China and the Ghosts of 1900: Stories of the Boxers and the First Global War

This illustrated lecture revisits the anti-Christian uprising and international invasion that convulsed the Qing Empire as the nineteenth century ended, paying particular attention to the varied ways the events were understood in different places at the time and the diverse kinds of stories that have been told about them since. As different as the world of 1900 is from our own, we can find in China's Boxer uprising and the actions of an Allied Army made up of soldiers from across the globe intimations of things to come in the troubled twentieth century and our own angry, anxious age.

Prof. Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a leading expert on Modern Chinese Social and Cultural History, with a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into comparative and global perspective. He has taught and written about subjects ranging from gender to revolution, human rights to urban change. He has contributed to many academic periodicals, including the China Quarterly, Journal of World History, Journal of Global History, and History Workshop Journal and is also a regular contributor of commentaries and reviews for various news media, including the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and NPR. He is the author of multiple books, including: Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford, 1991); and China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.