Bruce Cumings (born September 5, 1943) is an American historian of
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...
, professor, lecturer and author. He is the
Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History, and the former chair of the history department at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. He specializes in modern
Korean history
The Lower Paleolithic era in the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria began roughly half a million years ago.
Christopher J. Norton, "The Current State of Korean Paleoanthropology", (2000), ''Journal of Human Evolution'', 38: 803–825.
The earliest ...
and contemporary
international relations
International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such ...
.
In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae-jung Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by South Korea. The award is named in honor of 2000
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolo ...
winner and former
president of South Korea
The president of the Republic of Korea (), also known as the president of South Korea (often abbreviated to POTROK or POSK; ), is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of Korea. The president leads the State Council, and ...
Kim Dae-jung
Kim Dae-jung (; ; 6 January 192418 August 2009), was a South Korean politician and activist who served as the eighth president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003.
He was a 2000 Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his work for democracy and human ...
. The award recognizes Cumings for his "outstanding scholarship, and engaged public activity regarding human rights and democratization during the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship ended in 1987."
Cumings' ''Origins of the Korean War'', Vol. 1 (1980) won the
John K. Fairbank Prize The John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History is offered annually for an outstanding book in the history of China proper, Vietnam, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, or Japan, substantially after 1800. It honors the late John K. F ...
of the
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...
, and his ''Origins of the Korean War'', Vol. 2 (1991) won the Quincy Wright Book Award of the
International Studies Association
The International Studies Association (ISA) is a US-based professional association for scholars and practitioners in the field of international studies. Founded in 1959, ISA has been headquartered at the University of Connecticut in Storrs sin ...
.
Biography
Cumings was born in
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
, on September 5, 1943. He was raised in Iowa and Ohio, where his father, Edgar C. Cumings, was a college administrator. He worked summers for five years, three of them at the Republic Steel plant in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the United States, U.S. U.S. state, state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along ...
, to put himself through
Denison University
Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary and ...
, with further help from a baseball scholarship. He graduated with a degree in psychology in 1965, then served in the
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John ...
in Korea in 1967–68 before taking an M.A. at
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universi ...
. He then earned a
Ph.D. in
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and ...
from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1975. He taught at
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...
,
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seatt ...
,
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
, and
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. In 1999 he was elected Fellow,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
.
He is married to
Meredith Jung-En Woo
Meredith Jung-En Woo is an American academic and author. She is the 13th and current President of Sweet Briar College, and is the former director of the International Higher Education Support Program at the Open Society Foundation in London. S ...
, the president of
Sweet Briar College and former
Dean
Dean may refer to:
People
* Dean (given name)
* Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin
* Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk
* Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean
Titles
* ...
of
Arts & Sciences at
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
. They had two sons; additionally, Cumings has a daughter from his first marriage.
Intellectual life and scholarship
Cumings joined the
Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) was founded in 1968 by a group of graduate students and younger faculty as part of the opposition to the American participation in the Vietnam War. They proposed a "radical critique of the assumptio ...
at Columbia after
Mark Selden Mark Selden (born 1938) is a coordinator of the open-access journal ''The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus'', a senior research associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, and Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton Un ...
formed a chapter there,
[Pdf.]
/ref> and published extensively in its journal, ''Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) was founded in 1968 by a group of graduate students and younger faculty as part of the opposition to the American participation in the Vietnam War. They proposed a "radical critique of the assumptio ...
,'' where his writings ranged from the early history of the Korean resistance movement against Japan to the intertwining of US academia with US intelligence agencies. His research focus is on 20th century international history, United States and East Asia relations, East Asian political economy
Political economy is the study of how Macroeconomics, economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and Economy, national economies) and Politics, political systems (e.g. law, Institution, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied ph ...
, modern Korean history, and American foreign relations. He is interested in the "multiplicity of ways that conceptions, metaphors and discourses are related to political economy and material forms of production", and to relations between "East and West".
Cumings' scholarship has gone deeper than any other writing in English with respect to the circumstances of the Korean War outbreak, and pre-1990 documents allowed him to draw lines of culpability of various actors for the tragedy of the Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
. Cumings wrote:
Cumings has not confined himself purely to the study of modern Korea but has written broadly about East Asia and even books about the expansion of the American West. He wrote ''Industrial Behemoth: The Northeast Asian Political Economy in the 20th Century'', which seeks to understand the industrialization of Japan
The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...
