Program

Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies Predissertation-Summer Travel Grants, 2017

Project

Living on Empire's Edge: Europe, America, and the South China Coast, 1780 to 1844

Department

History

Abstract

Most histories have painted a bleak portrait of the 19th-century Sino-Western encounter, with legal disputes, bureaucratic restrictions, and opium taking the fore in a conflict-centered account of the pre-Opium War period. My dissertation, however, argues that everyday conflict and misunderstanding were far less typical than scholars believe. Via a bottom-up reexamination of the daily lives and incentives of people living on the global margins of the South China Coast, my dissertation shows how problem solving and cooperation, not conflict, were in fact the norm. I both reframe the story of pre-Opium War relations by telling it from the ground up, and also open up broader historiographic questions about how we understand and narrate causality in an entangled, multinational context.

Program

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships, 2021

Project

Barbarians on the Shore: Global Trade, Conflict Resolution, and Everyday Life on the South China Coast, 1780-1860

Department

History

Abstract

Most scholars have painted a bleak portrait of the nineteenth-century encounter between “China” and “the West,” with stories of cross-cultural misunderstanding, legal disputes, and opium smuggling punctuating a conflict-centered narrative of the years before the first Opium War. This project, however, argues that everyday conflict and misunderstanding were far from representative. Through a bottom-up reexamination of daily life in the globally entangled societies of the South China Coast, this research shows that active problem solving and cooperation, not conflict, were in fact the norm: driven by shared economic incentives, most local merchants, sailors, prostitutes, interpreters, coolies, cooks, pirates, and other liminal actors worked flexibly with their foreign counterparts to resolve problems on the ground level, long before they wended their way up to the political sphere.

Program

Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships in China Studies – Long-Term, 2024

Project

Beyond Conflict: Global Trade and Everyday Relations between China and the West, 1780-1860

Named Award

Long-term - NEH

Department

History

Abstract

This project examines the history of trade and grassroots relations between Chinese, Europeans, and Americans on the South China Coast in the decades surrounding the first Opium War from 1839 to 1842. Through a bottom-up reassessment of the daily lives and incentives of merchants, sailors, interpreters, coolies, cooks, sex workers, and other individuals, this project pushes back against traditional narratives of Sino-Western conflict and shows that active transnational problem solving and cooperation, not conflict, were in fact the norm. By highlighting these processes of negotiation and relationship building, this research revises scholarly understandings of nineteenth century China and offers a more sensitive understanding of how people from different parts of the world engaged across cultural and national divides.