James A. Millward 米華健 is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, where he teaches Qing, Chinese, Central Asian and world history. Millward is the academic editor for the "Silk Roads" book series published by Chicago University Press, and former president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society. In Spring of 2025 he will be a fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
Millward’s specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments publicly on current issues regarding Xinjiang, the Uyghurs and other native Xinjiang peoples, PRC ethnicity policy and PRC-US relations. His publications include Eurasian Crossroads: a history of Xinjiang (2021; 2007); The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013); New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004); and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998); as well as the albums Get it while you Can and Songs for this Old Heart (recorded with the band By & By). He is currently working on "Decolonizing History in China," a book reexamining how the concepts of Sinicization, the tribute system and "Chinese dynasties" support an exceptionalist and exclusionary historiography of the East Asian mainland.
Jim's general-audience articles and op-eds on contemporary China are published in The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Guardian , The Los Angeles Review of Books , The New York Review of Books , Foreign Affairs , Foreign Policy and other media. He has appeared on the PBS Newshour, All Things Considered, Al Jazeera, i24 News, the Sinica Podcast and other broadcast programs and networks.
Email: millwarj@georgetown.edu Twitter: @JimMillward
For office hours appointments (fall and spring semesters), please sign up at https://bit.ly/2T8IskQ or contact me at millwarj@georgetown.edu .
PUBLICATIONS
Recent op-ed essays:
"Lessons from Tiananmen for Today’s University Presidents." Chinafile 29 April 2024.
Nader Hashemi and James Millward. "Lessons on Genocide From Xinjiang and Gaza." DAWN, 23 February 2024.
Books
In Progress: Decolonizing History in China
In Progress: Lutes on the Silk Road: What the journey of a musical instrument tells us about cultural exchange across Eurasia, from ancient to modern times.
The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2013. Chinese edition by Yilin publishing 译林出版社, Nanjing, China, 2017. Ma Rui, trans. Preface by Rong Xinjiang.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. New York: Columbia University Press; London: C. Hurst Co., 2007; second expanded edition 2021.
Millward, James, Shinmen Yasushi and Sugawara Jun, eds. Studies on Xinjiang Historical Sources in the 17th-20th Centuries. Tokyo: Toyobunko, 2010.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. New York: Columbia University Press; London: C. Hurst Co., 2007.
New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. (Chief editor; with assistance from Ruth Dunnell, Mark Elliott and Philippe Forêt)
Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Xinjiang, 1759-1864. Stanford University Press, 1998. (PRC Chinese translation in National Qing History Editorial Project Foreign Language Translation series, volume 9, 2006; Complex characters Chinese edition: 米华健，“嘉峪關外: 1759–1864 年新疆的經濟、民族和清帝國.”Jia Jianfei賈建飛, trans. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press 中文大学出版社, 2017.
More recent scholarly articles and chapters
"Decolonizing Chinese History: How 'Chinese Dynasties' Periodization Works with the ‘Tribute System' and 'Sinicization' to Erase Diversity and Euphemize Colonialism in Historiography of China." The Historical Journal, 67:1 (Jan. 2024), 151-160.
"The Qing Conception of Strategic Space." In Mapping China's Strategic Space, National Bureau of Asian Research, 23 August 2023.
"Sinicisation, the Tribute System and Dynasties: Three Concepts to Justify Colonialism and Attack non-Sinitic Diversity in the People’s Republic of China." IAI Papers, Istituto Affari Internazionali, 25 July 2023.
"Getting Past Old Models of PRC Diversity: Understand the Empire to Understand the Imperial Nation State." Journal of Chinese Political Science, 21 August 2022. https://rdcu.be/cVsk0
Millward, James and Dahlia Peterson. "China's system of oppression in Xinjiang: How it developed and how to curb it." The Brookings Institution, Global China series, September 2020.
"Lutes, pipa, and ouds: the silk road spread of the stringed instrument." In Susan Whitfield, ed., Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes. London: Thames and Hudson, 2019.
