Stephen R. Platt is an American historian whose work examines modern China and its political, military and cultural relationships with the wider world. He is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and holds a doctorate in Chinese history from Yale University, where his dissertation received the Theron Rockwell Field Prize. His research concentrates particularly on the Qing dynasty, nineteenth-century warfare, Chinese foreign relations and the individuals who connected China with Europe and the United States.
Platt’s books include Provincial Patriots, a study of regional identity and nationalism in Hunan, and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, a global history of the Taiping Rebellion that won the Cundill History Prize. Imperial Twilight traces the commercial, diplomatic and political tensions that culminated in the First Opium War. His later book The Raider follows United States Marine officer Evans Carlson, who observed Chinese Communist guerrilla forces during the 1930s and attempted to apply their tactics within the American military during the Second World War. Platt’s narrative histories combine military events with diplomacy, commerce and the personal ambitions that shaped encounters between China and the West.
