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Courses by Justin Jacobs
This course provides a short introduction to six of the most important Chinese philosophers from ... more This course provides a short introduction to six of the most important Chinese philosophers from the second half of the first millennium B.C.: Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi. We will learn about the changing historical and social context of their age and how they responded both to the world around them and to the ideas of one another. We will cover the most important ideas formulated by each philosopher as well as the schools of thought that they represented: Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism.
6 video lessons297 views
There are over three thousand years of recorded history in China. This course provides a concise ... more There are over three thousand years of recorded history in China. This course provides a concise introduction to many of the major states, historical figures, and evolving themes of Chinese history. Emphasis is placed on the dynamic change that has been a regular feature of Chinese civilization over the millennia, with a focus on both continuities and discontinuities. We will cover politics, religion, culture, ethnicity, and the economy, in the process laying the groundwork for a better grasp of the diversity and complexity of China today.
5 video lessons110 views
This course provides an overview of the origins, development, dismantlement, and legacy of the Ja... more This course provides an overview of the origins, development, dismantlement, and legacy of the Japanese Empire during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Though it lasted only fifty years, the Japanese empire shook the foundations of the East Asian geopolitical order and led to a sweeping realignment of power politics and cultural orientations throughout the region. We will address the question of when and how the empire began, the motivations behind its acquisition, the ideologies that justified these acquisitions, and the Cold War agendas that discouraged deep reflection on this imperial enterprise - with lasting consequences for the Asia-Pacific region today.
6 video lessons183 views
This course provides a concise introduction to the major themes, events, and people in modern Chi... more This course provides a concise introduction to the major themes, events, and people in modern Chinese history, from the end of the Qing Empire to the legacy of the Mao era. We begin with the Macartney Mission to Beijing in 1793, examining the ways in which it reveals the competing agendas, ideologies, and power relations of Europe and China at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The focus then shifts to the consequences of the sudden military advantage gained by Western states (and Japan) over China during the 19th century, laying the foundation for subsequent political and economic crises. The twentieth century witnessed the end of the last imperial dynasty, the rise of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party, and ultimately the victory of Mao Zedong's Communist Party in 1949. We'll take a look not only at big political developments, but also significant reforms in the areas of culture, ethnicity, and gender. The goal of this course is to provide in-depth historical context to better understand the concerns, actions, and challenges of China and its people today.
6 video lessons198 views
Books by Justin Jacobs
From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities f... more From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital” to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.
An overview of the hidden agendas of those who transported artifacts across ethnic and cultural b... more An overview of the hidden agendas of those who transported artifacts across ethnic and cultural boundaries in the name of science and empire, from Europe and the Middle East to China and Latin America.
This book views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were t... more This book views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were tasked with governing Xinjiang. This region, inhabited by Uighurs, Kazaks, Hui, Mongols, Kirgiz, and Tajiks, is also the last significant "colony" of the former Qing empire to remain under continuous Chinese rule throughout the twentieth century. By foregrounding the responses of Chinese and other imperial elites to the growing threat of national determination across Eurasia, the author argues for a reconceptualization of the modern Chinese state as a "national empire." He shows how strategies for administering this region in the late Qing, Republican, and Communist eras were molded by, and shaped in response to, the rival platforms of ethnic difference characterized by Soviet and other geopolitical competitors across Inner and East Asia. The narrative tracks Xinjiang political history through the Bolshevik revolution, the warlord years, Chinese civil war, and the large-scale Han immigration in the People's Republic of China, as well as the efforts of the exiled Xinjiang government in Taiwan after 1949 to claim the loyalty of Xinjiang refugees.