, both Koreas, Taiwan, and parts of China, and the ways that scholars and political leaders have viewed that development.
Cumings wrote in his book ''North Korea: Another Country'': "I have no sympathy for the North, which is the author of most of its own troubles," but he alludes to the "significant responsibility that all Americans share for the garrison state that emerged on the ashes of our truly terrible destruction of the North half a century ago."
In a talk given at the University of Chicago in 2003, Cumings declared that the US had "occupied" South Korea for 58 years. In 1945, he explained that the Chinese and Soviets had armies in the north of Korea and that the Americans had an army in the south. The Soviets withdrew in 1948, followed by the Chinese in 1958, but US troops remained in South Korea, and in the event of war, the US commander would control the South Korean Army
The Republic of Korea Army (ROKA; ko, 대한민국 육군; Hanja: 大韓民國 陸軍; RR: ''Daehanminguk Yuk-gun''), also known as the ROK Army or South Korean Army, is the army of South Korea, responsible for ground-based warfare. It is the l ...
. He disputed the contention that North Korea had cheated on the October 1994 Agreed Framework.
Reception
In 2003, the University of Chicago awarded Cumings for "Excellence in Graduate Teaching." Four years later, he was awarded the Kim Dae Jung Prize for "Scholarly Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights, and Peace." Cumings has been described as "the left's leading scholar of Korean history." Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China. It is consistently ranked one of th ...
scholar Kathryn Weathersby wrote that Cumings’ two-volume study of the origins of the Korean War was the "most important revisionist account" in which Cumings provides an interpretation of the war in which "the question remains open whether it was in fact the DPRK or the ROK that initiated the military action on 25 June 1950."
The University of Georgia historian William W. Stueck does not find that account to be convincing but acknowledges that Cumings succeeds in exploring aspects of the Korean War that have lacked analysis in traditionalist accounts. Stueck notes that Cumings published more than a generation after the start of the war and that his arguments "challenged the views that the war was largely international in nature and that the American participation in it was – with at least one prominent exception – defensive and wise.” The historian Allan R. Millett
Allan R. Millett (born October 22, 1937) is a historian and a retired colonel in U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. He is known for his works on the Korean War, but he has written on other military topics.
Early life
Millett is the son of John D. Mille ...
argued that the work's "eagerness to cast American officials and policy in the worst possible light, however, often leads him to confuse chronological cause and effect and to leap to judgments that cannot be supported by the documentation he cites or ignores." Cumings himself has rejected the "revisionist" label. Matt Gordon in '' Socialist Review'' praised Cumings' ''North Korea: Another Country'' (2003) as a "good read... for an introduction to this member of 'the axis of evil', especially given the lack of books on the subject which aren't hysterical denunciations from the U.S. right or hymns of praise from Stalinists." Reviewing ''The Korean War'' (2010), William Stueck wrote, "Cumings displays a limited grasp of sources that have emerged since he published his second volume on the war's origins in 1990" and that readers "wanting an up-to-date account of the war in all its complexity should look elsewhere ."
References
Bibliography
* ''The Origins of the Korean War'' (2 vols). Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
, 1981, 1990.
* ''Korea: The Unknown War'' by Jon Halliday
Jon Halliday (born 28 June 1939) is an Irish historian specialising in modern Asia. He was formerly a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London. He was educated at University of Oxford and has been married to Jung Chang since 199 ...
and Bruce Cumings, London: Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquire ...
, 1988. Brief "photojournalism" account of the Korean War with many photographs.
* ''War and Television''. Verso, 1993.
* ''Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History''. Norton, 1997.
* ''Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations''. Duke University Press, 1999, paperback 2002.
*
North Korea: Another Country
'. The New Press, 2004.
* co-author, ''Inventing the Axis of Evil''. The New Press, 2005.
* ''Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
*
The Korean War: A History
'. Modern Library Chronicles, 2010
Articles (selected)
* "The Political Economy of Chinese Foreign Policy," ''Modern China
The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the ''Book of Documents'' (early chapter ...
'' (October 1979), pp. 411–461
* "Chinatown: Foreign Policy and Elite Realignment," in Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, eds., The Hidden Election (Pantheon Books, 1981), pp. 196–231.
* "Corporatism in North Korea," Journal of Korean Studies (no. 4, 1983), 1–32.
* "The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political *Consequences," International Organization (winter 1984), pp. 1–40.
