JONATHAN M. TANG

My research centers on the political history of early Republican China.

 

I am currently revising my dissertation for publication. “Mutiny in Hunan: Writing and Rewriting the ‘Warlord Era’ in Early Republican Chinese History,” draws on archival materials I collected as a Fulbright fellow in China to reconsider conventional interpretations of the period. Focusing on a 1920 mutiny in Hunan, I examine how regional political elites pursued constitutional and administrative alternatives to the revolutionary centralism that ultimately prevailed. By recovering political possibilities obscured by subsequent historiography, my work demonstrates how categories such as “warlordism” were constructed and how contingent historical outcomes can come to appear inevitable. This research has also shaped my broader interest in the relationship between political power, historical memory, and the production of knowledge about modern China.