This talk will discuss the role of China’s recent past in its contemporary nationalism, and its understanding of its foreign relations. Drawing on his book Out of China, Robert Bickers will sketch out of the key features of the often-forgotten story of foreign-controlled ‘treaty ports’, and of the young Chinese nationalists who freed their country from foreign domination, and of the legacies of that story today.
Robert Bickers grew up on Royal Air Force bases in Britain, Germany and Hong Kong. He received his PhD at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies, and has held fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge University. Since 1997 he has taught at the University of Bristol, where he is a professor of History. His books include The Scramble for China: Foreign devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Foreign Domination (both in Penguin), and China Bound: John Swire & Sons and its world, 1816-1980 (Bloomsbury).
