An "Other" Historian's Diary

Years ago, looking for a PhD program that would admit me, I wrote lots of emails to the professors that I was interested to work with. I was really excited when I received words of encouragement. The most memorable one for me, among all the impressive response I got, was one from Professor J. C. D Clark at University of Kansas. I was still in Taiwan back at that time. I sent him my research proposal and asked him for suggestion. He emailed me back. (I was thrilled when I was his response: Such a prominent professor would actually answer an email from someone out of nowhere!) And he said he had been thinking that we needed someone from a non-European background to do the history of political thoughts of the American Revolution, so that we could have different perspectives. Although I ended up not getting admitted by University of Kansas, this message has been of great influence in my career, and I have been searching for what different perspective I could bring to this flourishing field.

It has been years since that inspiring email. Ever since then, I have been in a master's program for two years, and in a PhD program for 5 years. I have been amazed by the diversity in the field of early American history. Although most general readers are more familiar with traditional historical writings: political history, military history, and the biography of the Founding Fathers, early American scholars has published many books on women history, native Americans, Atlantic slavery, history of sensibility, diplomatic history, and cultural history. I am amazed by all these works, and I also recognize that it is nearly impossible that one historian can see all the possible respects of history. Everyone has their own perspective, based on their personal and cultural background. The ways we see history are greatly influenced by our experiences and knowledge of our own past.

I often felt alone when I went to Early American history conferences. I was usually one of the very few Asian, not to mention Taiwanese or Chinese, scholars there. When I went to some bigger conferences, such as AHA or OAH, although I would see more Asian faces, I still felt a different kind of loneliness because most Asians studies Asia. It might be either Asian history, Asian-American diplomatic history, or Asian-American history. Whenever I met a Chinese scholar who studied early American history we became friends right away, because we are like endangered animals in this field. I volunteered to be a teaching assistant for our department chair in fall 2017. One day when we walked out of library, he pointed out how special I was. He said something like, "You are a Taiwanese Mormon working on early American history!" Yes, I guess I try to break a lot of stereotypes.

But I think it is not enough to just be "different." Being different should yield distinct contributions. There are two different ways to reflect diversity: different topics and divergent perspectives. Different topics oftentimes come from diverse perspectives. For example, works on women history have proliferated as the number of female historians has increased. African-American scholarship of slavery looks at Atlantic slavery system from the angle of the suppressed slaves, instead of from the angle of their white owners. On the other hand, coming from different cultural background makes people interpret this world differently. Therefore, even on the same theme or topic, people from diverse cultural background take different things for granted and so could yield very different interpretations, or could reframe issues in divergent ways.

The reason that I name this blog "An 'Other' Historian's Diary" is that, I am an outsider to American culture. My inherited cultural understanding inevitably dissociates me from the American culture to some extent, no matter how willing I am to fit into this culture. As an outsider, sometimes I might misunderstand American culture and history due to the lack of context. Sometimes, I might notice something worth to be discussed while many people would have ignored it because they have taken it for granted. I hope that my view as an outsider will offer an alternative interpretation of early American history, and even of our world today.

In terms of early American history, sometimes we forget that even Americans today are also outsider of early American world. While many politicians, even the general public on social media, claim that their ideas come from U.S. Constitution or "Founding Fathers," and blame their opponents' ideas to be "unconstitutional," their ideas usually come from their own interpretations of the Constitution. The so-called Founding Fathers that they pay tribute to are not necessarily the real George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, or Thomas Jefferson, but are the idealistic images shaped by their political needs and purposes.

I claim to be an outsider. But the truth is, to early American history, everyone can be an outsider. That might be exactly the beauty of early American historical studies.