2024
Dr Ron Po on The Chinese History Podcast
Dr. Po was interviewed on The Chinese History Podcast, where he shared his views on the changing concept of maritime China in the long eighteenth century. The podcast is an educational platform designed for students, teachers, and anyone interested in Chinese history worldwide. Here is the link to the interview:
https://www.chinesehistorypodcast.com/e/professor-ronald-po-on-qing-chinas-blue-frontier/
Please check it out if you're interested in joining Dr. Po for a closer look at China and the sea!
Dr Po speaks at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
As the CCK-APC visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Dr. Po delivered two public lectures on cartographers and sea charts in late imperial China. These took place on September 9 at CUHK and September 11 at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Dr Po Speaks at Conference
On June 12, Dr. Po was invited to speak at the international conference “The Rescuing Sovereign at Sea: Historical Perspectives on Maritime Law, Morals, and Politics,” organised by the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin. His paper is titled “Salvaging Lives: Principles and Practices of Maritime Rescue in Early Modern China.”
Dr Po has published an open-access article titled “The Dunn Map: An American and a Long-Forgotten Curio from Nineteenth-Century China,” in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Asian Interactions.
More than just a long-overlooked illustrative account that offers a glimpse into the seascape of Fuzhou, China, the map, as Dr. Po contends, is a crucial piece of evidence that reveals much about the times and contexts in which it was created and interpreted.
Read the article here
Dr Ron Po on BBC Radio 4
Dr. Po was invited to attend the show In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 to discuss the Empress Dowager Cixi and the late Qing empire with Melvyn Bragg (the host), Rana Mitter (Harvard), and Yangwen Zheng (University of Manchester).
The podcast is available here
“Taiwan Studies in Transition: Sources, Theories, and Approaches.”
On May 2, 2024, Dr. Ron Po, in collaboration with the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and Leiden University, organized an international workshop in Taiwan studies titled “Taiwan Studies in Transition: Sources, Theories, and Approaches.” The lineup of speakers, coming from Taipei, Beijing, Portsmouth, Prague, Boston, London, Leiden, and Amsterdam, examined Taiwan from various perspectives — literature, frontier studies, environmental science, religion, and historical anthropology — providing unique insights into Taiwan’s rich and complex identity. Nearly 70 attendees participated in the event, highlighting the vibrant and interdisciplinary nature of this field.
More information about this event can be found on this website
Dr. Po awarded the Research and Impact Support Fund
Dr. Po has been awarded the Research and Impact Support Fund (RISF) of £20,000, offered by our school, to support his new project concerning the cultural history of shark fins in China. Set up in 2020, the RISF is dedicated to supporting world-class research at LSE by academic faculty and researchers.
Learn about the RISF
Keynote speech at the Annual Workshop organised by the CISEPS at the University of Milano-Bicocca
Dr. Po was invited to give a keynote speech at the Annual Workshop organised by the CISEPS at the University of Milano-Bicocca on April 12, 2024. His talk is titled "An International Fisheries Exhibition in Milan: The Qing Empire and the World," which will delve into the interactions between the Qing Empire and global powers through the perspective of fisheries. It aims to shed light on the role of these exhibitions in promoting international dialogue and cooperation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
2023
In discussion on the role of coastal islands in late imperial China.
Dr. Po was in conversation with historian Prof. Joanna Waley-Cohen, Provost for New York University Shanghai on 4 December 2023, to discuss the role of coastal islands in late imperial China.
The event was hosted by the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai. Meanwhile, supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Dr. Po is currently visiting the University of Tokyo as a research fellow.
Dr Po's book shortlisted for ICAS Book Prize
Dr. Ron Po's latest book, The Placid Ocean: Qing China and the Asian Sea, was shortlisted by the International Convention of Asia Scholars for the ICAS Book Prize. Under the Chinese Language Edition category for 2023.
Visiting Professorship offered by Leiden University
Dr. Po has been granted a Visiting Professorial Fellowship from Leiden University.
Commencing this September, he will work in the Netherlands in partnership with scholars at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and the Leiden Institute for Area Studies to deepen our understanding of the maritime history of late imperial China.
