Paul Smith
Paul Smith
The John R. Coleman Professor; Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures; Chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Hall 208
(610) 896-1068
psmith@haverford.edu

Education

A.B. Bard College
PhD University of Pennsylvania

Research and Teaching

Born cocky in the Bronx, I learned humility studying the Confucian classics under Aisin Gioro Yu Yun in Taiwan (1973-76). From there I entered the doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania (1977-83), focusing on the social and institutional history of Mid-imperial China, roughly the tenth through the sixteenth centuries. Although my initial concern was the interaction between society and the state, over time that interest evolved into a preoccupation with the cultural and political consequences of China’s constant companion in this period: War. From my doctoral dissertation through my current project on the politics of war in mid-Song China , I have studied and written about how China’s wars with its powerful northern neighbors have shaped state-building and reform, demographic movements, politics and policy-making, elite and popular culture, and even Chinese fiction. Quite recently that concern has made its way into my teaching, through courses on China’s military culture, bandits and warriors in East Asian fiction, East Asia’s global wars ca. 1650 to Vietnam, and Quakers in East Asia. Besides seeking some of the general principles disclosed by the particular histories of war in China and East Asia broadly speaking, I view all my classes as an opportunity to explore the centrality of East Asia to our understanding of the global past and present more generally. I invite students to join me in that exploration.

Selected Publications:

Monograph

1991    Taxing Heaven's Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074-1224, Cambridge: Harvard University, Council on East Asian Studies.

Edited Books

2016    State Power in China, 900-1325. Edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Paul Jakov Smith. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

2009    The Cambridge History of China Volume 5, Part 1: The Sung Dynasty and its Precursors, 907-1279.  Edited by Denis Twitchett and Paul Jakov Smith.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Authorized Chinese translation in progress.

2003    The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History.  Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn, eds.  Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003. 

            Smith’s chapters:

Recent Articles

2016    “A Crisis in the Literati State: The Sino-Tangut War and the Qingli-era Reforms of Fan Zhongyan, 1038-1045.” Forthcoming in Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 45 (issue date, 2015).

2010    流寓策略中的家庭，同鄉和身分團體關係。1230-1330 年間蒙古人入侵和四川精英流徒 (Chinese trans. of “Family, Landsmann, and Status-group Affinity, 1992).  In Zhang Guogang 張國剛, ed., 家庭與社會 (Family and Society) (Beijing: Qinghua Univerity Press), pp. 187-217.

2006A “Irredentism as Political Capital: The New Policies and the Annexation of Tibetan Domains in Hehuang (the Qinghai-Gansu Highlands) under Shenzong and his Sons, 1068 – 1126.” In Patricia Ebrey and Maggie Bickford, eds., Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center), pp. 78-130.

2006B “Shuihu zhuan and the Military Subculture of the Northern Song, 960-1127,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 66.2 (December 2006): 363-422. 

Current Project

Remilitarizing the Literati State: Politics and the Wars of Necessity, Choice, and Desperation in Mid-Song China, 1040 to 1142.