Subject Area: History
This course can also be studied in the following specialisation: Asian Studies

China is a global powerhouse of tremendous economic, political and military influence in the 21st century. Yet, at the start of the 20th century, the country faced domestic turmoil and external invasion. How did the once-prosperous Qing empire become weak and vulnerable? What were the competing Chinese plans to rebuilding their fragmenting nation through the twentieth century? How have these contested designs for national reconstruction impacted the region and the world through to the present day? The course explores China’s dramatic modern history from the mid 1800s onwards. It positions China’s national history within an international framework of global contestation about ideals of government and examines the dramatic changes in the ways individual subjects and citizens interact with the state and their communities. The key historiographical theme is the contestation over the “ownership” of a “national” history.