Regional Fields
East Asian History
The East Asian region was one of the core areas of civilizational development in the Old World, forming a distinctive political and cultural complex. To many in the West, it seems that East Asia was always a distant and isolated region, with little impact on Western or world history. Nothing could be further from the truth. For millennia, East Asia was a source of commodities, luxuries, ideas, and technologies that fostered development in cultures throughout the Eurasian continent. Interaction with China and Japan were key to the formation of European identity and of the modern world economic system. Understanding the history of East Asia and its interactions with the wider world are important to comprehending the formation of the complex world we live in today.
The one Chinese (Rawski) and two Japanese (Chaiklin, Smethurst) specialists in the Department of History cover the long historical span of East Asian (China, Japan, Korea) history in their teaching. Their research focuses on diverse topics such as imperial rituals, and the modernization of Japan as seen through the life of an important 20th-century minister of finance. East Asianists also work closely with other colleagues on graduate interdisciplinary programs training PhDs in art history, anthropology, archaeology, economics, music, and political science.
Faculty in East Asian History
Martha Chaiklin works on the material culture of early modern Japan examining foreign trade, technological history and other aspects of the historical environment. She is presently writing a book on ivory trade in early modern Asia. Upcoming publications include articles on the sex life of the samurai and prostitution in early modern Nagasaki,
Evelyn Rawski is currently working on several projects: "Qing Publishing in Non-Han Languages" will appear in Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, edited by Cynthia Brokaw and Kai-wing Chow and published by the University of California Press. "The Qing Formation and the Early Modern Period" will appear in Qing Formation in World-Historical Time, edited by Lynn Struve and published by the Harvard University Asia Center. "Book Culture in Qing Inner Asia" will be part of Books in Numbers, a conference volume to be edited by Wilt Idema and published by Harvard University Press.
Richard Smethurst is currently writing a biography of Takahashi Korekiyo, Japan's "Keynesian" finance minister during the World Depression, 1931–36. How did an illegitimate child, born the year after Commodore Matthew Perry visited Japan in 1853, become a sophisticated finance minister three-quarters of a century later? What impact did Takahashi's study of English, which began with American missionaries in Yokohama in 1864, have on his education as a financial statesman? Smethurst also studies the rise of militarism in Japan and the road to World War II. The two interests merge because young army officers brutally murdered Takahashi in February 1936 as an impediment to their militaristic plans.
Recent Books
 Evelyn Rawski (with Jan Stuart) Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits |
 Evelyn Rawski The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions |
 Richard Smethurst Takahashi Korekiyo, Japan's Keynes: From Foot Soldier to Finance Minister |
Martha Chaiklin |
