Koreans also increased tensions, as these pro-Japanese partners effectively became death squads, sweeping villages for communists and other “anti-state” elements, executing them on-sight. 

Broadly, like the consular police, Esselstrom’s work extends well beyond the borders of the Japanese Empire making it a valuable read for anyone interested in the physical manifestations of imperialism across East and SouthEast Asia. Ultimately, Crossing Empire’s Edge complicates the traditional narrative of imperial interaction between China, Korea, and Japan making a welcome contribution to this historiography for future expansion.