About

Kathlene Baldanza is an Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at Penn State. She is a historian specializing in early modern Vietnam and China, with research interests that include book history, diplomatic and cultural exchange, and environmental history. Her first monograph, 'Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia,' emphasizes mutuality and negotiation in Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Ming and Mạc dynasties. Her work on book history has been published in the Journal of Asian Studies and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, exploring topics such as publishing industries and reading practices in Vietnam and China, as well as the culture of knowledge in 19th-century Vietnam. Baldanza has also contributed to translating and introducing primary sources related to Vietnam’s maritime history, including a shipwreck tale from the early 19th century. Her current research projects focus on the history of miasma in the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands and the first century of US-Vietnam relations, exemplified by the 1845 visit of the U.S.S. Constitution to Vietnam.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Ancient history
• History
• Law
• Sociology
• Literature
• Economic history
• Philosophy
• Ethnology
• Archaeology
• Ecology
• Art
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Xing Hang. <i>The Port: Hà Tiên and the Mo Clan in Early Modern Asia</i>

  The American Historical Review · 2025-12-20

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Our mountains and rivers have changed: Nature and empire in the Ming colonisation of Đại Việt, 1407–28

  Journal of Southeast Asian Studies · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Ancient history

  Scholars have yet to fully recognise the central role environment played in inspiring, and stymying, the Ming dynasty invasion and colonisation of Đại Việt (1407–27) and subsequent Vietnamese resistance movement. During the initial campaign, the Yongle emperor and his generals identified miasma, the illness-inducing hot and misty climate of the Sino-Vietnamese uplands (‘the Dong World’), as their primary obstacle and obsessed over strategies to avoid it. For Lê Lợi, the Vietnamese dynastic founder who expelled the Ming troops from Đại Việt, resistance to Ming environmental exploitation of Vietnamese resources was a rallying cry. The ecology and flora and fauna of Đại Việt helped inform an articulation of Vietnamese difference and independence. Despite the anticolonial rhetoric of the early Lê, the dynasty was soon engaging in a project of imperial expansion not dissimilar from that of the Ming. The Vietnamese state that emerged following Ming colonisation was in turn limited by the miasmic uplands.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Poetic Transformations: Eighteenth-Century Cultural Projects in the Mekong Plains. By Claudine Ang. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. 308 pp. ISBN: 9780674237230 (cloth).

  The Journal of Asian Studies · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Economic history
  • Ancient history

  Poetic Transformations: Eighteenth-Century Cultural Projects in the Mekong Plains. By Claudine Ang. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. 308 pp. ISBN: 9780674237230 (cloth). - Volume 79 Issue 3

  PublisherDOI

• Yuanchong Wang. Remaking the Chinese Empire: Manchu-Korean Relations, 1616–1911.

  The American Historical Review · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • History

  In his Remaking the Chinese Empire: Manchu-Korean Relations, 1616–1911, Yuanchong Wang provides a fascinating and detailed account of the ritual protocol of Choson-Qing relations. Critiquing recent work in Qing history known collectively as “the New Qing history” as too Eurocentric and not sensitive to the milieu of Qing China, Wang seeks to situate Qing-Choson relations in the period before the Qing conquest of China and develop a new vocabulary to more accurately portray the relations of the two states. A major theme that emerges is the centrality of Choson Korea not only to Qing self-fashioning but also to diplomatic relations between European powers, Japan, and China. Wang employs Zongfan to describe Qing diplomatic norms, leaving the term’s baggage-laden translations, “tributary” or “Chinese world order,” behind. The Zongfan system cast the center as the patriarch and the periphery as the family members, classifying Choson as the Qing’s shuguo, or subordinate country (122). Wang views Choson as something between a sovereign nation and a colony. This relationship was confusingly nebulous to both Japanese and European diplomats. It was not, Wang implies, confusing for Qing and Choson bureaucrats. He demonstrates that Choson and the Qing were so dependent on one another for symbolic legitimacy and so bound in their norms and procedures that their response to the new model of foreign relations insisted upon by Great Britain, France, the U.S., and Japan were flat-footed and inadequate. This is an old story but one that Wang fleshes out with care.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China</i>, by Michael Szonyi

