Notes from IH Seminar

With regards to the study of imperialism and international history, we are surveying snapshots of a field reinventing itself. Each of the works we viewed is reacting against something that left issues under or unexamined.

English Lessons tackles the whitewashing of British action in the the 19th century as an unfortunate but necessary passage by remapping the scale and violence and justifications of the civiliziing mission. Havia's work seeks to recover the lost history through examining how the British employed visuals to convey and shape a narrative of their rule while reterritorializing the Chinese state. He also looks at plunder, travel, and memory.

Chinese historiography underwent a series of mutations since the late 1960s. The old thesis on the China World Order, where a confrontation between fixed and rigid Chinese culture and the modern formations lost ground to an assault on the grand narrative that instead focused on internal developments in China. Havia chooses to illuminate how outside connections with other cultures forced a hybrid Chinese development. Insularity is a major issue for the China field.

Kristin Hoganson seeks to destablize certain histories as does Kramer. Notions of race, pg 21, constructed in the colonial outposts, not exported from the metropolis.