These have become an indispensable resource for students of the Qing dynasty throughout the world. His efforts in 1972-73 as negotiator and intermediary were instrumental in arranging financial support from the American Council of Learned Societies for the photographing and publication of voluminous historical archives in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan.

In addition to his own research, Liu contributed prolifically to the bibliographical literature, editing and co-editing volumes and studies on Chinese-American relations, imperial archives, and both Chinese and American scholarship on modern China. Fairbank, a Harvard professor, considered Liu to be 'the foremost historian of 19th century China.' Fairbank, one of the most prominent American scholars of East Asia in the 20th century, co-edited Vol. He contributed three chapters to the authoritative 'Cambridge History of China,' and together with John K. Liu edited the two volumes that emerged from that conference, 'Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China' and 'Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China,' the second jointly with Richard Shek. The importance of ideology in government, rebellion and modernization figured prominently in his own research, and inspired him to organize a large international conference on the subject in 1981, funded by the American Council of Learned Societies.

Liu's interests branched out to include Sino-American relations, the history of Christian missions, power relations within the late dynastic governmental order, the intellectual and political dimensions of statecraft and modernization, and the historiography of peasant rebellions. His first article, Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874, was followed by a voluminous output of books and articles on a widening range of topics. 28 at the age of 84 of a heart attack.īest known for his work on 19th century Chinese social and political history, Professor Liu was a pioneer in the study of foreign business interests in China when unequal treaty rights ruled. Kwang-Ching Liu, a UC Davis professor emeritus of history considered by many as the foremost historian of 19th century China, died in his Davis home Sept.

Ching liu photoshop