Papers by Justin Jacobs
西域文史, 2022
本文是拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，Un... more 本文是拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，University of Chicago Press，2020)的最后一章。前面的章节以中文、英文以及法文档案资料为依 据，分析了20世纪头三十年中，新疆和甘肃的穆斯林、汉族劳工以及汉族官员、学者与 西方考古学家之间的关系。我在分析时试图跳出通常用来解释如此多的文化珍宝被从中 国掠走的欺骗、腐败、威逼的话语，而是强调中国民众在西方探险家考察期间参与并协 助他考察的激励因素与遏制因素。本书的前半部分分析了在清末外国考察活动的鼎盛时 期，中国人会对外国考古学家热情且通常自愿协助的原因。本书的后半部分则试图理解 这些关系在辛亥革命和第一次世界大战后的几十年里是如何转变的。在转变的过程中， 西方考古学家在大部分汉族人和穆斯林的眼中，从科学英雄变成了帝国主义窃贼。这里 的最后一章讲述了美国古生物学家安得思(Roy Chapman Andrews)和英国考古学家奥 莱尔·斯坦因(Aurel Stein)于20世纪20年代末与30年代初在中国最后的考察，而讲述 的中心便是北京的古物保管委员会，其成员是第一代全面接受了西方教育的中国学者的 代表——因此他们对艺术品和文物的估值与西方人完全相同。在这一章中，我们将看到 委员会是如何靠着自己对中国境内的艺术品和文物的“无价”估值，而迫使北京与乌鲁 木齐的北洋军阀以及南京的国民党政客放弃他们认为同样的对象是略微不那么珍贵的 “政治资本”的估值的。也正因如此，委员会首开先例，成功将外国探险家赶出了中 国，且没有让他们带走任何古物。
西域文史, 2021
本文是对拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，U... more 本文是对拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，University of Chicago Press，2020)第三章的中文翻译。本章以英文、法文以及中文的档案资料为依 据，尝试还原曾与来华西方考古学家和探险家有过互动的各种中国人的声音，以期了解 这些人对于大量艺术品和文物流失海外的想法与感受。我的研究发轫于一个简单而耐人 寻味的事实，这个事实几乎出现在所有关于晚清时期西方考古学家的中文资料中，那就 是在中国几乎所有与西方考古学家在其考察时有过互动或之后对其有所耳闻的人，都对 他们的活动报以一种极度正面且热情的回应，哪怕是已经知道这些西方人的所作所为。 这与后来对这一批人的评价大相径庭。这些西方人如今常常被认为是蒙骗和欺压了“腐 败无知”的清朝官员的“小偷”。那么问题来了，该如何解释清末民初西方考古学家如 此正面的印象呢?拙著第一章运用西方考古学家的通信和野外考察日记，还原出当年加 入考察队的中国劳工的日常经历和目的。这些人大多是目不识丁的底层穆斯林和汉族百 姓，承担了田野工作中大部分的体力活。他们加入考察队主要是被各种形式的经济资本 所吸引:工资、奖赏、身份跃迁以及新的工作机会。《西域文史》在此刊出的第三章，采 用类似的方法对那些受过良好教育且通常很富有的中国官员与西方考古学家在考察期间的 互动进行分析。本章揭示，与经济资本驱动下的贫穷且不识字的农民截然不同，新疆和甘 肃的中国官员向西方考古学家提供帮助的动机是想要获取各种形式的政治和社会资本。换 句话说，西方人的考古探险活动包括了很多与考古学关联甚少甚至根本无关的互动。而我 们只有关注了考古调查中发生的所有活动后，才能理解为什么当时有这么多来自不同经济 阶层和不同文化背景的人都自发且热情地去帮助这些西方考古学家。
丝路文明, 2021
20 世纪前期敦煌文献收藏者、学者、官员们撰写的题跋，是中国近代史研究值得注意的史料。它们反映了 20 世纪前期的文物流通模式，敦煌文献被用于各种社交、政治和经济目的。通过它们还可以看到当时中国... more 20 世纪前期敦煌文献收藏者、学者、官员们撰写的题跋，是中国近代史研究值得注意的史料。它们反映了 20 世纪前期的文物流通模式，敦煌文献被用于各种社交、政治和经济目的。通过它们还可以看到当时中国人对斯坦因、伯希和的看法及其演变。考察题跋内容的历史背景，可以辨别出一些伪造的题跋。
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2020
The concept of the Silk Road first attained prominence in the latter half of the 19th century as... more The concept of the Silk Road first attained prominence in the latter half of the 19th century as part of European attempts to impose economic and political claims upon the lands and peoples of Xinjiang (also known as East Turkestan, Chinese Central Asia, or Chinese Turkestan). These claims were given cultural substance at the turn of the century by a series of expeditions undertaken by Western explorers and archaeologists, who ventured into the deserts of northwestern China in search of Greco-Indian art and antiquities. The study and display of such artifacts were motivated primarily by a desire to highlight the eastward migrations of Indo-European speakers into Central Asia. When these same expeditions began to reveal the presence of ancient Chinese ruins and antiquities as well, Chinese scholars and officials joined their Western counterparts in the field, using the material proceeds of their excavations to construct competing narratives of the westward influence of Chinese civilization. In the decades since the end of World War II, the concept of the Silk Road has come to dominate popular and scholarly associations with the region, monopolizing everything from the advertising of Central Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine to the names of academic monographs and international string ensembles.
