Documenting the Chinese and Baohuanghui in Montana: Mark T. Johnson

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The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky

Research on Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui in North America: Sources and Methods

Kang Youwei in Los Angeles, 1905
Private collection, Jane Leung Larson

In March 2018, Chinese scholars specializing in Kang Youwei convened in Kang’s birthplace, Nanhai, Guangdong, to commemorate the 160th anniversary of his birth and 120th anniversary of the 1898 Hundred Days of Reform. Those of us coming from North America focused on Kang’s experience in the New World from 1899 to 1909. In particular, we made use of the source materials from South Windsor, Connecticut and Los Angeles that have illuminated our knowledge of Kang’s activities in Canada, the United States and Mexico. 

Jane Leung Larson spoke on “Research on Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui in North America: Sources and Methods.”  She contrasted the relatively open access to resources on Kang and the Baohuanghui in North American archives, libraries, and the internet with the much more restrictive research environment in which Chinese historians work.

Kang Youwei as Utopian, Traveler and Politician: A Panel at the New England conference of the Association of Asian Studies, October 3-4, 2014

This year's New England regional Association of Asian Studies meeting is being held at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, October 3-4. Storrs is very near the small town of South Windsor, Connecticut, where Kang Tongbi lived from 1903 to 1907. Since we have been working with the large collection documents she left behind in South Windsor, we have organized the following panel.

Best Review of Jung Chang's book on Empress Dowager Cixi

Jung Chang's latest book, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China, has been treated all too gently by China scholars since it was released last year in Great Britain. In the United States, as elsewhere, the book leapt to the top of non-fiction best-seller lists.

Finally, the London Review of Books (April 17, 2014)  has published an unvarnished review of this book.  "In the Hornet's Nest" is by noted Qing history scholar, Pamela Crossley, Dartmouth College. Crossley is a rare expert on the Manchus and author of The Wobbling Pivot: China Since 1800. Crossley  reveals the full range of Jung Chang's dangerous distortions of the late Qing reforms and the workings of the Qing court. Crossley shows us how Chang's approach to archival sources has resulted in a book more resembling a novel than a history. This describes  Chang's characterization of Kang Youwei, "who was called ‘Wild Fox Kang’ as a young man because of his philosophical methods, though Chang inexplicably belittles him by giving him this name throughout," writes Crossley.

The link to Crossley's review is included above with permission of The London Review of Books and Pamela Kyle Crossley.