Luman Wang
Associate Professor
Email wanglm1@shanghaitech.edu.cn
Educational Background
2014 Ph.D., History, University of Southern California
Dissertation: Money and Trade, Hinterland and Coast, Empire and Nation-state: An Unusual History of Shanxi Piaohao, 1820s-1930s
2011 M.A., History, University of Southern California
2007 M.A., History, National University of Singapore
M.A. Thesis: “The Rise and Decline of Shanxi Piaohao in Late Qing Dynasty China, 1820-1911”
2005 B.A., History, Peking University
2005 B.A., Economics, National School of Development (former China Center for Economic Research), Peking University
Prior Employment
2017- 2022 Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA
2018 Henry Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship
2014-2017 Assistant Professor, Department of History, Virginia Military Institute, USA
Profile
I am an economic and business historian of China and have published bilingually in English and Chinese on financial and business history, urban studies, and postcolonial theories. My English monograph entitled Chinese Hinterland Capitalism and Shanxi Piaohao: Banking, State, and Family, 1720-1910 (London; New York: Routledge, 2021) examines Shanxi piaohao—private financiers from the Chinese hinterland—in the economic and business history of late imperial China. My book forms the original theory of Chinese hinterland capitalism, deepens the conventional understanding of capitalist dynamics at work in the families and financial institutions n nineteenth-century China, and foregrounds the expansionist role played by Chinese family-owned banking firms in transforming China’s market and trade from an agrarian empire to a modern nation-state in the age of imperialism. The Chinese edition of my monograph was published by China’s preeminent Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshu guan) in 2022. English book reviews of my monograph are available in The Journal of Asian Studies, Business History, and Business History Review.
My current research goals are: 1) publish a new monograph on commercial and industrial changes and continuities in the Chinese hinterland through the prism of Shanxi province during China’s long twentieth century, which serves as a sequel to my current monograph; 2) organize an international workshop on the presence of merchants and families from the Chinese interior in treaty ports and coastal areas, which aims to explore the interconnected histories of the so-called Chinese hinterland and the coastal areas in the age of imperialism and capitalism.
Publications
MONOGRAPHS
2022 Zhongguo neilu ziben zhuyi yu shanxi piaohao (ChineseHinterland Capitalism: Shanxi piaohao, Banking, State, and Family, 1820-1910 rewritten in Chinese). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan.
2021 ChineseHinterland Capitalism: Shanxi piaohao, Banking, State, and Family, 1820-1910. London, New York: Routledge.
2016 Co-authored with Chi Zhen. Wenzhongzi [An introduction to Wang Tong and his writings, a leading Confucian scholar of the Sui dynasty]. Kaifeng, Henan University Press (China).
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
2022 “Reappraisal of Shanxi Piaohao’s Role in Public Finance from the Perspective of Administrative Subcontract” [in Chinese], Shilin [Historical Review], No. 3: 69-83.
2016 “Managing Public Finance through Palace Memorials: Late-Qing Debates on Taxation Transfer, 1860–1900,” Frontiers of History in China 12 (1):21-41.
2016 Featured review of the Chinese Translation of Trust in Troubled Times by Brett Sheehan and an Anti-Binary Critique of American China Urban Studies [in Chinese], Shilin [Historical Review], No. 3: 200-208 (co-authored with Chi Zhen).
2014 “Beyond Speculation: State Politics and the 1910 Shanghai Rubber Share Crisis” [in Chinese], Shilin [Historical Review], No. 6: 8-16.
2013 “Featured Review: Post-modern History—A Genealogical Sketch” [in Chinese], Shixue yuekan[Journal of Historical Science], No. 11: 121-132.
BOOK REVIEWS
2022 Review of French Banking and Entrepreneurialism in China and Hong Kong by Hubert Bonin, Business History 64 (2022): 1737-8.
2016 Review of The Political and Economic History of China (1949–1976) by Hu Angang, in Journal of Asian Studies 75 (2016):506-509.
2015 Review of War Finance and Logistics in Late Imperial China, A Study of the Second Jinchuan Campaign (1771—1776) by Ulrich Theobald, Journal of Military History 79 (2015), Issue 2: 485-486.
OTHER SCHOLARLY OUTPUT—CHINESE TO ENGLISH TRANSLATION
2023 Wenxi Zhang. Property and Justice: A Trend Towards Marxist Political Philosophy.London, New York: Routledge (Principal translator)
2022 Duan Qi.The Indigenization of Christianity in China. 3 vols. London, New York: Routledge (Principal translator)
2022 Shuxian Ye, “Resurrecting the Mythological History of Zhurong: Reconstructing the Fourteen-Generation Genealogy of the Chu State in High Antiquity through the Quadruple-Evidence Method,” Confucian Academy (Kongxuetang), vol. 33, Issue 4: 1-16.
2022 Zhang Xinmin, “Moralization and Education: Wang Yangming’s Academic Endeavor and Rise of the Central Guizhou School,” Confucian Academy (Kongxuetang), vol. 31, Issue 2: 148-160.
2022 Zhou Chunjian, “The Rise and Fall of Civil Service Examination and Evolution of Study of Confucian Classics in Early Ming,” Confucian Academy (Kongxuetang), vol. 30, Issue 1: 81-93.
2021 Liu Shunyan, “The State System of Ritual and Music and Sacred Time,” Confucian Academy (Kongxuetang), vol. 28, Issue 3: 63-74.
2021 Huang Kaiguo,“The Ritual Gradation in Spring and Autumn Era,”Confucian Academy (Kongxuetang), vol. 29, Issue 4: 89-99.
2021 Xia Hai, “Inherently Evil Nature, Law, Position and Tact: Inquiring into Essence of Han Fei’s Thinking,”vol. 29, Issue 4: 100-111.
CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS (PAST FIVE YEARS)
March 2022 “Education and lifeworld in the post-piaohao era: the histories of three private academies of merchant-banker families in central Shanxi province, 1895-1937,” Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Honolulu
March 2022 “Transcending Binary Opposition in the field of economic and business history: the case of Shanxi piaohao,” Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Econ-History Seminar, Vanderbilt University
May 2021 Chinese Business History Webinar “Chinese Hinterland Capitalism and Shanxi Piaohao: Banking, State, and Family,” Hong Kong Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong
July 2018 “Beyond Speculation: the 1910 Shanghai Financial Crisis from a National Perspective,” The Third Economic History Workshop, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China
March 2018 “Risk-Averse Financial Strategies of Shanxi piaohao in the Nineteenth Century,” the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Washington D.C.