Why Wartime Matters: Rethinking China’s Nationalist World War II Experience and Legacy in the Shaping of Contemporary China

Why Wartime Matters: Rethinking China's Nationalist World War II Experience and Legacy in the Shaping of Contemporary China

Rana Mitter - Professor of History and Politics of Modern China, University of Oxford

Thursday, April 8, 2010 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Room 211, Linsly-Chittenden Hall See map
63 High Street
New Haven, CT 6511

More than six decades after the end of World War II, China is finally coming to terms with the devastating effects of the war against Japan on its society and culture. During the war, ideas of nationhood and citizenship were fundamentally challenged and rethought in the wake of mass population flight, physical destruction, and countless deaths. This talk will use wartime materials from Chinese archives of the Nationalist (Kuomintang) government to argue that modern ideas of state and citizenship in China were profoundly shaped by the experience of war, and that the effects of those ideas have lasted to the present day, shaping contemporary society as it seeks to redefine China’s place in the modern globalized world.

Tags: 
Region: 
China, Japan, Transregional