  The English Historical Review · 2019-05-15

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Michael Szonyi’s book focuses on the ‘everyday politics’ deployed by members of military-registered households of the south-east coast of China to manage their relations with the Ming state (1368–1644). As indicated by the title, Szonyi’s work complements James Scott’s influential 2009 study, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Instead of analysing methods of evasion and resistance to state power, as Scott does, Szonyi studies the more widespread methods of mediation, negotiation and optimisation. He also extends his period of study further back in time, making the case that pre-modern states, specifically Ming China, also sought to map territory and people to make them ‘legible’ in the fashion of modern states, though their technologies differed. The Ming dynasty implemented a military registration system that required each military household to provide a soldier for service, to be replaced in perpetuity. It was the family’s responsibility to designate the serving individual, creating some leeway for the way they chose to fulfil the requirement. The transition from Ming to Qing (1644–1911) rule did not entirely erase the influence of the Ming registration system. Although organisation of the military was transformed, at least in some places and time periods, the Ming military registration system continued to shape communities, lineage formation, and tax collection.

  PublisherDOI

• Review: Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present. by Ben Kiernan

  Journal of Vietnamese Studies · 2019-01-01

  article

  Book Review| February 01 2019 Review: Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present. by Ben Kiernan Ben KiernanViệt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present.New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 656 pages. Catherine Churchman, Catherine Churchman Victoria University of Wellington Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Kathlene Baldanza, Kathlene Baldanza The Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Brett Reilly Brett Reilly University of Wisconsin–Madison Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2019) 14 (1): 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2019.14.1.97 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Catherine Churchman, Kathlene Baldanza, Brett Reilly; Review: Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present. by Ben Kiernan. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1 February 2019; 14 (1): 97–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2019.14.1.97 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Vietnamese Studies Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Review: Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands by Bradley Camp Davis

  Journal of Vietnamese Studies · 2018-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Book Review| February 01 2018 Review: Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands by Bradley Camp Davis Bradley Camp DavisImperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam BorderlandsSeattle: University of Washington Press, 2016. 288 pages. $29.98 (paper) Kathlene Baldanza Kathlene Baldanza The Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2018) 13 (1): 137–139. https://doi.org/10.1525/jvs.2018.13.1.137 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kathlene Baldanza; Review: Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands by Bradley Camp Davis. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1 February 2018; 13 (1): 137–139. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jvs.2018.13.1.137 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Vietnamese Studies Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2018 by The Regents of the University of California2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Books without Borders: Phạm Thận Duật (1825–1885) and the Culture of Knowledge in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Vietnam

  The Journal of Asian Studies · 2018-06-29 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  It is well-known that the educated elite of China, Vietnam, and other neighboring polities participated in a shared community of inquiry, but how did it work in practice? This article examines Phạm Thận Duật's 1856 Hưng Hóa Gazetteer in order to discover the process by which knowledge was contested and produced within this broader culture of knowledge. Writing within the gazetteer genre, Phạm Thận Duật engaged with foundational classical Chinese texts, recent Vietnamese works, and the Qing-era kaozheng movement of evidentiary scholarship. That he took himself to be participating in a literary culture that transcended Vietnam is clear from an analysis of his textual citations, as is his confidence in rejecting, reconfiguring, or adding to a transregional culture of knowledge. Phạm Thận Duật and others like him were autonomous contributors to a community of inquiry that transgressed political boundaries. For Vietnamese scholars, this community was rooted in classical texts but centered in Vietnam.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Publishing, Book Culture, and Reading Practices in Vietnam

  Journal of Vietnamese Studies · 2018-01-01 · 8 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The Nôm Preservation Foundation recently made the libraries of two Buddhist temples near Hà Nội available in digitized form. The resulting composite temple collection allows us to pose questions about the history of the book in Vietnam. The history of the book in Vietnam must be understood from an interregional perspective. The availability of relatively inexpensive Chinese books influenced what was worthwhile to print locally. At the same time, even books with the same title are remarkably diverse in terms of content, medium, and annotation. A close look at individual books can show us what and how people read.

  PublisherDOI

• Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands Sarah Turner , Christine Bonnin and Jean Michaud Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2015 xii + 223 pp. $50.00 ISBN 978-0-295-99466-6

  The China Quarterly · 2017-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands Sarah Turner , Christine Bonnin and Jean Michaud Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2015 xii + 223 pp. $50.00 ISBN 978-0-295-99466-6 - Volume 229

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• B. Reilly

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  1 shared

• Catherine Churchman

  Victoria University of Wellington

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Academy of Korean Studies Conference Grant (2018)
• Penn State Humanities in the Digital Age Grant (2018)
• Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Scholar grant (2017-2018)
• Penn State Center for Humanities and Information Faculty Fel…
• Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies Postdoct…