The Ghosts of 1900: The Boxer Rising and Invasion of the Eight Allied Armies as Global Media Events

The Ohio State University Institute for Chinese Studies hosts a talk by Jeffery Wasserstrom on the international reaction to the Boxer Rebellion.

Institute for Chinese Studies presents the "China and the International Mediasphere" Lecture Series

"The Ghosts of 1900: The Boxer Rising and Invasion of the Eight Allied Armies as Global Media Events"

Professor Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor of History, Department of History, University of California at Irvine

This illustrated talk will examine the intense international interest generated by the Chinese crisis of 1900, which began with anti-Christian militants attacking churches and villages, included a siege of Beijing's foreign legations, and ended with an international invasion and then military occupation of North China.  Themes examined will include the widely varied opinions on the Chinese crisis by prominent figures of the day, from Tolstoy and Tagore to Teddy Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill, and the ways that the Boxers and their enemies were portrayed in poems, plays, and political cartoons.

Bio:
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor's Professor of History at UC Irvine and editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.  He is the author of five books, including China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, and editor, most recently, of The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China, forthcoming mid-2016.  In addition to writing for scholarly venues, often contributes commentaries and reviews to newspapers, magazines, and blogs.  He is currently working on a book on the Boxer Crisis for Oxford University Press, and a short collection of his commentaries, Eight Juxtapositions: China Through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo, will be published as a Penguin Special early in 2016.

Co-sponsor:
Department of History

This event is sponsored in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant for The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.