Wensheng Wang

Associate Professor
Primary Fields: China, World Comparative / Transnational
Other Fields: Ming-Qing China, World History

Office: Sakamaki B204
Email: wensheng@hawaii.edu | Phone: (808) 956-4233
Accepting new graduate students? Depends; contact me to discuss

BA, MA Wuhan University, 1998, 2001; MA, PhD University of California, Irvine, 2006, 2008

Background

Professor Wang is a historian of late imperial China whose research encompasses three main, interrelated areas. First, he examines Qing politics, society, and culture leading up to the First Opium War (1839-1842), addressing topics such as empire-building, social protest, cultural politics, popular religion, maritime affairs, and foreign relations. Second, he investigates Sino-Western exchanges, focusing on China’s interactions with Jesuit science and religion from the late Ming through the late Qing dynasty. Third, he employs an interdisciplinary and theoretical approach to Chinese history, promoting dialogue between historians and social scientists to encourage synergies between their research methods and agendas.

Professor Wang is currently working on two book projects: one examines the Ming-Qing encounter with Jesuit mathematics and astronomy, and the other explores the transformative power of Confucian ideology and its complex relationship with the Qing state in the half-century before the First Opium War. With a broad interest in world history, he is committed to contextualizing China within regional and global frameworks through comparative studies and by exploring the empire’s connections with other parts of the world.

Courses Taught

World History to 1500; World History since 1500; Civilizations of Asia; East Asian Civilizations; Society and Culture in Traditional China; The Search for Modern China; China in World History; Graduate Seminar on Late Imperial China

Representative Publications

Books

• White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, January 2014.

Edited Volume (In Chinese)

• Guide to Global History Research, co-edited with Jiguo Xia and Xianbing Du, Commercial Press of China (copy-edited and forthcoming) 全球史研究指南，与夏继果，杜宪兵合编，商务出版社，待版

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

• “The Value and Prospect of the Needham Question: A Historiographical Reflection and Elaboration.” Journal of World History 35, no. 1 (2024): 119-161.
• “State Making, Political Sustainability, and Critical Crisis: A Historical and Theoretical Perspective from Qing China.” International Journal of Asian Studies 20, no. 2 (2023): 793-811.
• “Science, Religion and Sino-Western Exchanges: Literati-Jesuit Translation of Euclidean Geometry and Its Reception from Late Ming to Mid-Qing.” Journal of Chinese History 8, no.1 (2022):115-145.
• “Sino-Vietnamese Pirates and British Invaders: Maritime Crises, Oceanic Governance and Sovereignty in Mid-Qing China.” Review of Culture 60 (2019): 46-65
• “The Mid-Qing Construction of the South China Sea,” World History Connected 14, no.2 (2017).
• “Towards An Integrated Understanding of Critical Upheavals: From Crisis, to Contentious Politics, to All-encompassing Contentious Crisis,” Journal of Historical Sociology 30, no.4 (2017): 746-767.
• “Parallels and Connections: Consumption, Environment, and State Formation at Both Ends of Eurasia, 1500-1900AD,” World History Studies 2 (2015): 102-122.
• “Prosperity and Its Discontents: Contextualizing the Social Protest during the late Qianlong Reign,” Frontier of History in China 6 (2011): 347-369.

Peer-Reviewed Chapters in Edited Volumes

• “Diplomacy and Foreign Relations in Qing China.” In Struggles for Sovereignty: Non-European Powers in the Age of Empire, edited by David Motadel and Houchang Chehabi. Oxford University Press (copy-edited and forthcoming)
• (in Chinese) Co-authered with Jiguo Xia 夏继果, “导论：全球史研究：互动、比较、建构” (Introduction: Global History: Interaction, Comparison and Framing). In Guide to Global History Research, co-edited with Jiguo Xia and Xianbing Du, Commercial Press of China (copy-edited and forthcoming)
• “Social Crises and Political Reform during the Jiaqing Reign of Qing China, 1796-1810s.” In From Early Tang Court Debates to China’s Peaceful Rise, ed. Friederike Assandri and Dora Martins. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pp.33-52.