Beijing at War: Negotiating Crises of Economy, Environment, and Security, 1850–1860

FAIN: FEL-288440-23

Emily Mokros
University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY 40506-0004)

Research and writing leading to a book on how two overlapping wars affected the residents of Beijing, China, in the 1850s. 

The fellowship will support library research and writing leading to a book entitled Beijing at War: Negotiating Crises of Economy, Environment, and Security, 1850–1860. Usually interpreted separately, denizens of China’s capital region experienced the years between the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) and the Second Opium War (1857–1860) as a continuous, harrowing decade of war. The book’s themes of economy, environment, and security highlight how capital officials, urban residents, and suburban communities grappled with the anxieties, shortages, and disruptions of war as unremitting crises rather than interrupted experiences in the mid-century decade. The book therefore addresses the broader humanistic problem of defining boundaries around periods of war and upheaval, whether judging when a war begins, who is implicated, or what spaces are affected.