We are excited to announce a new title in the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute book series: China's War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842–1965, published by Columbia University Press. The book's author is Philip Thai, an Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University. Smuggling along the Chinese coast has … [Read more...]
Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet
STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES Max Oidtmann (Columbia University Press, 2018) For information from the publisher, please click here. In 1995, the People’s Republic of China resurrected a Qing-era law mandating that the reincarnations of prominent Tibetan Buddhist monks be identified by drawing lots from a golden urn. The Chinese Communist Party hoped to limit the … [Read more...]
Playing by the Informal Rules: Why the Chinese Regime Remains Stable despite Rising Protests
STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES Yao Li (Cambridge University Press, 2018) For information from the publisher, please click here. Growing protests in non-democratic countries are often seen as signals of regime decline. China, however, has remained stable amid surging protests. Playing by the Informal Rules highlights the importance of informal norms in structuring … [Read more...]
Thomas S. Mullaney’s Study of the WEAI “The Chinese Typewriter” Wins Lewis Mumford Award
We congratulate Thomas S. Mullaney, associate professor of history at Stanford University and Columbia alumnus (M.A. 2004, Ph.D. 2006), whose Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute The Chinese Typewriter: A History was awarded the 2018 Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics from the Media Ecology Association (MEA). The book, … [Read more...]
Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire
STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES David R. Ambaras (Cambridge University Press, 2018) For information from the publisher, please click here. This major new study uses vivid accounts of encounters between Chinese and Japanese people living at the margins of empire to elucidate Sino-Japanese relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each chapter … [Read more...]
