Joyman Lee
I am a historian primarily interested in Asian economic history (part of social and economic history), modern Chinese and Japanese history, and global history. My dissertation ‘Japanese industrialization experience and Chinese thinking on economic development, 1910-40’ explores the impact of the Japanese model of industrialization on China. It examines the significance of Japan and China’s position at the global semi-periphery, as well as the states’ shared will towards economic independence, which created the possibility for organizational systems and technology to flow relatively easily between the two countries. In my dissertation I argue that a ‘Japan-Zhili model’ created in North China formed one of the most important models of growth in interwar Chinese economic history and, together with the continued presence of Japan as China’s greatest industrial competitor, had an important impact on economic policy under the Kuomintang government.
Raised in London, England, I received my B.A. First Class Honours with Distinction in History from Clare College, Cambridge, where I studied the political economy of globalization, 1939-1974 for my special subject. My awards include a British Kennedy Scholarship, and my work has been funded by the Japan Foundation, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and the Yale Council on East Asian Studies. The Richard U. Light Fellowship at Yale University supported a year of study at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies. My publications include an article in History Today (‘Senkaku/Diaoyu: islands of dispute’), and book reviews in Economic History Review, Historical Journal and Enterprise and Society. I have presented my work at forums including the World History Association, the Research Meeting on Economic History at the University of Tokyo, and the Socio-Economic History Society of Japan.
At Yale, I taught for courses on modern Chinese and East Asian history, as well as early modern British history. I have held visiting affiliations at Peking University, the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo and the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica, Taiwan. My oral examinations were in modern China, early modern and modern Japan and modern Latin America.
Jonathan Spence is my advisor at Yale, and between Dec 2011 and Nov 2012 I am studying in Japan under Sugihara Kaoru.