LSESU Teaching Award nominees for Outstanding Teaching
Dr. Po was nominated by our students for their Outstanding Teaching in 2023.
Socioeconomic Diplomacy and the Qing Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century
Dr Po was invited by the Institute for History of Leiden University to deliver a keynote lecture as part of their Summer School from 26-28 June 2023.
In attendance were master students, PhD candidates, and early career scholars who are keen to explore the concept of socioeconomic diplomacy in the context of global empire building.
2022
Awarded Global Research Fund
Dr. Po has been awarded the Global Research Fund. This funding is a new LSE pilot scheme supporting collaborative endeavours between LSE faculty and their nominated international research partners.
Talk at the University of Oxford China Centre
Dr. Po will gave a talk entitled "The Qing Empire and Its Offshore Island During the Long Eighteenth Century" that examined island management in early modern China at the University of Oxford China Centre on February 16.
Visiting Fellow at Tohoku University and Hokkaido University in December
Dr. Po has been invited by Tohoku University and Hokkaido University to be a Visiting Fellow this December. He will be giving talks during his stay in Japan. One of them is scheduled for 15 December entitled “Fishing, Power, and the World’s Fair: China and the 1906 Milan Fisheries Exposition in the Age of Global Rivalry.”
His trip is generously sponsored by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation together with the aforementioned universities.
Present a paper at a conference by La Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris
Dr. Ron Po was invited to present a paper entitled "Securing the Maritime Frontier: Lan Dingyuan and the Social Obligations of the Wealthy" at the international conference Comparative Economic History Europe and Asia, 16th-20th Centuries: Issues and Perspectives. The event was organised by La Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris held on 14-15 November 2022.
Talked at SOAS History Research Seminar
Dr. Po gave a talk entitled "Charting Coastal Islands in the Great Qing" covering China’s engagement with the maritime world" at the SOAS History Research Seminar on 26 October 2022.
Research grant awarded
Dr. Po has been awarded a research grant offered by the Sino-British Fellowship Trust. The fellowship will sponsor his travel and accommodation costs for his one-month visit at the University of Hong Kong.
Talk at KU Leuven
At a workshop entitled "Mapping Practices and Transpacific Transfers of Geographic Knowledge, Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries", Dr Po presented a paper and served as a discussant on one of the panels. The workshop was organised by Elke Papelitzky and Wim De Winter at KU Leuven.
Linnaeus University Annual Lecture
Dr Po recently gave an annual lecture organised by the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University. His lecture is entitled "The Blue Dragon: In Search of a New Qing Maritime History". This presentation proposed a paradigm to study the Qing Empire during the early modern era from a refreshed maritime angle, in an approach he calls the 'new Qing maritime history (haishang xin Qingshi)'.
Interview with National Geographic Podcast Overheard
Dr Po was interviewed by Amy Briggs on the National Geographic podcast Overheard. In the show they discussed Zheng Yi Sao, who tormented the South China Sea with her fleet of 70,000 raiders in the early nineteenth century. He was joined by Professor Dian Murray (University of Notre Dame) and Ms Leigh Lewis.
Presentation at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference
Dr Po joined Dr Xiaofei Gao and Dr Young Rae Choi in a panel at the AAS Annual Conference on March 26. His paper was entitled "The Shaping of Maritime Religiosity: The Bohai Sea and Mount Penglai in Late Imperial China" and the panel was chaired by Professors Prasenjit Duara and Ian Miller.
Online Event hosted by the Royal Museums Greenwich
Dr Po was joined Emeritus Professor Dian Murray (University of Notre Dame) and Helaine Becker, bestselling author of more than 90 books, to explore the fascinating life of Zheng Yi Sao, the most successful pirate of all time for an online event hosted by the Royal Museums Greenwich. More information. Watch the event here.
Event at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Dr Po spoke at an event at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences on 24 February. Moving beyond the familiar histories of Canton and Macao, and complicating the history of coastal surveying and earlier studies of these representative cities in maritime Asia, he discussed a map of the waterways which connect these two trading hubs.
Workshop at Yale University
Dr Po was invited to attend a workshop entitled "The Early Modern in China and Europe" at Yale University organised by Valerie Hansen and Francesca Trivellato. The goal of this event is to bring together a group of scholars working on both Europe and China to consider the changing conception of "early modern" as well as what the arrival of European vessels in Chinese water after 1500 reveals. The meeting was held Friday, Feb 18-19.
