Frank Dikötter, "The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Communist Revolution, 1945-1957"

Frank Dikötter draws on newly opened party archives, interviews, and memoirs to cast new light on the foundations of one of the most powerful regimes of our times. Abundant archival material has become available over the past decade that allows historians to look in much greater detail at some of the defining episodes of the first eight years of Chairman Mao’s regime, including land distribution, the organized terror unleashed against enemies from 1951 to 1952, the Korean War, thought reform as well as a sustained attack against private enterprise. Dikötter’s new book The Tragedy of Liberation characterizes the period as an “era of systematic violence and calculated terror,” and in this talk the author reflects on the nature of the archival evidence that has led him to reach this conclusion.

Frank Dikötter is chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong. Prior to his move to the University of Hong Kong in 2007, he was professor of history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Dikötter is the author of nine books, from The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to the more recent Mao's Great Famine (2010), which won the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction in 2011 and was selected as one of the books of the year by the Economist, Independent, Sunday Times, London Evening Standard, Telegraph, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and Taipei Times. His newest publication, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Communist Revolution, 1945-1957, will be available in September 2013.