Research
Timothy Brook is a historian of China whose work has focused on the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) but extends to issues that span the period from the Mongol occupation of China in the 13th century to the Japanese occupation of China in the 20th. In addition to serving as the general editor of Harvard University Press’ History of Imperial China, he has published extensively on China in the world. A co-edited volume on the inter-polity relations of Inner and East Asia, Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018. His most recent book, Great State: China and the World, appeared in Britain and France (the French edition under the title of Le Léopard de Kubilai Khan) in September 2019 and on this side of the Atlantic by HarperCollins in March 2020. The French edition was awarded the Grand Prix des Rendez-vous de l’Histoire in October 2020.
Research Interests
- social and cultural history of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644)
- the Japanese occupation of China during World War Two
- historical perspectives on world history and human rights
Publications
Books
T. Brook. Completing the Map of the World: Cartographic Interaction between China and Europe 全圖: 中國與歐洲之間的地圖學互動. Taipei: Institute for Modern History, Academia Sinica, 2020.
T. Brook. Le Léopard de Kubilai Khan: une histoire mondiale de la Chine. Paris: Payot, 2019.
T. Brook. Great State: China and the world. London: Profile, 2019; New York: HarperCollins, 2020.
T. Brook; M. van Walt van Praag; M. Boltjes. Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan. London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
T. Brook. Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer. Toronto: Anansi; New York: Bloomsbury; London: Profile, 2013.
T. Brook. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010.
T. Brook. Vermeer’s Hat : The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World. Toronto: Anansi; New York: Bloomsbury; London: Profile Books, 2008.
T. Brook. Mingdai de shehui yu guojia = The Chinese State in Ming society / Bu Zhengmin. Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 2009.
T. Brook; J. Bourgon; G. Blue. Death by a Thousand Cuts. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008.
T. Brook. The History of Imperial China (6 vols). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007-2010.
T. Brook. The Chinese State in Ming Society. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.
T. Brook. Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005.
T. Brook. Zong le de kun huo : Ming chao de shang ye yu wen hua = The Confusions of Pleasure / Bu Zhengmin. Taibei: Lianjing, 2004.
T. Brook. Geographical Sources of Ming-Qing history. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.
T. Brook; B.T. Wakabayashi. Opium regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
T. Brook; A. Schmid. Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
T. Brook; G. Blue. China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
T. Brook. Documents on the Rape of Nanking. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
T. Brook. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
T. Brook; B.M. Frolic. Civil Society in China. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1997.
T. Brook; H.V. Luong. Culture and Economy: The Shaping of Capitalism in Eastern Asia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
T. Brook. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China. Cambridge, Mass: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University , 1993.
T. Brook. Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
T. Brook. The Asiatic Mode of Production in China. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1989.
T. Brook; T.K. Min; P.A. Kuhn. National Polity and Local Power: The Transformation of Late Imperial China. Cambridge, Mass: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1989.
T. Brook. Geographical Sources of Ming-Qing History. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988.
Articles/Book Chapters
T. Brook, “Comparative Pandemics: The Tudor-Stuart and Wanli-Chongzhen Years of Pestilence, 1567-1666.” Journal of Global History 15:3, September 2020.
T. Brook, “Les Yuan au centre du monde.” La Grande histoire de la Chine, ed. Laurent Testot. Sciences Humaines, Grands dossiers hors-série no. 7, January 2019.
T. Brook, “Differential Effects of Global and Local Climate Data in Assessing Environmental Drivers of Epidemic Outbreaks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, no. 49, 5 December 2017.
T. Brook, “Chinese Charting of Maritime Asia.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. May 2017.
T. Brook, “Nine Sloughs: Profiling the Climate History of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, 1260-1644.” Journal of Chinese History 1, 27-58, 2017.
T. Brook, “Le Monde en cartes.” In Europa: notre histoire, ed. Étienne François and Thomas Serrier, 955-65. Paris: Les Arènes, 2017.
T. Brook, “Souvenirs intimes, souvenirs du monde: Vermeer.” In Europa: notre histoire, ed. Étienne François and Thomas Serrier, 1287-92. Paris: Les Arènes, 2017.
T. Brook, “Weber’s Religion of China.” In Max Weber’s Economic Ethic of the World Religions, ed. Thomas Ertman, 87-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
T. Brook, “China’s Maritime World.” In The Sea in History: The Early Modern World, ed. Christian Buchet and Gérard Le Bouëdec, 551-563. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017.
T. Brook, “Great States.” The Journal of Asian Studies 75:4, 957-972, November 2016.
T. Brook, “A Month of Delta Summer: The Work of Leisure in the Diary of Li Rihua.” The Chinese Historical Review 23:2, 147-62, 2016.