2021
"You're Dead to Me"
Dr Po was interviewed about the history of pirates in late imperial China for the BBC Radio 4's show. He was joined by the public historian Greg Jenner and comedian Ria Lina to talk about Zheng Yi Sao, the most successful pirate queen of all time! Listen to the podcast
Research grant
Dr Po awarded a grant from The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation for his project entitled "The Shaping of Maritime Religiosity: The Cultural History of Mount Penglai/ Hōrai in China and Japan". Read more
Online talks
He gave a talk on 24 September at the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan on “Eradicating the Bandits, Pacifying the Sea: A Memorial Submitted to the Daoguang Emperor in the Nineteenth Century (除莠安良，肅謐洋面： 道光朝的《閩浙總督奏辦洋匪盜稿文)”. On 22 October, he gave another online talk entitled "In Search of a ‘New Qing Maritime History’: A Critical Review of Recent Historiography" at Hong Kong Baptist University (see the poster), followed by a third talk on 25 October at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He explored the potential of examining maritime China from an artistic perspective. On 3 November he was invited to speak on "The Fusheng Quantu: An Exceptional Maritime Painting in Nineteenth Century China" at Leiden University.
New book in Chinese
Published with China Times Publishing Co. in Taiwan, The Placid Ocean: Qing China and the Asian Seas connects various topics through an intellection of what Dr Po calls “new Qing maritime history.” The book will take the reader on a journey revealing how the maritime world has mattered to China, as well as how China the maritime world. Find out more (in Chinese).
Maritime Asia Conference
On 11 August, Dr Po presented a paper at the “Maritime Asia: Securitisation of the China Seas Conference” jointly organised by the University of Cambridge and UC Berkeley. His paper entitled “The Universal Exposition of 1906 and Fisheries Governance in Late Qing China” was part of a panel on international law and grand strategy.
Second visiting fellowship in 2021/22
Offered by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in the Netherlands, Dr Po was selected out of a large pool of applicants to join them from October 2021 to January 2022, a renowned global research institute in Asian Studies. Find out more about the fellowship.
LSESU Teaching Award nomination
In May, Dr Po was nominated for an LSESU Teaching Award This competition is designed to allow students to recognise those members of staff who have made a difference to their time at LSE. The LSESU Teaching Awards are the only awards at the School that are student-led.
Guest commentator in Professor Wang Gungwu's event
On 16 April, Dr Po was the commentator for the event “A Conversation with Wang Gungwu”, organised by the LSE China Forum and the Washington University in St. Louis China Forum. One of the most eminent historians in the field of Chinese Studies, Professor Wang Gungwu was awarded the Tang Prize in Sinology in 2020.
Young Scholar Visiting Fellowship
The Fellowship is awarded jointly by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the Chaing Ching-Kuo Foundation in Taiwan. The fellowship will support Dr Po's residence at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Chinese Studies and the Institute of Chinese Studies at CUHK as a Visiting Scholar during the 2021/22 academic year.
2020
New Books Network
Dr Po gave an interview to the New Books Network on 24 December, where he discussed his book The Blue Frontier (Cambridge, 2018). Listen to the episode.
Camphor War of 1868
Dr Po's latest article, “The Camphor War of 1868: Anglo-Chinese Relations and Imperial Realignments within East Asia”, was released in English Historical Review in December. Dr Po argues that the long-forgotten Camphor War was more than a minor military skirmish but an encounter that indicated the eagerness of the Qing empire to reposition itself in the global arena, both politically and economically, in the nineteenth century. By tracing the social and material history of camphor, Dr Ron also examines how demand for this global commodity set the gears of the Qing, the British, and the American empires into motion in the post-Opium age. Read the article
STICERD research grant
Dr Po has been awarded a STICERD grant for his book project entitled “The North China Sea: A History”. The project will be the first comprehensive study to weave together the long-forgotten North China Sea into a more productive and enduring dialogue with Chinese, Asian, and global history. Dr Po aims to reconnect this sea space to the broader historical spectrum, and to bring it out of almost a century of solitude.
