Ortai and the Qing State's Land Reclamation Program in Southwest China: 1725-1735

John Herman will speak about the history of land reclamation in Southwest China at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

John Herman, Ph.D., earned his B.A. in History and East Asian Studies at the University of Oregon, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in History at the University of Washington. In 1986-87 Dr. Herman attended The Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies at Nanjing University; in 1991-92 he enrolled as a graduate student in the Department of History at National Taiwan University; twice he was awarded year-long research fellowships from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1991-92 and 1998-99); and in 1997-98 he was named one of two An Wang Postdoctoral Fellows at The John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University. For the academic year 2010-2011, Dr. Herman has been awarded membership in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ. He is currently Associate Professor of History at VCU, the Director of VCU-China Relations, and a Visiting Scholar/Associate Member of the East Asia Center, University of Virginia.

Dr. Herman's research interests are in late imperial Chinese history (900-1800), in particular the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1636-1912) dynasties, frontiers and border regions, social-economic history, colonial discourse studies and ethnic studies. He has published a number of articles in English and Chinese, and his first book, Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200-1700 (Cambridge Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2007), is currently being translated into Chinese for publication in China. His current research project is titled, Financing Empire in Southwest China: Land, State-Building and Local Society, 1650-1750.