The elusive and malleable idea of “the Silk Road” has provided an attractive ideological platform over the past 200 years for major political, economic, and cultural actors throughout Eurasia to assert their imagined historical importance across both time and space, often with a highly romanticized gloss. In that sense, it is a purely modern intellectual construct, one that would have been utterly unfamiliar and likely incomprehensible to those historical agents it purports to describe.
Indiana Jones in History: From Pompeii to the Moon, 2017
The popular Indiana Jones film franchise is great fun, but is it good history? This chapter explo... more The popular Indiana Jones film franchise is great fun, but is it good history? This chapter explores the intersection of film and history by comparing the characters and plotlines from the Hollywood movies to known historical facts and themes from the history of Western archaeological expeditions in the non-Western world. Did George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg do their homework? Would the Nazis actually be interested in recovering Judeo-Christian treasures? Could they have undertaken large-scale digs in Egypt in 1936? How are the local Arab, Muslim, and Hindu populations who help or hinder Jones portrayed? Do the movies make any historical sense at all, or are they mostly flights of fancy filled with degrading stereotypes? With the aid of a leaked transcript of a brainstorming session for the first film and a critical eye toward all four Hollywood films, this chapter weighs fact against cinematic fiction and demonstrates the ways in which popular culture intersects with the truth of the past. It also anticipates the changing political sensitivities sure to inform the upcoming fifth film.
This paper examines the relationship between foreign explorers in northwestern China and the Chin... more This paper examines the relationship between foreign explorers in northwestern China and the Chinese officials who bore responsibility for overseeing their expeditions during the early twentieth century.
The extraordinary lengths the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan went to after 1949 to purs... more The extraordinary lengths the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan went to after 1949 to pursue a “One China” policy during the Cold War are well known. Recently declassified archives, however, reveal that Chiang Kai-shek’s determination to maintain the geopolitical integrity of China went far beyond the suppression of a Taiwanese independence movement and lukewarm support for the 1959 Tibetan uprising. The exodus of several tens of thousands of Uighur and Kazak refugees from Xinjiang, a mostly Muslim province only loosely integrated into the modern Chinese state, provided a rare opportunity for the Nationalist government in exile to make overtures to a vulnerable non-Han populace whose Cold War loyalties were up for grabs. This study of the historically unique and heretofore unknown Office for the Chairman of the Xinjiang Provincial Government in Taiwan demonstrates the Nationalist commitment to preserving the non-Han borderlands of China while in exile, even if the immediate beneficiary of such efforts was the Communist government on the mainland.
Journal of Asian Studies, Feb 2014
The expeditions of foreign explorers and archaeologists along China’s borderlands during the late... more The expeditions of foreign explorers and archaeologists along China’s borderlands during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have long been a lightning rod for debates over cultural sovereignty, imperialism, and nationalism. This study attempts to move beyond such cultural and moral glosses by placing the expeditions of Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin to the northwestern province of Xinjiang back into the domestic geopo- litical context of the Nanjing Decade (1927–37). Newly available archival material demonstrates how the discourse of cultural sovereignty, far from sabotaging such expeditions, instead became the handmaiden of domestic geopolitical competitors who attempted to turn Stein and Hedin into exploitable resources for their own agendas. The logistical pragmatism revealed in these sources relegates principled nationalist intel- lectuals and their imperialist targets to the background, and shows how a new approach to a familiar topic can help paint a fuller portrait of some of the most contested episodes of transnational cultural interactions throughout Eurasia.
The American Historical Review, Dec 1, 2010
This course provides a short introduction to six of the most important Chinese philosophers from ... more This course provides a short introduction to six of the most important Chinese philosophers from the second half of the first millennium B.C.: Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi. We will learn about the changing historical and social context of their age and how they responded both to the world around them and to the ideas of one another. We will cover the most important ideas formulated by each philosopher as well as the schools of thought that they represented: Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism.
