Stephen R. Platt

American historian and writer

Stephen R. Platt
Occupation(s)	Author, historian
Employer	University of Massachusetts Amherst

Stephen R. Platt is an American historian and writer. He is currently a professor of Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[1]

Early life and education

Platt holds a PhD in Chinese history from Yale University (2004). His area of expertise is in modern China, especially in the nineteenth century and the Qing dynasty's foreign relations.^[2]

Writing career

In 2007 he published Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China.^[3]

Platt's books Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom and Imperial Twilight (examine East-West relations in China during the 19th century, focusing on the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) and the period leading up the First Opium War (1800-1842).^{[citation needed]}

He published Imperial Twilight in 2018, and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom in 2012.^[3]

Platt has also written for The New York Times, Chinafile, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and Late Imperial China.^[3]

Awards and honors

2004 Theron Rockwell Field Prize (Yale University) for dissertation Hunanese Nationalism and the Revival of Wang Fuzhi, 1839-1923 ^{[citation needed]}
2012 Cundill Prize in History winner for Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom^[4]
2018 Baillie Gifford Prize shortlist for Imperial Twilight^[5]

Bibliography

Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China  (Harvard University Press, 2007).
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Knopf, 2012)
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018)

References

^ Steve Pfarrer (May 10, 2018). "'I write what I would love to read': Award-winning historian Stephen Platt pens new book on the 19th-century Opium War". Daily Hampshire Gazette. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
^ "Stephen Platt - History - UMass Amherst". www.umass.edu.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Stephen R. Platt". umass.edu. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved January 23, 2020.
^ "University of Massachusetts historian Stephen Platt receives prestigious Cundill Prize".
^ "The Baillie Gifford Prize 2018 announces shortlist". Baillie Gifford Prize. 2 October 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2018.