Date & Time: Wednesday 22 February 13:00-14:30
Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, East Building, CSEAS, Kyoto University
Title: Chinese Sojourners in Wartime Raj, 1942-45
Speaker: Cao Yin
This talk is about the experiences of the Chinese sailors, smugglers, deserters, and pilots in British India during the Second World War. In telling how the Indian and the Chinese governments were worried by the activities of these Chinese sojourners and how the authorities of both countries tried to check, control, and discipline them, Cao Yin sheds new light on the unexpected encounter between British colonial anxieties and Chinese state-building. He further points out that the misunderstandings between the British Raj and the Chinese Nationalist government with regard to the issue of the Chinese sojourners in wartime India further influence the relations between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China.
Cao Yin is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Tsinghua University. He is the author of From Policemen to Revolutionaries: A Sikh Diaspora in Global Shanghai, 1885-1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2018) and Chinese Sojourners in Wartime Raj, 1942-45 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). His research can also be found in Journal of World History, Modern Asian Studies, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, and Indian Historical Review.