Speaker: Kelly Hammond, Associate Professor of East Asian History, Department of History, University of Arkansas

Bai Chongxi’s life spanned the Late Qing, the founding of the Chinese Republic and its fracturing into the so-called “Warlord Era,” the Nanjing Decade, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. He is rightly recognized for his dedication to Guangxi and his illustrious military career. He receives less credit for his active participation in Muslim organizations, his advocacy for the inclusion of Muslims into state-building projects, and his diplomacy with Muslims in and beyond China.  This talk examines some of the tensions between the ways that Bai tried to ensure that Muslim voices were heard at the national level throughout his military career. By doing this, we see that Bai attempted to foreground Muslim concerns as a pressing geopolitical issue for the Nationalists. Bai’s actions from the 1920s through to the 1960s expose the fraught and complex processes of nation and state building in China and show how the political and military architects of KMT state-building efforts often had loyalties that conflicted with the KMT.  

Kelly Hammond is an Associate Professor of East Asian History in the Department of History at the University of Arkansas. She is also the Associate Director of International and Global Studies. Hammond specializes in modern Chinese and Japanese history, and her work focuses on Islam and politics in 20th-century East Asia. She is the author of China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire: Centering Islam in World War II. She serves on the editorial board of Twentieth-Century China and is the Associate Editor for Modern China at The Journal of Asian Studies.  

Also via Zoom.
Register: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Er_y618RQp2L2JszSP9xbw