Selda Altan discusses research during Harvard lecture

Professor Selda Altan spoke at Harvard this fall.

Selda Altan

History professor Selda Altan recently gave a lecture at Harvard University. 

Altan spoke at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard, which brings together a global community of world-leading academics and practitioners to advance scholarship in all fields of China studies.

Altan’s talk explored labor conflicts during the construction of the French railway between China and Vietnam (1898–1910) as an episode in the emergence of Chinese workers as a global working class. 

Drawing on Chinese, French, and English sources, she revealed how inter-colonial competition for cheap labor and the global circulation of anti-Chinese discourses shaped labor market dynamics in China. These developments set the stage for labor to emerge as a radical force in Chinese politics.