"The Qing and Twentieth-Century Chinese Diversity Regimes," in Andrew Phillips and Christian Reus-smit eds. Culture and Order in World Politics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019 (ch. 4, pp. 71-92). (This book won the 2021 International Studies Association Prize for the Best Edited Book in International Theory and was runner up for the ISA Best Edited Book in History and IR.)
"The Silk road and the Sitar: Finding Centuries of Socio-cultural Exchange in the History of an Instrument." The Journal of Social History 52:2 (Nov. 2018), 206-233. doi:10.1093/jsh/shy050
米华健 (James Millward) “丝绸之路” 研究与清帝国边疆 (Silk Road Research and the Qing Imperial Frontier). Pengpai xinwen 23 February 2018.
"What did the Qianlong Court Mean by huairou yuanren 怀柔远人? An Examination of Manchu,
Mongol and Tibetan Translations of the Term as it Appears in Chengde Steles, as a Defense of
“New Qing History.” In Morris Rossabi, ed. New Interpretations in Mongolian and Inner Asian History. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
"Bao-yu's Education." In Andrew Schonebaum and Tina Lu, eds., Approaches to Teaching The Story of the Stone （Dream of the Red Chamber）, pp. 159-63. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2012.
"Shredding for the Motherland: The Guitar in China." In Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Angilee Shah, eds. Chinese Characters. University of California Press, 2012.
"Chordophone Culture in Two Early Modern Societies: a Pipa-Vihuela Duet." Journal of World History 23:2 (June 2012), 237-278.
Public press, media and other publications
"Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil’s ‘Waiting to Be Arrested At Night’ offers a harrowing glimpse of life as an ethnic minority in China." The Boston Globe 3 August 2023.
"China’s Reincarnation Monopoly Has a Mongolia Problem: The twin lines of the Dalai Lama and the Jebtsundamba Khutughtu have shaped geopolitics for centuries." Foreign Policy, 23 April 2023.
China’s New Anti-Uyghur Campaign: How the World Can Stop Beijing’s Brutal Oppression , Foreign Affairs, 23 January 2023.
"Why It Matters That China’s Protests Started in Xinjiang," Guest Essay, The New York Times, 6 December 2022.
China in Protest: A ChinaFile Conversation (Contributor), ChinaFile 29 November 2022; and in Foreign Policy
"Jak Chińczycy zmanipulowali postrzeganie historii." Wszystko Co Najważniejsze, 1 September 2022.
(Identity) Politics in Command: Xi Jinping’s July Visit to Xinjiang. The China Story, 22 August 2022.
"Mike Pompeo accused China of committing ‘genocide,’ an international crime. Biden’s team agrees." Conversation with Jessica Chen Weiss and Oumar Ba in The Washington Post's The Monkey Cage. 23 January 2021.
"More Hun than Han: James Millward reads the original Mulan poem that inspired Disney's films." Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, 25 September, 2020.
“The Uighurs' suffering deserves targeted solutions, not anti-Chinese posturing.” The Guardian. 27 July 2020.
『一位美国教授的武汉热干面回忆』 [An American Professor remembers Wuhan's Hot Dry Noodles]. Global Times 环球网 25 January 2020.
"Between the lines of the Xinjiang Papers." The New York Times. 20 November 2019.
"What Xi Jinping hasn't Learned from China's Emperors." The New York Times. 1 October 2019.
"We need a better middle road on China. Here's how we can find it." The Washington Post. 6 August 2019.
"Re-educating China's Muslims." The New York Review of Books, February 7, 2019. Republished outside paywall on Chinafile.
“There is no epidemic of self-censorship about China.” Letters to the Editor. 28 Sept. 2018. The Washington Post.
“Is China a colonial power?” The New York Times 4 May 2018.
“What its like to live in a surveillance state.” The New York Times 18 February 2018.
“China’s fruitless repression of the Uighurs.” The New York Times p. A27, 29 September 2014.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
- Secondary
- Professor, College - Department of History