Acknowledgments

Many individuals and institutions have provided invaluable support in the writing of this book. First and foremost, I extend my deepest gratitude to the National University of Singapore (NUS) and its Asia Research Institute (ARI), where I have worked since 2016. I am especially thankful to the directors and cluster leaders who supported my work, including Prasenjit Duara, Jonathan Rigg, Tim Bunnell, Naoko Shimazu, and Tim Winter. I am also deeply appreciative of the multiple grants and administrative assistance provided by NUS and ARI, which facilitated fieldwork, conference participation, and the organization of numerous conferences, workshops, roundtables, and lectures. These opportunities were instrumental in the development and refinement of this book. My heartfelt thanks go to the current and previous members of the ARI conference team – Valerie Yeo, Sharon Ong, Tay Minghua, and Lim Zi Qi – for their tireless efforts, as well as to the many international conference participants and Singapore-based colleagues and friends who engaged with my work over the years. They are too many to be named here individually, as fluctuation, especially among postdocs and assistant professors, was high, further intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, but their support is deeply appreciated. I am also grateful to Singapore’s Social Science Research Council for its research support (Project No. MOE2020-SSRTG-027), which shaped the final chapter on biological invasions, and the Max Weber Stiftung, especially the DIJ-ARI Research Partnership.

With my involvement with the Society of Floating Solutions (Singapore) as current president and previously a council member, the society’s investigations into the benefits and challenges of floating structures – particularly in relation to urban growth, energy supply, food production, and climate adaptation – greatly enriched this book. I am particularly indebted to Lim Soon Heng and C. M. Wang, as well as Charles Lim, Larry Lim, Ivan Stoytchev, Tay Zhi Yung, Anil Thapar, and Danny Ton. I also greatly appreciate the research and administrative support provided by Sheryl Low and Wendalyna Lye. My thanks extend to the International Scientific Committee of the Society’s World Conference on Floating Solutions and the local organizing committees that brought these events to life together with SFSS. The conferences, held in Rotterdam (2020, online due to COVID-19), Tokyo (2023), Hong Kong (2024), and Espoo (2025), offered valuable insights. Ironically, I missed the first World Conference in Singapore in 2019 due to my stay in the United States.

I spent three summer semesters at Harvard University: at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (Spring 2017) and at the Harvard University Asia Center (Spring 2018 and Spring 2019). I am grateful to the directors and acting directors of these centers – Andy Gordon, Karen Thornber, and Grzegorz Ekiert – for their support. I also thank the Fulbright Program and the US SSRC’s Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship program for their financial and intellectual contributions to these stays. Special acknowledgment goes to Prasenjit Duara and Ho Engseng for leading intellectual exchanges at two major related meetings of the SSRC. My time at Harvard fostered multiple collaborations, resulting in conferences, panels, and the edited volume Oceanic Japan: The Archipelago in Pacific and Global History (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025). I am grateful to many outstanding scholars who contributed to these efforts, including David Armitage, Arunabh Ghosh, Andy Gordon, David Howell, Ian J. Miller, Jonas Rüegg, and Victor Seow. I also want to thank Nadin Heé (University of Leipzig) and Bill Tsutsui (Ottawa University) for joining many of these initiatives, co-hosting events, and providing invaluable feedback. Other early participants in these initiatives include Martin Dusinberre, Toshi Higuchi, Julia Mariko Jacoby, and Paul Kreitman – and I also thank the members who later joined this growing group.

At Harvard, I refined the idea for this book in conversations with David Armitage. His guidance, along with that of Renisa Mawani and Sujit Sivasundaram – the editors of the Oceanic Histories series – has been very helpful. I am also grateful for the feedback from two reviewers and the support of Cambridge University Press publisher Lucy Rhymer.

Additional research for this book was conducted during a History and Public Policy Fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a postdoctoral fellowship at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, in Spring 2016. I am thankful to Christian Ostermann and Simone Lässig, respectively, for hosting me. Further acknowledgments go to the Bundeswehr University Munich’s Historical Institute, the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, and the Roosevelt Studies Center in Middelburg, Netherlands, for their support.

Numerous conferences, public lectures, informal meetings, and online presentations, ranging from large international gatherings such as the American Society of Environmental History’s annual conference to much smaller, focused events such as an AAS-organized workshop on “Asia in the Anthropocene,” provided essential feedback for this book, for which I am profoundly grateful. Once again, I cannot mention all of them, not even all that begin with an “A.”

I also owe a great debt to the staff of many libraries and archives, whose assistance was invaluable to my research. My deepest thanks go to Harvard University’s Widener Library, with additional gratitude extended to a wide array of institutions, including (in alphabetical order) the Asian Development Bank Archives, Manila; Bavarian State Library, Munich; Baker Library, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA; British Library, London; Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde; Columbia University Library, New York City; Defense Technical Information Center, Fort Belvoir, VA; Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Tokyo; ENI Archives, Pomezia; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Archives, Rome; Hamilton Library, University of Hawai'i at Mnoa, Honolulu, HI; Historical Archives of the European Union, European University Institute, Florence; Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Library, Singapore; Japan Atomic Energy Agency (Nihon Genshiryoku Kenky? Kaihatsu Kik?), Funaishikawa; LBJ Presidential Library, Austin, TX; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; National Air and Space Museum Archives, Chantilly, VA; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD; National Archives of Singapore; National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew; National Diet Library, Tokyo; National Library of Singapore; National Technical Reports Library, Alexandria, VA; NASA Technical Reports Server, Washington, DC; NUS Libraries, Singapore; Special Collections Division, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, WA; Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno, CA; Stanford University Libraries, Palo Alto, CA; The Kenzo Tange Archives, Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA; United Nations Archives, Geneva; United Nations Archives, New York City; United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok; United States Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA; University of Hawai'i School of Law Library Archive, Honolulu, HI; and World Bank Group Archives, Washington, DC.

Finally, I extend deep thanks to my family, Rita, Hans, Anja, Siew Ping, Jeffrey, J, and riddle-loving Tessa, for bearing with me while I was writing this book. And here is the riddle, as promised: “As they say, the early bird catches the worm. This book was truly born out of the power (hydroelectrically derived, given the nature of this book) of a year’s dedication. Speaking candidly, some days of this journey felt like navigating out of a dark cave, while others were brimming with hope and excitement for the positive implications this holds for the Earth and our generations of brothers and sisters to come. I hope you find inspiration in this tale as did I”.

This book is entirely a product of human research. No parts of it were created with the aid of generative AI.

Funding from NUS made it possible for this book to be published open access, making the digital version (on the Cambridge University Press website) freely available for anyone to read and reuse under a Creative Commons licence.