Stephen Platt
Stephen R. Platt is an American historian and writer. He is currently a professor of Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[1]
Stephen Platt  | |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s) | Author, historian | 
| Employer | University of Massachusetts Amherst | 
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).
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
 - 2012 Cundill History Prize 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.
 - "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.