6 video lessons297 views
There are over three thousand years of recorded history in China. This course provides a concise ... more There are over three thousand years of recorded history in China. This course provides a concise introduction to many of the major states, historical figures, and evolving themes of Chinese history. Emphasis is placed on the dynamic change that has been a regular feature of Chinese civilization over the millennia, with a focus on both continuities and discontinuities. We will cover politics, religion, culture, ethnicity, and the economy, in the process laying the groundwork for a better grasp of the diversity and complexity of China today.
5 video lessons110 views
This course provides an overview of the origins, development, dismantlement, and legacy of the Ja... more This course provides an overview of the origins, development, dismantlement, and legacy of the Japanese Empire during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Though it lasted only fifty years, the Japanese empire shook the foundations of the East Asian geopolitical order and led to a sweeping realignment of power politics and cultural orientations throughout the region. We will address the question of when and how the empire began, the motivations behind its acquisition, the ideologies that justified these acquisitions, and the Cold War agendas that discouraged deep reflection on this imperial enterprise - with lasting consequences for the Asia-Pacific region today.
6 video lessons183 views
This course provides a concise introduction to the major themes, events, and people in modern Chi... more This course provides a concise introduction to the major themes, events, and people in modern Chinese history, from the end of the Qing Empire to the legacy of the Mao era. We begin with the Macartney Mission to Beijing in 1793, examining the ways in which it reveals the competing agendas, ideologies, and power relations of Europe and China at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The focus then shifts to the consequences of the sudden military advantage gained by Western states (and Japan) over China during the 19th century, laying the foundation for subsequent political and economic crises. The twentieth century witnessed the end of the last imperial dynasty, the rise of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party, and ultimately the victory of Mao Zedong's Communist Party in 1949. We'll take a look not only at big political developments, but also significant reforms in the areas of culture, ethnicity, and gender. The goal of this course is to provide in-depth historical context to better understand the concerns, actions, and challenges of China and its people today.
6 video lessons198 views
From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities f... more From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital” to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.
An overview of the hidden agendas of those who transported artifacts across ethnic and cultural b... more An overview of the hidden agendas of those who transported artifacts across ethnic and cultural boundaries in the name of science and empire, from Europe and the Middle East to China and Latin America.
This book views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were t... more This book views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were tasked with governing Xinjiang. This region, inhabited by Uighurs, Kazaks, Hui, Mongols, Kirgiz, and Tajiks, is also the last significant "colony" of the former Qing empire to remain under continuous Chinese rule throughout the twentieth century. By foregrounding the responses of Chinese and other imperial elites to the growing threat of national determination across Eurasia, the author argues for a reconceptualization of the modern Chinese state as a "national empire." He shows how strategies for administering this region in the late Qing, Republican, and Communist eras were molded by, and shaped in response to, the rival platforms of ethnic difference characterized by Soviet and other geopolitical competitors across Inner and East Asia. The narrative tracks Xinjiang political history through the Bolshevik revolution, the warlord years, Chinese civil war, and the large-scale Han immigration in the People's Republic of China, as well as the efforts of the exiled Xinjiang government in Taiwan after 1949 to claim the loyalty of Xinjiang refugees.
