Dr Elizabeth Ingleson SAR 2.06

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 AT. 20 hours of seminars in the WT.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6 of the AT and WT. 

One essay (2000-2500 words) in the Autumn Term.

• David Arkush and Leo Lee, Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present (1989)
• Robeson Taj Frazier, The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination (2016)
• Julia Lovell, Maoism: A Global History (2019)
• Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power (1997)
• 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)
• Ellen Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the model minority (2016)
• 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)
• Louisa Lim, The People’s Republic of Amnesia (2014)
• Yuen Yuen Ang, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016)

Essay (75%, 4000 words) in the WT.
Class participation (25%) in the AT and WT.