Read more about STICERD Research grants for LSE Staff.
Associate Professor
Following the most recent round of the School's review and promotion process, Dr Po passed major review and was promoted to Associate Professor. His position will become effective on 1 August.
2019
Dr Ronald C. Po at Warwick & Oxford Conference on China and Global History
On 16 September, he presented a paper entitled “Clothes Make the Modern Sailor: Naval Uniforms and Westernisation in Nineteenth Century China”. Dr Po argued that not only does the evolution of these naval dresses provide insight into what the Qing state valued as it modernized and grew stronger, but the way fashion, as represented by these naval uniforms, shaped modernity within the confines of regulated clothing was also important. Dr Po spoke on the first day of the 2-day conference at Warwick in a panel titled “The Chinese Empire in Global Context”.
The Blue Frontier longlisted for book prize and recipient of Accolade
The Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire, was longlisted by the International Convention of Asia Scholars for the 2019 Humanities English Edition book prize. The prize aims to create an international focus for academic publications on Asia, thus increasing their worldwide visibility. Subsequently, the book was awarded the 2019 Specialist Publication Accolade in Humanities also by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS).
Article on Shi Lang
Dr Po released a new article in Modern Asian Studies (53:4) in May 2019. “Hero or Villain? The Evolving Legacy of Shi Lang in China and Taiwan”discusses Shi Lang, the commander-in-chief who led the Qing navy to annex Taiwan in 1683, and how he is essential to our understanding of the cross-strait tension and the murky outlook for its future. By analysing most of the previous appraisals and examinations of Shi Lang, Dr Po reveals the historical narratives of this admiral as being continually under construction in a shifting and mutually reinforcing process from the Qing dynasty to the present day.
Keynote lecture at Oxford
Dr Ronald C. Po gave his first keynote lecture entitled “China and the Sea: Three Fallacies” on 23 April at the Third Annual China Humanities Graduate Conference, Resistance and Acceptance: Getting China Moving (University of Oxford). His talk offered three specific avenues of exploration to reinforce the proposition that the Qing was integrated into the sea through its naval development and customs institutionalisation throughout the long eighteenth century. He also argued that it is time to move beyond our understanding of maritime China from a “Southeast China centrism”.
Book review
A review has been written in the journal China Quarterly (vol. 237, March 2019) about Dr Ron C Po’s recently released book The Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Richard Horowitz commented: “Po makes a convincing case that Qing government maritime policy deserves greater attention and respect” and that his “introduction skillfully connects his work on China to scholarship on maritime history in other parts of the world.”
International Conference on Ocean and China Studies
On 31 March, Dr Po gave a talk entitled “Charting the Coast of the Qing Empire before the First Opium War” at an international conference on Chinese Maritime Studies jointly organised by Xiamen University and Sun Yat-sen University in China. Read more (in Chinese).
Dr Ronald C. Po at AAS Conference
Dr Po organised a panel at this year’s Association of Asian Studies (AAS) conference in Denver, Colorado from 21-24 March. The panel, entitled “The New Qing History: A Maritime Approach”, proposed to study the Qing dynasty in the long eighteenth century from a maritime angle in an approach framed as the new Qing maritime history (haishang xin Qingshi). Together with five senior and junior scholars from Stanford University, Northwestern University, Brandeis University, University of Akron and the University of Birmingham, Dr Po contended that the Qing administration was attentive and deliberate in developing maritime policy.
LSESU HKPASS Forum
Dr Po served as the Academic Chair for the 2019 LSE Forum organised by the Hong Kong Public Affairs and Social Service Society on 17 February. The LSE Forum is an annual debate competition hosted by the LSESU HKPASS, where students from universities across the UK gather to discuss and debate on some of the most contentious challenges faced by Hong Kong.