* "Power and Plenty in Northeast Asia," World Policy Journal (winter 1987–88), pp. 79–106
*
* "Illusion, Critique, Responsibility: The Revolution of `89 in West and East," in Daniel Chirot, ed., The Revolution of `89 (University of Washington Press, 1991)
* "The Seventy Years' Crisis and the Logic of a Trilateral `New World Order,'" World Policy Journal (Spring 1991)
* "Silent But Deadly: Sexual Subordination in the U.S.-Korean Relationship," in Saundra Pollock Sturdevant and Brenda Stoltzfus, ''Let the Good Times Roll: Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia'' (New York, The New Press, 1992).
* "`Revising Postrevisionism': Or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic History," ''Diplomatic History'', 17/4 (fall 1993), pp. 539–70.
* "Global Realm With No Limit, Global Realm With No Name," Radical History Review (fall 1993).
* "Japan's Position in the World System," in Andrew Gordon, ed., Postwar Japan as History (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994), pp. 34–63.
* "Archaeology, Descent, Emergence: Japan in American Hegemony, 1900–1950," in H.D. Harootunian and Masao Miyoshi, eds., Japan in the World (Duke University Press, 1994).
* "The World Shakes China," ''The National Interest
''The National Interest'' (''TNI'') is an American bimonthly international relations magazine edited by American journalist Jacob Heilbrunn and published by the Center for the National Interest, a public policy think tank based in Washington, ...
'', no. 43 (spring 1996), pp. 28–41.
* "Pikyojôk simin sahoe wa minjujuûi" ivil Society and Democracy: A Comparative Inquiry Ch'angjak kwa Pip'yông reation and Criticism (Seoul, May 1996)
* "Nichibei Senso, Hajimari to Owari” he U.S.-Japan War, Beginning and End
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
in Kojima Noboru, ed., Jinrui wa senso wo Husegeruka an Humankind Prevent War?(Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1996).
* "Time to End the Korean War," ''The Atlantic Monthly
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' (February 1997), pp. 71–79.
*
* "CNN's Cold War," ''The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' (October 19, 1998), pp. 25–31.
* “Still the American Century,” British Journal of International Studies, (winter 1999), pp. 271–299.
* “The Asian Crisis, Democracy, and the End of 'Late' Development,” in T. J. Pempel. ed., The Politics of the Asian Economic Crisis (Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 17–44.
* “Web with No Spider, Spider with No Web: The Genealogy of the Developmental State,” in Meredith Woo-Cumings, ed., The Developmental State (Cornell University Press, 2000).
*
::Review of ''The End of North Korea'' by Nicholas Eberstadt
Nicholas Eberstadt (born 1955) is an American political economist. He holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a political think tank. He is also a Senior Adviser to the National Bureau of Asia ...
.
* “Occurrence at Nogun-ri Bridge: An Inquiry into the History and Memory of a Civil War,” Critical Asian Studies, 33:4 (2001), pp. 509–526.
* “Black September, Adolescent Nihilism, and National Security,” in Craig Calhoun, Paul Price, and Ashley Timmer, Understanding September 11 (The New Press, 2002).
* “Wrong Again: The U.S. and North Korea," London Review of Books, v. 25, no. 3 (December 2003), pp. 9–12.
* “Time of Illusion: Post-Cold War Visions of the World,” in Ellen Schrecker, ed., Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism (The New Press, 2004), pp. 71–102.
External links
Faculty Profile
at the University of Chicago
Archive of articles
by Bruce Cumings in The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
Archive of articles
by and about Bruce Cumings in LRB LRB may refer to:
* Love Runs Blind, a Bangladeshi rock band
* '' Lego Rock Band'', a game in the ''Rock Band'' video game series
* Liquid rocket booster
* Little Red Book, quotations from Chairman Mao
* Little River Band, an Australian music act
* ...
Library Holdings
at the Pritzker Military Library
The Pritzker Military Museum & Library (formerly Pritzker Military Library) is a non-profit museum and a research library for the study of military history on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. The institution was founded in 2003, and its spe ...
Audio interview with ''Electric Politics''
June 16, 2006, 98 minutes.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cumings, Bruce
21st-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Historians of Korea
University of Chicago faculty
Peace Corps volunteers
1943 births
Denison University alumni
Living people
Writers from Rochester, New York
Historians of American foreign relations
Experts on North Korea
American expatriates in South Korea
Historians from New York (state)
21st-century American male writers