T. Brook, “Correspondence between Geng Dingxiang and Li Zhi.” In A Book to be Burn and a Book to Keep Hidden: Selected Writings of Li Zhi, ed. Rivi Handler-Spitz, Pauline Lee, and Haun Saussy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
T. Brook, “Telling Famine Stories: The Wanli Emperor and the ‘Henan Famine’ of 1594.” Études chinoises 34:2, 163-202, 2015.
T. Brook, “The Shanghai Trials, 1946: Conjuring Justice.” In Postwar Changes and War Memories, ed. Academia Historica, 127-155. Taipei: Academia Historica, 2015.
T. Brook, “A Bibliography of Books Published by the Ming State.” In Imprimer sans profit? Le livre non commercial dans la Chine impériale, ed. Michela Bussotti and Jean-Pierre Drège, 155-199. Gévève: Droz, 2015.
T. Brook, “Coming onto the Map.” In Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia, ed. Dennis Carr, 9-17. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2015.
T. Brook, “Commerce: The Ming in the World.” In Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, ed. Craig Clunas and Jessica Harrison-Hall, 254-291. London: The British Museum, 2014.
T. Brook, “The Ownership and Theft of Monastic Land in Ming China.” In Buddhism and Law: An Introduction, ed. Rebecca French and Mark Nathan, 216-233. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
T. Brook, “Trade and Conflict in the South China Sea: China and Portugal, 1514-1523.” In A Global History of Trade and Conflict since 1500, ed. Lucia Coppolaro and Francine McKenzie, 20-37. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
T. Brook, “Something New.” In Early Modern Things, ed. Paula Findlen, 369-374. Routledge, 2013.
T. Brook, “Our Very Own Chinese Postcards from Hell.” In Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture, ed. Maria Pia Di Bella and James Elkins, 108-121. New York: Routledge, 2013.
T. Brook, “The Artful Life of the Late-Ming Recluse: Li Rihua and his Generation.” In The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China, ed. Peter Sturman and Susan Tai, 50-61. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2012.
T. Brook, “Hesitating before the Judgment of History”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 71, p. 103, 2012.
T. Brook, “The Logic of Monastic Property in a Commercial Economy: Theft and Patronage in the Suzhou Region, 1570-1640.” Studies in Chinese History 22, 1-28, 2012.
T. Brook, “Capital Punishment and State Sovereignty in China”, Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 11, 2011.
T. Brook, “Time and Global History”, Globalizations, vol. 6, 379-387, 2009.
T. Brook, “The Tokyo Judgment and the Rape of Nanking”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 60, 673-700, 2001.
T. Brook, “Picturing Clunas: A Review Essay”, Ming Studies, vol. 40, 117-124, 1998.
T. Brook, “Edifying Knowledge: The Building of School Libraries in Ming China”, Late Imperial China, vol. 17, 93-119, 1996.
T. Brook, “The Sinology of Joseph Needham”, Modern China, vol. 22, 340-348, 1996.
T. Brook. “Mapping Knowledge in the Sixteenth Century: The Gazetteer Cartography of Ye Chunji“, East Asian Library Journal 7:2, 5-32, 1994.
T. Brook, “Weber, Mencius, and the History of Chinese Capitalism”, Asian Perspective 19, 1995.
T. Brook, “Funerary Ritual and The Building of Lineages in Late Imperial China”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 49, 465-499, 1989.
T. Brook, “Censorship in Eighteenth-Century China: A View from the Book Trade”, Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 23, 1988.
T. Brook, “The Merchant Network in 16th Century China”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 24, 1981.
Additional
T. Brook, “Timothy Brook, lauréat du Grand Prix,” L’Histoire, 12 October 2020.
T. Brook; C. Fabre, “Comment la Chine est (re)devenue le centre du monde,” L’Histoire 475, 46-49, September 2020.
T. Brook, “It Came from the East: Why is the West so Quick to Blame China when Pandemics Arise?” The Globe and Mail, 15 February 2020.
T. Brook, “The Thousand and One Stories of the Silk Road.” Le Monde d’Hermès 76, ed. Patrick Boucheron, 34-40. Paris: Hermès International, 2020.
T. Brook, “Le monde dans une bôite.” L’Histoire 40 ans (L’Histoire 447), 108-112, May 2018.
T. Brook, “Why Historians (Sort of) Like Pandemics.” Newsweek, 25 March 2020.
T. Brook, “Le monde selon Vermeer.” Vermeer: le monde du silence (Figaro hors-série), 40-46, February 2017.
T. Brook, “Trading Places.” Apollo Magazine, October 2015.
T. Brook, “Hundreds of Years of History in a £2 Plate.” The Spectator Magazine, 5 July 2014.
T. Brook, “Chinese Whispers.” Masterpiece 2014 London (Apollo Magazine), 24-28, June 2014.