Robert Bickers Explained

Robert A. Bickers
Birth Name:	Robert Bickers
Birth Place:	Wiltshire, England
Alma Mater:	SOAS University of London
Occupation:	Historian

Robert A. Bickers (born 1964) is a British historian of modern China and colonialism.^[1] He is currently a professor of history at the University of Bristol.^[2] Bickers is the author of six books and editor or co-editor of three more.

Biography

Born in a Royal Air Force hospital in Wiltshire, UK, Bickers grew up living on Royal Air Force bases across England, in Germany, and in Hong Kong.^[1] He studied Chinese language at SOAS University of London during the mid-1980s, including a year studying in Taiwan. After holding fellowships in Oxford University and Cambridge University, Bickers joined the department of history at the University of Bristol in 1997, where he is currently a professor of history and associate pro vice-chancellor.^[3] He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.^[4]

Scholarship

Bickers' book Out of China was shortlisted for the 2018 Wolfson History Prize.^[5] Rana Mitter in the New York Review of Books described it as "a panoramic examination of the increasingly powerful articulation of China's national identity in the twentieth century and the country's painful encounter with Western imperialism."^[6] Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (Allen Lane/Penguin and Columbia Univ. Press, 2003) was awarded the Morris D. Forkosch Prize of the American Historical Association.^[7]

Bickers directs the Hong Kong Kong History Project and the Historical Photographs of China digitization initiative.^{[8] [9]} He is the former co-director of the British Inter-university China Centre and the REACT Knowledge Exchange Hub and is currently associate pro vice-chancellor (PGR) at the University of Bristol.^{[10] [11] [12]}

Published works

• China Bound: John Swire & Sons and Its World (Bloomsbury, 2020)
• Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination (Allen Lane, 2017)
• Getting Stuck In for Shanghai: Putting the Kibosh on the Kaiser from the Bund (Penguin, 2014)
• The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914 (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2011)
• Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2003)
• Britain in China (Allen Lane/Penguin, 1999)

Edited works:

• Settlers and Expatriates: Britons Over the Seas (Oxford History of the British Empire, 2014)
• Britain and China, 1840-1970: Empire, Finance, and War co-edited with Jonathan J. Howlett
• Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land & Power (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia, 2018) co-edited with Isabella Jackson

External links

• Robert Bickers at the University of Bristol

Notes and References

1. Web site: Morgan . John . Interview with Robert Bickers . The University Rankings . 26 April 2018 . 8 January 2020 .
2. Web site: Professor Robert Bickers . University of Bristol . 8 January 2020 .
3. Web site: Bickers . Robert . About me . 5 September 2011 . 8 January 2020 .
4. Web site: Professor Robert Bickers FBA . 2023-10-21 . The British Academy . en.
5. Web site: The 2018 Wolfson History Prize Winner and Shortlist . The Wolfson History Prize . 8 January 2020 .
6. Mitter . Rana . Rana Mitter . Barbarians Out! . The New York Review of Books . 7 December 2017 . 8 January 2020 .
7. Web site: Morris D. Forkosch Prize Recipients . American Historical Association . 8 January 2020 .
8. Web site: Bickers . Robert . Hong Kong History Project . 8 January 2020 .
9. Web site: Historical Photographs of China . 8 January 2020 .
10. Web site: The British Inter-University China Centre . 8 January 2020 .
11. Web site: Watershed Hosts Partnership Hub for SW Creative Industries . Watershed . 16 August 2011 . 8 January 2020 .
12. Web site: University of Bristol: Senior Team . University of Bristol . 8 January 2020 .