2018
New chapter in edited volume on China's global historical role
Dr Ronald C. Po released a chapter in an edited volume entitled Voyages, Migration, and the Maritime World: On China’s Global Historical Role (De Gruyter, 2018) edited by Clara Ho, Ricardo Mak, and YH Tam. In his chapter, “The Pearl by the Bohai Sea: Qinhuangdao in the Early Modern Period”, Dr Po argues that it is a necessary and salutary corrective to existing literature that the northeastern coastline could hardly be discounted when comprehending the oceanic history of late imperial China. In explicating the connection between China and the sea throughout the long eighteenth century, maritime historians have long focused on port cities along the coastal reach south of Shanghi. However, focusing on the history and function of a port city called Qinhuangdao, Dr Po seeks to answer the following questions: Did the northeastern coast of China lay motionless during the expanding, extensive trans-regional sea trade of the early modern period? Had the northeast never participated in the process of proto-globalisation in Asia? Despite disparity between sea trade in the southeast and northeast, would it be feasibly possible to obtain a variegated picture of maritime China while disregarding the latter?
New book by Dr Ronald C. Po
Dr Po’s new book with Cambridge University Press was released in August 2018. The Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire provides a revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Qing Empire from a maritime perspective. It explores how the Qing Empire deliberately engaged with the ocean politically, militarily and even conceptually in the long eighteenth century. Contrary to orthodox perception, Dr Po offers a much broader picture of the Qing as an Asian giant responding flexibly to challenges and extensive interaction on all frontiers, both land and sea.
New article on China and the Global South
Dr Po published a new article, “China and the Global South: A Geostrategic Perspective” in the latest issue of Radical History Review (issue 131). Reluctant to side with those analysts who regard the China Dream as being equivalent to its aspiration of rising as a Pacific power, Dr Po argues that in facilitating the China Dream, over the next few decades, the Chinese government is and will be more interested in engaging with the Global South than with any other regions of the world, particularly in its military engagement in Africa and the Indian Ocean. Even though the Pacific Ocean is no less geopolitically salient, he suggests that the Pacific has not been prioritized as the foremost strategic theatre by the Chinese Communist Party since last century.
University of California Berkeley event
Dr Ronald C. Po was at Berkeley on 15 May, presenting a paper entitled “Fortifying Frontier and Defining Sovereignty: Diagram of Coastal Defense (yingxuntu) in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century China”. The paper was part of a panel discussion on “Maritime Asia: Securitization of the China Seas”, organised by the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Cambridge.
2017
Guest Panelist on Nationalism Symposium at LSE
Dr Po will was a guest panelist in a symposium organised by the LSE Student Union Hong Kong Public Affairs and Social Service Society. The symposium, entitled Nationalism: On Catalonia, HK and USA, was held on 22 November. Other panelists included Dr Jonathan Hopkin (LSE Government), Dr Toni Rodon (LSE European Institute) and Dr John Hutchinson (LSE Government).
New article on 18th C. Northeast Chinese port city Dengzhou
Dr Po’s newest article, entitled “A Port City in Northeast China: Dengzhou in the Long Eighteenth Century”, was released online in September 2017 by the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. In his article, Dr Po investigates the importance of Northeast China's port cities by focusing particular attention on the less familiar coastal seaport of Dengzhou. By detailing and examining the political and economic importance of this port city in the early modern period, Dr Po shows that Qing China's northeastern coast was no less important than the southeast. Even if China's northern port cities might not have been as economically vibrant as those in the south (e.g. Shanghai, Canton, Xiamen, and Macau), one should not overlook their functions and histories. Indeed, they also attained unique patterns of political and economic development throughout the long eighteenth century. LSE users, can access the article freely in the publisher's website.
Dr Ronald C. Po in Hong Kong for public lecture
Dr Po was in Hong Kong on 14 September to give a public lecture at the Hong Kong Baptist University. His lecture was on “What is Maritime History? Some Observations and Reflections”.
2016
LSE Santander Travel Research Fund
Dr Ronald C. Po was awarded a LSE Santander Travel Research Fund in December 2016 to visit universities in Hong Kong and South Korea, from late June to July 2017, where he will give talks and seminars. He will also conduct archival research to develop his new project, entitled “A Global History of Camphor: From an Oleoresin to a Commodity", and attend two international conferences, namely the AAS-in-Asia Conference (in Seoul) and the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) in Chingmai. Both highly regarded in the field of Asian studies.
2013
Heidelberg University interview
Read an interview conducted by the Heidelberg University in 2013.
https://bit.ly/3LZIRmq