The Arc of History in Asia:
Freedom and Authoritarianism in China and South Asia in the 20th and 21st centuries
Peter Perdue, Yale University
Denise Ho, Georgetown University
Zaib Aziz, University of South Florida
with
James Millward, Georgetown University
and Eric Schleussel, George Washington University
EverScholar in Washington
November 21-24, 2024
Washington, DC
$2395 per person
Modern China’s political regimes, from the Qing dynasty to the Republican period and the People’s Republic, have almost always been authoritarian one-party states. Even though elections were held in all three regimes, a single party dominated the process. Not until the end of martial law in Taiwan did a Chinese regime become a multi-party polity.
Colonial India, after 1857, was also an authoritarian regime in which the Indian population did not have equal civil rights or a voice in the government. After independence, India, Pakistan, and later Bangladesh have followed a variety of paths, including parliamentary democracy, military dictatorship and electoral authoritarianism.
Authoritarian regimes systematically repress dissent, but they do not rule by coercion alone. They buttress their legitimacy in other ways, by teaching official approved versions of history, by mobilizing civil society, by conducting public rituals, and by propagating symbols of national unity. Citizens resist as best they can, through protest, underground literature, and by rewriting national history to stress the rights of the people against the state.
Colonial regimes, such as the British and French, also denied equal rights to the colonized peoples, and ensured their domination through repression, surveillance, and the writing of histories that legitimated colonial rule. Anti-colonial organizers who evaded surveillance wrote alternative descriptions of the world that anticipated rebellions against the colonial powers. The victorious nationalists in India wrote a new constitution guaranteeing social and political rights, and despite attacks on it, it still shapes Indian politics today.
This seminar examines authoritarian states in China and South Asia from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. We look at particular times of crisis, when the regimes faced challenges to their official ideology. How they responded may indicate possibilities for current – and future – democratic and authoritarian polities.
Our Lead Faculty:
Professor of History Emeritus
Yale University
Peter C. Perdue is Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. He has taught courses on East Asian history and civilization, Chinese social and economic history, the Silk Road, and historical methodology. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of numerous books, including China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard University Press, 2005). His current research focuses on Chinese frontiers, Chinese environmental history, and the history of tea. Most recently, he has published an introduction to environmental history in Chinese. Professor Perdue has taught several programs under the EverScholar model to great acclaim.
Assistant Professor in the History of the Modern British Empire
University of South Florida
Zaib un Nisa Aziz is a historian of global and imperial history with a focus on Modern South Asia and British History. She received her PhD in Global History from Yale University in 2022. Her forthcoming book, Nations Ascendant: The Global Struggle Against Empire and The Making of our World, shows how an international community of colonial activists, thinkers and campaigners came to share ideas about universal decolonization and the end of empires in the aftermath of the First World War and Bolshevik Revolution. Her published work includes “Passages from India: Indian Anti Colonial Activism in Exile 1905-1920.” Forthcoming includes work on the anti-colonial movement in British India for an edited volume published by Cambridge University Press. She has taught in two prior EverScholar courses, and returns by popular demand.
Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History, Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service
Denise Y. Ho is associate professor of modern Chinese history at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She is the author of Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China, and co-editor of Material Contradictions in Mao’s China. Ho is currently writing a book entitled Cross-Border Relations: A Grassroots History of Hong Kong and China. Her scholarly articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, the China Quarterly, and Modern China, among others. She earned her PhD from Harvard University and is a member of the fifth cohort of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program.
Our Guest Faculty:
Associate Professor of International Affairs
George Washington University
Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians. Schluessel is currently pursuing two research projects: Saints and Sojourners explores the economic history of the Uyghur region from the 1750s through the 1950s as seen from below. It ties changes at the village level to shifts in the global economy in places as far away as Manchester and Tianjin. Exiled Gods delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire. Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
Professor of Inter-societal History
Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service
James A. Millward 米華健 is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, where he teaches Qing, Chinese, Central Asian and world history. Millward is the academic editor for the “Silk Roads” book series, and former president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society. In Spring of 2025 he will be a fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
Millward’s specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments publicly on current issues regarding Xinjiang, the Uyghurs and other native Xinjiang peoples, PRC ethnicity policy and PRC-US relations. His publications include Eurasian Crossroads: a history of Xinjiang (2021; 2007); The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013); New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004); and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998); as well as musical albums recorded with the band By & By. He is writing a new book, “Decolonizing History in China.”
Jim’s general-audience articles and op-eds on contemporary China are widely published including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, and other media. He has appeared on the PBS Newshour, All Things Considered, Al Jazeera, i24 News, and elsewhere.
Readings
All EverScholar courses actually start months before our meeting. After registration, you will receive all books and scholarly articles for the course, and will immerse yourself in great works curated by our faculty. “The Arc of History in Asia” is no exception, with works ranging from contemporaneous writings to great books written by your own EverScholar professors. Primary sources will mix with authoritative texts to produce night after night of joy as you prepare for your return to the life of the mind.
Special Events
One of EverScholar’s unique and most beloved features are our Special Events; sessions at a number of well-known (such as a museum or Art Gallery) or less-known centers of collection and learning. “The Arc of History in Asia” continues this tradition.
Events for this program are anticipated at an assortment of the many riches that Washington, DC, has to offer, with experts guiding us.
Beyond the Classroom
Everything that happens during an EverScholar program is enhanced by the fact that it takes place in a learning-promoting environment.
This program takes place in Washington, DC. Discounted housing will be arranged at a fine Washington hotel near the site of the seminars.
Learn more about the experience! (Images below are from past EverScholar programs on a related topic)
The course begins with a reception and dinner on Thursday…. and ends in late afternoon Sunday. The program cost is $2,395 per person. Deposit is $500 per person. Balance is due on September 1, 2024. Cancellation refund and COVID-19 refund policies will be detailed on the registration page once registration opens – so you can register without worries.
Looking forward to seeing you there!