Christopher Isett

History

920 Heller Hall

271 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Collegiate Affiliation

Professor,

Specialties

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Specialties

Comparative History and Historical Sociology
The Political Economies of Post-War East Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China
Late Imperial and Modern Chinese Economic, Social, Legal and Political History
Agrarian History and Agricultural Change
The History of Global Capitalism
The Global Cold War
Post-War Global Capitalism
History and Debates on the Transition to Capitalism
Marxism
Comparative Economic History

Publications

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Isett, Christopher M. “Sugar Manufacture and the Agrarian Economy of Nineteenth-Century Taiwan.” Modern China 21, no. 2 (1995): 233–59. doi:10.1177/009770049502100204.
Isett, Christopher M. State, Peasant, and Merchant in Qing Manchuria, 1644-1862. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Brenner, Robert, and Christopher Isett. “England’s Divergence from China’s Yangzi Delta: Property Relations, Microeconomics, and Patterns of Development.” The Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 2 (2002): 609–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/2700302.
Isett, Christopher M. "Village Regulation of Property and the Social Basis for the Transformation of Qing Manchuria." Late Imperial China 25, no. 1 (2004): 124-186
The Social History of Agriculture: From the Origins to the Present Crisis. Stephen Miller, Rowman & Littlefield, Isett, Christopher, 2016.
The Taiwanese Way: Isett, Christopher, Jacobin.
Uncertainty, Contingency, and Late Development in Taiwan: Xavier LaFrance and Charles Post , Palgrave, Isett, Christopher, Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism, 2018.
Isett, Christopher, Stephen Broadberry and Kyoji Fukao. "China: The Start of the Great Divergence." The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World (2021): Chapter Four.

Activities

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Invited Speaker: “The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan: Revisiting Thomas Smith" : London School of Economics. 2013
Invited Speaker: "Nutrition and wellbeing in C18 China: Preliminary Results" : Academia Sinica, Ming-Qing Workshop. 2012
Invited Speaker: "Labor and Migration in the Qing,": Sawyer Seminar Series on Gender Bias in the Past and Future of Asia, Stanford University. 2011
Invited Speaker: Academia Sinica. 2009
Invited Speaker: Stanford University. 2008
Invited Speaker: Chicago University. 2006
Invited Speaker: “China and the United States: The PRC’s Export Economy Today”: Minneapolis Community and Technical College, "Understanding China" speaker series. 2006
Historical Materialism Conference: Uncertainty, Contingency, and Late Development in Taiwan.. November 11, 2016
Inaugural Ott Family Lecture, Carleton College: China and the Great Divergence. April 15, 2019

Nutrition and well being in eighteenth-century China: Anthropometric study Ongoing
Kinship, Women’s Labor, and China’s Economic Performance in the 17th-21st Centuries: Melissa Brown (PI), Chris Isett (Co-PI); NSF funded research project.
Making Capitalism: The Politics of Taiwan's Post-War Development

Awards

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London School of Economics, Department of Economic History, Erasmus Mundus Fellowship of the EU, March 18 - March 29, 2013
Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange Grant for Professors, 09.01.10 - 08.31.13
Visiting Scholar, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, August 15, 2011 - June 15, 2012
IIE Fulbright Scholar Award, August 15, 2011 - June 15, 2012
Faculty Residential Fellow, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, January - May, 2005
Faculty Fellow, University of Minnesota Humanities Institute, January - May 2005
Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 1993 - 1994
Fulbright Scholar Award, declined

Courses

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