西域文史, 2022
本文是拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，Un... more 本文是拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，University of Chicago Press，2020)的最后一章。前面的章节以中文、英文以及法文档案资料为依 据，分析了20世纪头三十年中，新疆和甘肃的穆斯林、汉族劳工以及汉族官员、学者与 西方考古学家之间的关系。我在分析时试图跳出通常用来解释如此多的文化珍宝被从中 国掠走的欺骗、腐败、威逼的话语，而是强调中国民众在西方探险家考察期间参与并协 助他考察的激励因素与遏制因素。本书的前半部分分析了在清末外国考察活动的鼎盛时 期，中国人会对外国考古学家热情且通常自愿协助的原因。本书的后半部分则试图理解 这些关系在辛亥革命和第一次世界大战后的几十年里是如何转变的。在转变的过程中， 西方考古学家在大部分汉族人和穆斯林的眼中，从科学英雄变成了帝国主义窃贼。这里 的最后一章讲述了美国古生物学家安得思(Roy Chapman Andrews)和英国考古学家奥 莱尔·斯坦因(Aurel Stein)于20世纪20年代末与30年代初在中国最后的考察，而讲述 的中心便是北京的古物保管委员会，其成员是第一代全面接受了西方教育的中国学者的 代表——因此他们对艺术品和文物的估值与西方人完全相同。在这一章中，我们将看到 委员会是如何靠着自己对中国境内的艺术品和文物的“无价”估值，而迫使北京与乌鲁 木齐的北洋军阀以及南京的国民党政客放弃他们认为同样的对象是略微不那么珍贵的 “政治资本”的估值的。也正因如此，委员会首开先例，成功将外国探险家赶出了中 国，且没有让他们带走任何古物。
西域文史, 2021
本文是对拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，U... more 本文是对拙著《掠夺的报偿:中国失宝记》(芝加哥大学出版社， 2020年)(The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures，University of Chicago Press，2020)第三章的中文翻译。本章以英文、法文以及中文的档案资料为依 据，尝试还原曾与来华西方考古学家和探险家有过互动的各种中国人的声音，以期了解 这些人对于大量艺术品和文物流失海外的想法与感受。我的研究发轫于一个简单而耐人 寻味的事实，这个事实几乎出现在所有关于晚清时期西方考古学家的中文资料中，那就 是在中国几乎所有与西方考古学家在其考察时有过互动或之后对其有所耳闻的人，都对 他们的活动报以一种极度正面且热情的回应，哪怕是已经知道这些西方人的所作所为。 这与后来对这一批人的评价大相径庭。这些西方人如今常常被认为是蒙骗和欺压了“腐 败无知”的清朝官员的“小偷”。那么问题来了，该如何解释清末民初西方考古学家如 此正面的印象呢?拙著第一章运用西方考古学家的通信和野外考察日记，还原出当年加 入考察队的中国劳工的日常经历和目的。这些人大多是目不识丁的底层穆斯林和汉族百 姓，承担了田野工作中大部分的体力活。他们加入考察队主要是被各种形式的经济资本 所吸引:工资、奖赏、身份跃迁以及新的工作机会。《西域文史》在此刊出的第三章，采 用类似的方法对那些受过良好教育且通常很富有的中国官员与西方考古学家在考察期间的 互动进行分析。本章揭示，与经济资本驱动下的贫穷且不识字的农民截然不同，新疆和甘 肃的中国官员向西方考古学家提供帮助的动机是想要获取各种形式的政治和社会资本。换 句话说，西方人的考古探险活动包括了很多与考古学关联甚少甚至根本无关的互动。而我 们只有关注了考古调查中发生的所有活动后，才能理解为什么当时有这么多来自不同经济 阶层和不同文化背景的人都自发且热情地去帮助这些西方考古学家。
丝路文明, 2021
20 世纪前期敦煌文献收藏者、学者、官员们撰写的题跋，是中国近代史研究值得注意的史料。它们反映了 20 世纪前期的文物流通模式，敦煌文献被用于各种社交、政治和经济目的。通过它们还可以看到当时中国... more 20 世纪前期敦煌文献收藏者、学者、官员们撰写的题跋，是中国近代史研究值得注意的史料。它们反映了 20 世纪前期的文物流通模式，敦煌文献被用于各种社交、政治和经济目的。通过它们还可以看到当时中国人对斯坦因、伯希和的看法及其演变。考察题跋内容的历史背景，可以辨别出一些伪造的题跋。
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2020
The concept of the Silk Road first attained prominence in the latter half of the 19th century as... more The concept of the Silk Road first attained prominence in the latter half of the 19th century as part of European attempts to impose economic and political claims upon the lands and peoples of Xinjiang (also known as East Turkestan, Chinese Central Asia, or Chinese Turkestan). These claims were given cultural substance at the turn of the century by a series of expeditions undertaken by Western explorers and archaeologists, who ventured into the deserts of northwestern China in search of Greco-Indian art and antiquities. The study and display of such artifacts were motivated primarily by a desire to highlight the eastward migrations of Indo-European speakers into Central Asia. When these same expeditions began to reveal the presence of ancient Chinese ruins and antiquities as well, Chinese scholars and officials joined their Western counterparts in the field, using the material proceeds of their excavations to construct competing narratives of the westward influence of Chinese civilization. In the decades since the end of World War II, the concept of the Silk Road has come to dominate popular and scholarly associations with the region, monopolizing everything from the advertising of Central Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine to the names of academic monographs and international string ensembles.
