Dr Elizabeth Ingleson

This course is available on the MA in Asian and International History (LSE and NUS), MA in Modern History, MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in History of International Relations, MSc in International Affairs (LSE and Peking University), MSc in International and Asian History, MSc in International and World History (LSE & Columbia) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Trade wars. The end of engagement. Racial violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. A new Cold War? This course addresses some of the major questions and issues facing the United States and China today through a deep historical analysis of their shared past. It explores the decisions of a range of people in both countries—including policymakers, immigrants, businesspeople, and workers—as they navigated and helped shape the bilateral relationship since 1949. Throughout the course, we focus on three core themes: globalisation, geopolitics, and race. Together we will ask, how did both countries shape, and become shaped by, the post-World War Two era of globalisation? How have both nations’ understanding of their roles in Asia affected the geopolitical architecture of the region? And how have the relationships between foreign policy and race affected the lives of ordinary people in both nations? We will explore topics including how Mao used the history of American imperialism to support his political agenda in the Third World; how African Americans understood their own history of oppression in relation to Mao Zedong Thought; how Chinese Americans navigated and influenced the changing social and political terrain within the United States; and how trade ties have been shaped, and limited by, the two nations' diplomatic relationship.

20 hours of seminars in the MT.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6 of the MT. 

The School aims to run in-person seminars, subject to circumstances, with some online provision as and where necessary.

One source analysis and one essay (2000-2500 words) in the Michaelmas Term.

• David Arkush and Leo Lee, Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present (1989)
• Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (1992)
• Gordon Chang, Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China (2015)
• Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1850 (2012)
• Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004)
• Robeson Taj Frazier, The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination
• Jane Hong, Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (2019)
• Kristen Hopewell, Clash of Powers: U.S.-China Rivalry in Global Trade Governance (2020)
• Yuen Yuen Ang, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016)
• Graham Allison, Destined For War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides Trap? (2017)

Essay (70%, 5000 words) in January.
Class participation (15%) and source analysis (15%) in the MT.

The summative essay will be submitted in week 0 of the Lent Term.

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.