Hagar Zheng Gal

Bio

Hagar Zheng Gal (鄭若水) is a Ph.D. candidate in Global History at Harvard University. Her research focuses primarily on relations of political economy between the Qing and British Empires in the 19th to early 20th centuries, largely through the opium trade, linking the Qing interior to histories of Bombay and Portuguese India. Topics of interest include businesses such as Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Sassoons, Malwa opium, Bombay and Shanghai, and southwest China. Gal’s dissertation is tentatively titled, “The Long Arm of Malwa Opium: transformations of economic lives in Qing and British conquest frontiers.” With Shum Fellowship funding, Gal will conduct further research in several archives in China.    

Research Interests: Qing history; international trade; corporations; cultures; ideas; and drugs.