Klaus Mühlhahn

• Professor, Department of History

Education

• M.A. at Freie Universität Berlin, 1993
• Ph.D. at Freie Universität Berlin, 1998

Contact Information

Ballantine Hall, Rm. 729

(812) 855-1124

Background

A historian of modern and late imperial China, my work examines China's cultural and social development in an international and global context. I have written about and offered classes on a wide range of subjects, including China's relations with Europe, in particular Germany; the evolution of modern Chinese law; the history of human rights in China; the role of state violence as a generator of historical experiences and on internationalization and globalization in the twentieth century China.

My first book (see below) is primarily colonial history. It deals with the German colony Kiautschou (1897-1914) in China with a particular focus on cultural exchanges and transnational processes. I try to understand the colonial world as a dynamic space of transition and transfer. My current projects use legal cases to explore social historical topics. The manuscript of my second monograph is near publication; its title is “Criminal Justice in China: A History” (under contract with Harvard University Press). Here I am interested in how the state intervenes in social life and maintains control through the establishment of a professionalized criminal justice system. My next larger project will look into philanthropy and charitable enterprises in the Northern Chinese city of Tianjin. I am now turning to developments and forces in that tended to challenge state dominance over society such as for instance humanitarian activism. It is part of a collaborative project with colleagues in Turku und Berlin aiming at understanding governance in China. What connects these different projects of mine is my continued interest in power, control and state violence - in various colonial, national or global contexts - as forces that fundamentally shape historical experiences in the modern age, in China and beyond.

Selected Awards

• Associate in Research, Fairbank Centre for East Asian Research, Harvard University (2007-2008)
• General Research Grant, Academy of Finland (2007-2009)
• Visiting Fellow, Centre for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley (2002-2004)
• Research Grant, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany (2002-2004)
• Tiburtius Award of the Berlin Senate for the Dissertaion “Herrschaft und Widerstand in der „Musterkolonie“ Kiautschou“(1999)

Research Interests

• Modern Chinese history, social and cultural

Courses Recently Taught

• Modern China
• Approaches to Global History
• Contemporary China
• Topics in Modern Chinese History

Publication Highlights

Books

Criminal Justice in China – A History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (forthcoming, 2009)

Mechthild Leutner/ Klaus Mühlhahn (eds.), Kolonialkrieg in China. Die Niederschlagung der Boxerbewegung 1900-1901, Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag 2007.

Kirby, William C. / Leutner, Mechthild / Mühlhahn, Klaus (eds.), Global Conjectures: China in Transnational Perspective, Münster 2006.

Herrschaft und Widerstand in der „Musterkolonie“ Kiautschou: Interaktionen zwischen China und Deutschland, 1897-1914, München: Oldenburg 2000 (Chinese translation: ?“?????”?????????—1897?1914? ??????????(Power and Resistance in the "Model Colony" Kiautschou. Interactions between Germans and Chinese, 1897-1914), translated by Sun Lixin ????, Jinan: Shandong Daxue Chubanshe ??????? 2005, 627p)

Geschichte, Frauenbild und kulturelles Gedächtnis: Der ming-zeitliche Roman Shuihu zhuan  (Berliner China-Studien 23) München: Minerva 1994.

Articles

Visions of Order and Modernity - Crime, Punishment and Justice in Urban China during the Republican Period, in: Cities in Motion: Interior, Coast and Diaspora in Transnational China, edited by Sherman Cochran, David Strand and Wen-hsin Yeh, Berkeley: UC Berkeley, Institute for East Asian Studies 2007 (China Research Monographs no. 62). p. 182-217

Global Mobility and Nationalism. Chinese Migration and the Ethnicization of Belonging, 1880-1910 (with Sebastian Conrad), in: Sebastian Conrad / Dominic Sachsenmaier (ed.), Competing Visions of World Order. Global Moments and Movements, 1880s – 1930s, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2007, 181-211.

“Remembering a Bitter Past” – The Trauma of China’s Labor Camps, 1949-1978, in: History and Memory 16:2 (2004), 108-139.