Title: China, WWI, and China’s 20th Century Constitutionalism
Lecturer: Hans van de Ven (Professor of Modern Chinese History, University of Cambridge)
Chairperson: ZHANG Jishun (Fellow of Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, April 8th, 2014 (Tuesday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
The talk will be about the constitutional crises caused by China’s declaration of war on Germany in 1917 and its long term consequences. The talk will discuss early 20th century origins of China’s constitutional dilemmas and examine how they were dealt with in 1917, in Paris in 1919, and during WWII.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Hans van de Ven is a Professor of Modern Chinese History in University of Cambridge. Following his undergraduate studies in Sinology at Leiden University, he went to Harvard University to study modern Chinese history and obtained a Ph.D., then he went to UC Berkeley as a Postdoctoral Fellow. His research interests are History of the Chinese Communist Party before 1949; the history of warfare in modern China from the Taiping Rebellion to the Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists; the history of Chinese globalization in the 1850-1950 period. His main publications include War and Nationalism in China (London: Routledge, 2003, Translation in Chinese published by Sanlian), From Friend to Comrade: the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), Breaking from the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (Columbia University Press, 2014).