I am an historian of nineteenth and twentieth century China. Broadly, my research falls into two themes: the multi-ethnic Southwest, and histories of the rural economy. My first book examined inter-group violence in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century upland southwest China. My new research has to do with economic and cultural histories of work in rural China from 1945-1980. I have also led a project to translate Mao Haijian's The Qing Empire and the Opium War: Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty (Tianchao de bengkui), the most widely-read Chinese account of the First Opium War, into English. 

I grew up and was educated in New Zealand, where I did my BA in history at Otago University, and my PhD at Victoria University of Wellington. Between 2004 and 2008, I lived in China where I taught English in Xinjiang, Sichuan, and Jiangsu, and studied Chinese in Xichang College (Sichuan). Between 2011 and 2013, I lived in Taiwan, where I was a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica. Many of the questions in the background of my research and teaching relate to issues that seemed important in those contexts, or emerged from thinking comparatively about the different places I have lived: How comparable are colonial processes in different parts of the world? And: Why do societies become wealthier or poorer; or more or less equal? 

I am the senior tutor for the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology.

I am happy to supervise post-graduate work in any area of modern Chinese history.

My first book is A Frontier Made Lawless: Violence in Upland Southwest China (University of British Columbia Press, 2017). The book examines violence in Liangshan, in southwest Sichuan. The book considers Liangshan as a region beyond the control of a state. De facto, sovereignty was exercised by indigenous Nuosu clans, and negotiated or fought over at the frontier with the Qing and Republican Chinese regional state officials. Therefore, it serves as a case study for testing the notion, foundational in the Weberian tradition of social theory, that the rule of law can only be created by state authority strong enough to determine what counts as legitimate use of violence. To a certain extent, Liangshan demonstrates the rationale of Weberian thought: many conflicts developed out of clashes over land rights, which reflected the fact that Nuosu and Chinese had very different customs of land tenure, and there were no mutually recognized authorities for arbitrating disputes. However, a range of local institutions developed to contain violence, and there was much more local, upland ‘state-building’ than would be predicted by narratives of anarchist upland communities characterized by rejection of state-like authority. The bloodiest periods of violence in Liangshan stemmed not from local dynamics, but the consequences of disorder outside the region. https://www.ubcpress.ca/a-frontier-made-lawless

My next major project is about teachers and the Chinese party-states of the People's Republic and the Republic of China (Taiwan) during the Cold War. The expansion of education in the post-war era in both countries led to a rise of a new branch of the state. This project investigates the gender and ethnic dimensions of teaching, and its relationship with the ruling party. The first outputs from this project will be published soon. 

Since arriving at Newcastle, I have taught on a large number of modules, with contributions focusing on the history of the Qing empire and twentieth-century China and Taiwan. I have also lectured and led seminars on a range of other topics, including Tibetan history, missionaries in New Zealand, public history in New Zealand, Communist movements in East and Southeast Asia, comparative economic history, and environmental history. 

In 2021-22, my main teaching contributions will be on the following modules:

HIS1105: What is History For?

HIS2317: The Aftermath of War in Europe and Asia, 1945-1956 (module leader)

HIS2306: Famines in History

HIS2321: Global Environmental History

HIS3131: Social Histories of China and Taiwan in the Cold War (module leader)

• Lawson J. State, Commune and Gender Inequality among Teachers in Rural and Small-town China, 1957-1979. Journal of Historical Sociology 2021. In Press.
• Lawson J. A Frontier Made Lawless: Violence in Upland Southwest China, 1800-1956. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017.
• Lawson J. "Even if you don't want to drink, you still have to drink": The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage. In: Ludwig, C; Walton, L; Wang, Y-W, ed. The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination, and Consumption of Heritage. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2020, pp.261-276.
• He H, Lawson J, Bell M, Hui F. Millet, Wheat, and Society in North China over the Very Long Term. Environment and History 2019, 27(1), 127-154.
• Mao H, Lawson J, ed. The Qing Empire and the Opium War: Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty [translation of Mao Haijian, 'Tianchao de bengkui yapian zhanzheng zai yanjiu]. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
• Lawson J. Translator's preface. In: Lawson, J, ed. The Qing Empire and the Opium War: Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp.ix-xii.
• Lawson J. “Introduction: Transport and Communications Revolutions in the Late Qing”. Frontiers of History in China 2015, 10(3), 367-371.
• Lawson J. Mining, Bridges, Opium, and Guns: Chinese Investment and State Power in a Late Qing Frontier. Frontiers of History in China 2015, 10(3), 372-394.
• Lawson J. Unsettled Lands: Labour and land cultivation in western China during the War of Resistance (1937-1945). Modern Asian Studies 2015, 49(5), 1442-1484.
• Lawson J. The Chinese State and Agriculture in an Age of Global Empires, 1880-1949. In: Beattie, J; Melillo, E; O'Gorman, E, ed. Eco-cultural networks and the British Empire : new views on environmental history. London: Bloomsbury, 2015, pp.44-68.
• Lawson J. Warlord Colonialism: State Fragmentation and Chinese Rule in Kham, 1911-1949. Journal of Asian Studies 2013, 72(2), 299-318.