Asymmetry and Elastic Sovereignty in the Qing Tributary World: Criminals and Refugees in Three Borderlands, 1630s-1840s

This dissertation analyzes how Qing China (1636-1912) and three of its tributary states (Chosŏn Korea, Vietnam, Kokand) handled interstate refugees and criminals from the 1630s to the 1840s. I use Classical Chinese and Manchu memorials and diplomatic documents from Qing archives in Beijing and Taipei as well as Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese published sources to construct a bilateral view of these interstate relations and compare them. My research reveals multiple, flexible, and shifting conceptions of boundaries, jurisdiction, and sovereignty. Boundaries between Qing and its tributaries were not absolute to a Qing court that claimed universal rule, and the court often erased them by adopting tributary refugees as Qing subjects or encroaching on tributary domains. Further, the Qing court often asserted jurisdiction over tributary subjects committing crimes on its soil or against its subjects. In contrast, no tributary court openly asserted jurisdiction over Qing subjects. Together, these cases reveal two defining characteristics of the Qing tributary order: asymmetry and elastic sovereignty. They show how the political norms of early modern Asia defy post-Westphalian norms of inter-state equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of fellow sovereign states. This work breaks new ground in Chinese history by highlighting Qing imperial projects outside today’s Chinese borders and by comparing borderlands in Northeast, Southeast, and Central Asia. It is also a work of world history that combines the connective method and the comparative method in a novel way, focusing on interactions across interstate boundaries in Asia while comparing these Asian borderlands with those in other early modern empires such as Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Lastly, my work engages with the field of international relations by reconstructing the contours of interstate affairs in early modern Asia before the introduction of public international law to the region, thus answering the recent call by scholars for a more inclusive, pluralistic view of international relations.PHDHistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144072/1/jaymin_1.pd

The East Asian Journal of British History, vol. 3

The East Asian Journal of British History is produced by the East Asian Society of British History, and supported by the Institute for Historical Research. The Institute of Historical Research is pleased and proud to be supporting this recent addition to British history scholarship. Developing out of the IHR’s long-standing collaborative partnership with Japanese universities, and now in its fourth year, the East Asian Journal of British History features some of the best emergent scholarship from Anglophone historians working in China, Japan, and South Korea. Divided between an articles section and one devoted to reviews, the journal’s remit wide-ranging covering all fields and periods of British history. It complements the triennial Anglo-Japanese Conference organised by the IHR and Japanese historians based at the universities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, and the conference of the East Asian Society of British history, in which we are joined by our colleagues from South Korea. In future, we hope that more contributions will be featured in the journal from the Chinese mainland and from Taiwan

Genetic Evidence of Importation of Drug-Resistant Plasmodium falciparum to Guatemala from the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Molecular markers and population genetics were effective tracking tools.Imported malaria threatens control and elimination efforts in countries that have low rates of transmission. In 2010, an outbreak of Plasmodium falciparum malaria was reported among United Nations peacekeeping soldiers from Guatemala who had recently returned from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Epidemiologic evidence suggested that the soldiers were infected in the DRC, but local transmission could not be ruled out in all cases. We used population genetic analyses of neutral microsatellites to determine the outbreak source. Genetic relatedness was compared among parasites found in samples from the soldiers and parasite populations collected in the DRC and Guatemala; parasites identified in the soldiers were more closely related to those from the DRC. A phylogenetic clustering analysis confirms this identification with >99.9% confidence. Thus, results support the hypothesis that the soldiers likely imported malaria from the DRC. This study demonstrates the utility of molecular genotyping in outbreak investigations

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data