The Chinese government has, in modern times, had an exceptionally complicated relationship with its frontiers. Tim Oakes, in “Building a Southern Dynamo: Guizhou and State Power;” Max Woodworth, in “Frontier Boomtown Urbanism in Ordos;” and Scott Relyea, in “Conceiving the ’West‘: Early Twentieth-Century Visions of Kham,” all examine these frontiers in their various economic forms. … Continue reading Naught but Exploitation? An Examination of China’s Engagement with Its Frontiers in Three Provinces

Although the 50 years after the revolutions of 1848 are generally considered to be a time of great industrial progress for nations other than Britain (which had gotten a head start on industrialization earlier in the 19th century), the rate and results of industrialization in these nations varied tremendously. France, for example, ostensibly industrialized earlier … Continue reading The Ringstrasse and the Peasant: An Analysis of Modernization through Vienna and the French Countryside