Selected Publications
- Geschichte Chinas von der Mongolenherrschaft bis zur Gründung der Volksrepublik. 3., vollständig überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage [1. Aufl. 2006]. München: Oldenbourg Verlag 2015(= Oldenbourg Grundriss Geschichte, Bd.35).
- Geschichte Chinas im 20. Jahrhundert. München: C.H. Beck2009.Mao Zedong, München: C.H. Beck 2008(= C.H. Beck Wissen, Bd. 2439).
- Territorialer Nationalismus in China. Historisch-geographisches Denken1900-1949, Köln / Weimar: Böhlau 2006 (= Menschen und Kulturen, Bd. 2) [Habilitationsschrift].
- Das Qing-Imperium als Vision und Wirklichkeit. Tibet in Laufbahn und Schriften des Song Yun (1752-1835), Stuttgart: Steiner1994 (= Münchener Ostasiatische Studien, Bd. 69) [erweiterte deutsche Fassung der Dissertation].
- Zur Geschichte Hongkongs, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 70:8-10 (17. Februar 2020), S. 39-45.
- (mit Jürgen Osterhammel): Chinese Middle Classes between Empire and Revolution, in: Christof Dejung / David Motadel / Jürgen Osterhammel (Hg.), The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2019, S. 313-336.
- Perspectives on the Environmental History of China, in: Journal of Chinese History2:2 (July 2018), S. 281-290.
FRIAS Project
Cities and the Challenge of Water in Modern China
For more than two millennia, Chinese rulers and local communities have struggled to maintain ecological stability along rivers and coasts, undertaking ambitious programs of canal and dike construction in order to mitigate the effects of recurrent droughts, floods and typhoons. In the course of modern China’s urbanization process, the city has emerged as a focal point for coping with different challenges of water. In the context of urban industrialization, social development and population increase, water consumption, sewage discharge and solid-waste production have been growing rapidly. A crucial question is how to control water pollution and to develop, utilize and protect water resources effectively in order to secure sustainable urban development? In this project, resilience, understood as the ability and the will to cope with various water-related issues, is the key to analyzing and evaluating the different strategies employed by Chinese urban authorities and civil-society actors in tackling the different challenges of water. From a historical perspective, the question will be examined of how the methods of water management, and the concepts that are related to it, have changed throughout the twentieth century. Three different types of Chinese cities serve as case studies for this project: the coastal city of Ningbo, the riverside city of Changzhou in the Yangzi River Delta and Chengdu in Sichuan province – a city without significant connections to coastal or riverine sources of water supply. Resilience will be tested as a central term in examining the administrative efficacy of specific forms of water resources management as well as the technical and scientific capacity to overcome urban water problems.