Mining the Asia Directory & Chronicle: A New Exploration of the Foreign Presence in Asia (1863-1934)

Please join us Thursday June 7th in the seminar room at CESTA (Bldg. 160, Rm. 433A) from 12:00-1:30pm for a lecture by Stanford Visiting Professor of History, and Professor of History at the University Aix-Marseille, Dr. Christian Henriot. Professor Henriot's topic will be: "Mining the Asia Directory & Chronicle: A New Exploration of the Foreign Presence in Asia (1863-1934)."

Abstract:

The history of foreign presence in Asia has been examined from various vantage points (imperial studies, colonial studies, etc.), most often with a focus on a single country or through the onslaught of maritime trade or military conquest. This talk will offer a different perspective and approach. It is part of an on-going and ambitious project to explore a unique source ­--   The Asia Chronicle and Directory, a multi-year and multi-volume collection ­--  through the integration of new technologies, which are enabling development of a comprehensive digital resource for the research community rather than simply a digital version of the printed volumes. Because these volumes cover the entire East Asia and Southeast Asia region, they offer an unprecedented source of information at the level of individual actors, both individuals and institutions, with verified instances of hundreds of thousands of persons, employment, corporations, products and locations, as well as events, maps and published notices including advertisements. The presentation will explore the methodological challenges of the digital transformation of the Asia Chronicle and Directory and present preliminary research results based on the rich processed data.

About the speaker:

A renowned historian of modern Shanghai and a pioneer in the use of digital technologies to study China, Christian Henriot is Professor of Modern Chinese History at Aix-Marseilles University in France.  His many books include Shanghai 1927-1937: Municipal Power, Locality, and Modernization (UC Press, 1993), Prostitution in Shanghai: A Social History (Cambridge UP, 2001), and Scythe and the City: a Social History of Death in Shanghai, 1865-1964 (Stanford UP, 2016)..  His education included an M.A. in History at Stanford under the guidance of Harold Kahn and Lyman Van Slyke (1982), and he also spent 2006-07 as a Fellow in Digital Humanities at the Stanford Humanities Center.