Rana Mitter
British historian and political scientist
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Rana Shantashil Rajyeswar Mitter OBE FBA (born 11 August 1969) is a British historian and political scientist who specialises in modern Chinese history. He is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School.[1]
11 August 1969
Rana Mitter | |
|---|---|
Mitter in 2013 | |
| Born | Rana Shantashil Rajyeswar Mitter 11 August 1969 Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Academic background | |
| Education | King's College, Cambridge (BA, MA, PhD) |
| Thesis | The Japanese occupation of Manchuria (1996) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Historian |
Sub-discipline | History of the Republic of China, contemporary politics of China |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Website | hks |
Early life and education
Mitter, of Indian Bengali descent,[2] was born in Cambridge[3] and grew up on the south coast of England, near Brighton.[4] His father, Partha Mitter, taught art history at the University of Sussex and his mother, Swasti Mitter, was a professor of gender and technology at the University of Brighton.[5] Mitter was educated at Lancing College[6] and King's College, Cambridge, where he received a BA (1992), MPhil (1993), and PhD (1996).[7] He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University in 1993 and 1994.[8] In 1991 he was elected president of the Cambridge Union.[citation needed]
Academic career
He was formerly director of Oxford's China Centre[4] and Fellow and Vice-Master of St Cross College,[9][2][10] and until 2023 was professor of the history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford.[11]
His 2013 book China's War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival (titled Forgotten Ally: China's War with Japan, 1937-45 for publication in the US), about the Second Sino-Japanese War, was well received by critics.[12][13][14][15]
On 16 July 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).[16]
He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to education.[17]
He has published several op-eds for The Guardian on contemporary Chinese politics.[18] He is also a regular presenter for Free Thinking on BBC Radio.[19]
Publications
Books
- Mitter, Rana (2000). The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance and Collaboration in Modern China. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520221116.
- —— (2004). A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192803412.
- —— (2013). China's War with Japan, 1937-1945 : The Struggle for Survival. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0141031453.
- —— (2020). China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674984264.
Selected articles
- —— (20 February 2024). "The Real Roots of Xi Jinping Thought". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 103, no. 2.