2018 Volume 27 Issue 3 Pages 300-318
This paper considers the fundamental worldview shared by American advisors contributing to the development of the Hokkaido area in the early Meiji Period (1870s). This worldview adequately reflected the atmosphere of the time. At that time, professionals in America began to establish their own exclusive communities, such as universities and societies. These new establishments, considered together with the move towards intellectualization, can be understood as American professionalism. Both Horace Capron, in the field of agriculture, and Benjamin Smith Lyman, in that of geology, shared the worldview of American professionals, and introduced the worldview to at least the Hokkaido area. Moreover, the Massachusetts Agricultural College, where William Smith Clark (the man who would later become one of the most famous American advisors coming to Hokkaido historically) taught, held similar values, as illustrated in an American magazine article from the period. The efforts that these advisors made in Hokkaido could be recognized as one of the important precursors of the global spread of American professionalism. Accordingly, the geopolitical position of Hokkaido should be reconsidered through this context.
