Monthly Archives: April 2018

Thursday, May 3rd: Mark Frank “A Land ‘Without History to Speak of’: The Rise (and Fall and Rise) of Xikang Province”

Mark Frank

PhD Candidate in East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

” A Land ‘Without History to Speak of’: The Rise (and Fall and Rise) of Xikang Province”

Thursday May 3rd, 4:00-6:00 PM

John Hope Franklin Room [SSR 224]

Discussant: Kenneth Pomeranz, University Professor of Modern Chinese History and in the College, University of Chicago

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop in welcoming Mark Frank as he presents a draft of his dissertation chapter, titled “A Land ‘Without History to Speak of’: The Rise (and Fall and Rise) of Xikang Province.” He has provided the following abstract:

In 1939 the Republic of China fixed borders around the Kham region of eastern Tibet and declared it to be “Xikang Province”. This chapter chronicles the rise of that province as the hybrid outcome of an enduring political vision and a convoluted series of historical accidents. Sichuan officials first conceived of converting the Kham region into a province named Xikang (Kham-in-the-west) after the murder of a Qing imperial representative there in 1905, but their provincial project was derailed by the Chinese revolution of 1911. The notion of a potential Xikang Province circulated in Chinese discourse for decades, even as warlords battled the Tibetan army and each other for control of the Kham region. Chinese writers floated all manner of fantastical ideas about Xikang—that it was a vast virgin waste whose development would “benefit the country and enrich the people”; that it could be a springboard for the liberation of India from British rule, or a last bastion against Japanese invasion. The eventual founding of Xikang Province was a marriage of convenience between the wartime desires of the Nationalist government and those of the embattled warlord Liu Wenhui. In spite of very disparate notions of what Xikang should look like and what it meant for China, this essay contends that the fantasy of colonizing it with Han farmers persisted from the last years of the Qing through its eventual founding, and beyond.

 

Mark’s Paper can be found in the post below.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Robert Burgos at rburgos@uchicago.edu or Spencer Stewart at sdstewart@uchicago.edu.

Thursday, April 19th: Yuan Julian Chen “The Ecological Footprint of China’s Medieval Capital Kaifeng, 900-1200”

Yuan Julian Chen

PhD Candidate in History, Yale University

“The Ecological Footprint of China’s Medieval Capital Kaifeng, 900-1200”

Thursday April 19th, 4:00-6:00 PM

John Hope Franklin Room [SSR 224]

Discussant: Dan Knorr, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Chicago

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop in welcoming Yuan Julian Chen as she presents a draft of her dissertation chapter, titled “The Ecological Footprint of China’s Medieval Capital Kaifeng, 900-1200.” She has provided the following abstract:

From the 10th to the 12th centuries, the building of the new Song Dynasty capital at Kaifeng brought about profound ecological consequences in the Chinese Empire and beyond. With demographic, technological and economic growth, in addition to the shifting geopolitical landscape in East Asia, Kaifeng’s rapidly growing consumption and heightened security needs shaped ecologies in strategic borderlands and foreign territories alike, creating a vast “ecological empire” that radiated outwards from Kaifeng. I argue that three geo-factors –– geography, geoeconomics, and geopolitics –– played foundational roles in shaping the bounds of the ecological empire of Kaifeng, both within and outside of the Song empire proper.

 

This research will study the Kaifeng-centered ecological empire through the interplay of these factors. I will use six examples to illustrate the ecological consequences of the rise and fall of medieval Kaifeng: the Song emperors’ quest for legitimacy and lavish imperial garden building in Kaifeng; Kaifeng’s timber consumption and deforestation in old-growth forests in South China; Kaifeng’s seafood consumption and the booming of fisheries in the East China Sea; Kaifeng’s lamb consumption and desertification in the territories of the Xi Xia and Liao; the building of cavalry forces in the capital and the over-cultivation of tea in Sichuan; and Kaifeng’s need for security and the creation of a massive defensive forest along the Song-Liao border. This research will show that the Song period, from the view of Kaifeng, was not only a time of profound socio-political changes but also was an ecologically transformative era.

 

Yuan’s Paper can be found in the post below.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Robert Burgos at rburgos@uchicago.edu or Spencer Stewart at sdstewart@uchicago.edu.