Power and Civilization: China

Peter K. Bol is the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He has been named a Harvard College Professor in recognition of his commitment to teaching. He came to Harvard in 1985 after studying at the University of Leiden and Princeton. His major focus is debates over values during the last 1000 years of China's history. His books include Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton University Press, 1990), This Culture of Ours: Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China (Stanford University Press, 1994), Ways with Words (University of California Press, 2000), Neo-Confucianism in History (Harvard University Asia Center, 2010), and Localizing Learning: The Literati Enterprise in Wuzhou, 1100-1600 (2022). He directs the China Historical Geographic Information Systems Project, a collaboration between Harvard and Fudan University in Shanghai to create a geographic information system (GIS) for China's history, with the goal of integrating geographical knowledge and analysis with historical research. He is also the director of the China Biographical Database Project, a collaboration between Peking University, the Institute of History at Academia Sinica, and Harvard, which currently has 531,000 biographies and aims eventually to include all biographical records in China's history.