The elusive and malleable idea of “the Silk Road” has provided an attractive ideological platform over the past 200 years for major political, economic, and cultural actors throughout Eurasia to assert their imagined historical importance across both time and space, often with a highly romanticized gloss. In that sense, it is a purely modern intellectual construct, one that would have been utterly unfamiliar and likely incomprehensible to those historical agents it purports to describe.
Indiana Jones in History: From Pompeii to the Moon, 2017
The popular Indiana Jones film franchise is great fun, but is it good history? This chapter explo... more The popular Indiana Jones film franchise is great fun, but is it good history? This chapter explores the intersection of film and history by comparing the characters and plotlines from the Hollywood movies to known historical facts and themes from the history of Western archaeological expeditions in the non-Western world. Did George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg do their homework? Would the Nazis actually be interested in recovering Judeo-Christian treasures? Could they have undertaken large-scale digs in Egypt in 1936? How are the local Arab, Muslim, and Hindu populations who help or hinder Jones portrayed? Do the movies make any historical sense at all, or are they mostly flights of fancy filled with degrading stereotypes? With the aid of a leaked transcript of a brainstorming session for the first film and a critical eye toward all four Hollywood films, this chapter weighs fact against cinematic fiction and demonstrates the ways in which popular culture intersects with the truth of the past. It also anticipates the changing political sensitivities sure to inform the upcoming fifth film.
This paper examines the relationship between foreign explorers in northwestern China and the Chin... more This paper examines the relationship between foreign explorers in northwestern China and the Chinese officials who bore responsibility for overseeing their expeditions during the early twentieth century.
The extraordinary lengths the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan went to after 1949 to purs... more The extraordinary lengths the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan went to after 1949 to pursue a “One China” policy during the Cold War are well known. Recently declassified archives, however, reveal that Chiang Kai-shek’s determination to maintain the geopolitical integrity of China went far beyond the suppression of a Taiwanese independence movement and lukewarm support for the 1959 Tibetan uprising. The exodus of several tens of thousands of Uighur and Kazak refugees from Xinjiang, a mostly Muslim province only loosely integrated into the modern Chinese state, provided a rare opportunity for the Nationalist government in exile to make overtures to a vulnerable non-Han populace whose Cold War loyalties were up for grabs. This study of the historically unique and heretofore unknown Office for the Chairman of the Xinjiang Provincial Government in Taiwan demonstrates the Nationalist commitment to preserving the non-Han borderlands of China while in exile, even if the immediate beneficiary of such efforts was the Communist government on the mainland.
Journal of Asian Studies, Feb 2014
The expeditions of foreign explorers and archaeologists along China’s borderlands during the late... more The expeditions of foreign explorers and archaeologists along China’s borderlands during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have long been a lightning rod for debates over cultural sovereignty, imperialism, and nationalism. This study attempts to move beyond such cultural and moral glosses by placing the expeditions of Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin to the northwestern province of Xinjiang back into the domestic geopo- litical context of the Nanjing Decade (1927–37). Newly available archival material demonstrates how the discourse of cultural sovereignty, far from sabotaging such expeditions, instead became the handmaiden of domestic geopolitical competitors who attempted to turn Stein and Hedin into exploitable resources for their own agendas. The logistical pragmatism revealed in these sources relegates principled nationalist intel- lectuals and their imperialist targets to the background, and shows how a new approach to a familiar topic can help paint a fuller portrait of some of the most contested episodes of transnational cultural interactions throughout Eurasia.
The American Historical Review, Dec 1, 2010
The China Quarterly, Mar 1, 2011
Twenty-one short episodes chronicling the lives and events of the real-life Indiana Jones, from 1... more Twenty-one short episodes chronicling the lives and events of the real-life Indiana Jones, from 1750 to 1969. Provides a cultural history of Euro-American imperial expansion in the modern world, as seen through the lens of political controversies surrounding archaeological digs, expeditions, and exploration. Based on a course I teach at American University, with a companion book to be published in 2018.