Friday, October 27th: Scott Relyea “‘A Fence on Which We Can Rely’: Asserting Sovereignty in Early Twentieth Century Southwest China”

Scott Relyea

Assistant Professor, Appalachian State University

‘A Fence on Which We Can Rely’: Asserting Sovereignty in Early Twentieth Century Southwest China

Friday, October 27th, 4:00-6:00 PM

John Hope Franklin Room [SSR 224]

Discussant: Tian Yuan, PhD Student, University of Chicago History Department

Please Join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop in welcoming Scott Relyea [Appalachian State University] as he presents one of his current works-in-progress. Titled “Indigenzing International Law in Early Twentieth Century China: Sovereignty in the Sino-Tibetan Borderland,” Professor Relyea provides the following abstract:

This paper analyses the introduction of international law into China during the Qing Dynasty’s last decades and the first few years of the Republic of China. It explores the influence of two international law texts, the translation Wanguo gongfa (The Public Law of All States), published in Beijing in 1864, and perhaps the first indigenously written international law text in China, Gongfa daoyuan (The Origins of International Law), published in Chengdu around 1899. Building on scholarship exploring the global circulation of knowledge, which focuses largely on political and intellectual centres, this research offers an alternative perspective from the borderlands of Asia, from the interstices of global power where states and empires met and were transformed by the norms and principles of international law, especially territoriality and sovereignty. I argue that local Qing officials overseeing the Kham borderland of eastern Tibet during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries adopted the conceptual basis of international law, whereas central Qing government officials were slow to do so. It was in such contentious borderlands that theoretical claims to sovereignty under international law intersected with the actual exercise of authority, where Sichuan Province officials, influenced by these two texts, adapted the norm of territorial sovereignty to both exert and assert absolute Qing authority in Kham as a stepping stone toward the whole of Tibet. During these tumultuous years in China’s transition from imperial to state form, the actions and successes of these borderland officials in Kham fostered a more thorough adoption and application of international law principles by central government officials, especially during the first years of the Republic of China. This manifest in Republican Chinese negotiators referring to these actions in Kham as substantiation for appeal to the international law principle of ‘effective occupation’ at the Simla Conference (1913-14).

Professor Relyea’s paper can be found at the post below

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. This event is Co-Sponsored with the East Asia Workshop.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Spencer Stewart at sdstewart@uchicago.edu or Robert Burgos at rburgos@uchicago.edu

Thursday, October 19th : Kyle Gardner “Communication: Roads, Regulation and British Joint Commissioners”

Kyle Gardner

PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

“Communication: Roads, Regulation and British Joint Commissioners” Along the Hindustan-Tibet Road and Leh-Yarkand Treaty Road

Thursday, October 19th 3:00-5:00 PM

John Hope Franklin Room [SSR 224]

Discussant: Usama Rafi, University of Chicago History Department

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop as we welcome our own Kyle Gardner, who will be presenting a draft chapter titled “Communication: Roads, Regulation and British Joint Commissioners” from his dissertation. This chapter explores the particular histories of the Hindustan-Tibet Road and Leh-Yarkand Treaty Road from the mid 19th century onward, considering their development as regulatory mechanisms of empire as well as their status as means of both conveyance and restriction along the frontier.

Kyle’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.

 

Thurs. Feb. 9 **4:30 PM** : Stacie Kent “Commercial Treaties: A Framework for Governance”

Stacie Kent

Collegiate Assistant Professor, University of Chicago

“Commercial Treaties: A Framework for Governance”

February 9, 2017

4:30 – 6:30 PM

John Hope Franklin Room, SSR 224

**Please note the time change from 4:00 to 4:30**

Discussants:

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

Carl Kubler, University of Chicago History Department

In the first decade of the 19th century, European opinions about China and its trade policies began to shift towards bellicose opposition. China was denounced as backwards and antisocial, its administrators as arbitrary and self-interested. With this critique in mind, this paper examines the significance of Qing commercial treaties to global commercial and geopolitical integration as well as everyday commercial administration. It argues that Qing commercial treaties should be seen as part of a global effloresce in treaty making that attempted to rationalize and simplify global trade by curtailing the prerogatives and decision making power of local political authorities. Presented as a means to codify a natural community of equal nations, treaties naturalized the abstract compulsions of capital growth and offered a new interface between political authorities and global commerce that generated new limits on the exercise of official power. In China evolving treaty language gradually erased Qing claims to govern trade through flexible decision-making and mutual obligations between merchants and government authorities. In their stead, the treaties called for a novel static regulatory framework and rote official actions.

Professor Kent has been kind enough to provide us with both a chapter and the book proposal from her current project. Both can be found at the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop website 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 Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

WED 11/30 5 PM : Kyle Gardner

Kyle Gardner

University of Chicago

“The Space Between: Trade, Cosmology, and Modes of Seeing in Independent Ladakh”

WED, Nov. 30th 5:00-7:00 PM

John Hope Franklin Room, SSR 224

Discussants:

Matthew Lowenstein, University of Chicago History Department

Please join us for Kyle Gardner’s presentation of a chapter from his dissertation on Wednesday, November 30th at 4 PM in the John Hope Franklin Room (SSR 224). In addition to providing historical background of the making and demise of Ladakh (a region in the northwest Himalayan mountain range), “The Space Between: Trade, Cosmology and Modes of Seeing in Independent Ladakh” explores how four indigenous modes of viewing space–cosmological, political, linguistic, and material–created multiple modes of seeing that space.

Kyle’s paper can be accessed through at the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop website. The password is “cosmology”

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 Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

Frontiers Across Eurasia: A Faculty Forum — October 13, 4:00 PM

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop for our first meeting of the Fall Quarter.

Frontiers Across Eurasia: A Faculty Forum

Thursday, October 13, 4:00 – 6:00 PM

CEAS Room 319 (1155 E 60th St)

Presenters:

Kenneth Pomeranz (University Professor of Modern Chinese History and in the College; Member of the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge) “From ‘Civilizing’ to ‘Modernizing’: Late Imperial and 20th Century Projects to Remake Chinese Frontier Communities”

and

Faith Hillis (Assistant Professor of Russian History and the College) “Frontiers and the Relationship between Center and Periphery in Russian History.”

Discussants:

Robert Burgos (PhD Student, History, University of Chicago) and Alexander Hubert (PhD Student, History, University of Chicago

______________

As participants in EAT Histories’ first-ever faculty forum, Professors Pomeranz and Professor Hillis will each give a brief presentation on their recent work frontiers on opposite ends of the Eurasian continent. During the subsequent discussion we hope to draw connections between these two seemingly disparate sites of analysis and explore the boundaries of the frontiers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

There is no pre-circulated paper for this event, and first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments will be served.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

10/8 Laura Hostetler

Narrating Empire: Cartographic, Comparative, and Horticultural Perspectives

Asia, China, 1785

Asia, China, 1785

Speaker: Dr. Laura Hostetler (Professor of History, University of Illinois, Chicago)

Discussant: Dr. Kenneth Pomeranz (Professor of History, University of Chicago)

Date/Time: October 8, 4:00 to 6:00pm

Venue: John Hope Franklin Room (Social Science Research Building, 224)