Mingran Cao is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Area Studies.

More information about Mingran Cao

Research Interests

• 19-20th Century China
• Social and Economic History
• Business-State Relations
• History of Global Capitalism
• Environmental History

PhD Project

“An Experiment in Self-Governance: Cotton Plantations in Coastal Jiangsu, 1895-1950”

His PhD project studies cotton plantations in coastal Jiangsu from 1890s to 1950s. It examines how the land reclamation companies, which founded and managed the cotton plantations, negotiated with state, society, and environment, and how they mobilized global currents of knowledge and technology. The project delves into the rise and fall of cotton plantations in coastal Jiangsu, an economic nationalist project to enhance domestic supply of raw cotton, in order to understand capitalism in early-twentieth-century China with a global perspective.

Biography

Prior to his study at Leiden, he completed his BA in International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University and the London School of Economics, and obtained his MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History at Cambridge. Alongside his academic experiences, he had previously worked in think tanks and non-governmental organizations in China and the US.

Publication

Cao, Mingran. Review of The Master in Bondage: Factory Workers in China, 1949–2019, by Huaiyin Li, European Journal of East Asian Studies 23, 1 (2024): 109-111, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-02301002