The African American Encounter with Japan and China

“Provides important information about an understudied aspect of U.S. and African American history and is written in clear, accessible prose.” — Journal of American History

“Gallicchio’s new study chronicles the black internationalists' long infatuation with Japan and later tilt towards China, and examines how and why their confused search took place in the Asian context . . . . Gallicchio’s book is a successful and long-overdue examination of this topic.” — International History Review

“Gallicchio makes a significant contribution to this dynamic field of study. . . . This book is an extremely valuable contribution. It extends our understanding of the development of an African-American worldview back into the late 1800s, and its focus on black Americans' perceptions of Asia takes us into virtually uncharted territory. . . . All historians interested in the subject of African Americans and U.S. foreign relations will need seriously to consider Gallicchio’s study.” — American Historical Review

“Gallicchio has written a fascinating account of African American admiration for Japan, and it is an important contribution to the growing literature on U.S. perceptions of Asia.” — CHOICE

“[This book] will aid students and specialists in international history and is an excellent choice for graduate seminars in social and international history, world politics, foreign-policy analysis, and globalization studies. And if the civil-rights movement is properly introduced, the book will lend itself to use by upper-division undergraduates.” — China Review International

“This is a book of major importance. No one, to my knowledge, has examined so thoroughly and thoughtfully African Americans' views of East Asian developments, in particular of Japan’s rise as a major power and its challenge to the West. Gallicchio is the first historian who has successfully and persuasively integrated African American history into the history of U.S.–East Asian relations.” — Akira Iriye, Harvard University

“In this remarkable and valuable book, Marc Gallicchio has made a signal contribution to a growing body of scholarship that has created a new paradigm by placing the struggle for racial equality in a global context.” — Gerald Horne, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“This study insightfully captures the meanings and consequences for black internationalism of shifting African American attitudes toward Japan and China over time. In the process, this work sheds new and illuminating light on the history of black internationalism in the twentieth century.” — Waldo E. Martin Jr., University of California, Berkeley