Lin Man-houng () is an economic historian and the first female president of the Academia Historica ( 國史館). She is also one of few female historians to boldly argue in public about Taiwan's sovereignty and international status.

Biography

Born in Taiwan in 1951 to the Wufeng Lin family, she graduated from National Taiwan University and later received her Ph.D. in history and East Asian languages from Harvard University in 1989. Lin has been a senior research fellow at the

Institute of Modern History An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institute, research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countr ...

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

since 1990 and professor at the Department of History, National Taiwan Normal University since 1991. From 20 May 2008 to 15 December 2010, she served as the president of the

Academia Historica An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...

, the central academy of history of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Her appointment marked the first time a woman had headed the institute since its founding in 1947. She resigned because of the institute's hosting of a controversial online poll, which listed Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping among the candidates for the Top 100 most influential figures in the Republic of China's hundred-year history. Lin’s research primarily focuses on treaty ports and

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 ...

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...

in late

Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...

China, currency crisis in early nineteenth-century China, and various empires and the role of Taiwanese merchants in

East Asian 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 a ...

overseas economic networks. She has published five books and some 70 papers in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean. Her book ''China Upside Down'' links China’s topsy-turvy change from the center of the East Asian order to its modern tragedy with the Latin American Independence Movement.

References

Taiwanese women historians 1951 births Living people Harvard University alumni People from Changhua County National Taipei University alumni Lin family of Wufeng Historians of Taiwan {{Taiwan-historian-stub