Bruce Cumings
Biographic Data
| ID | 251046 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bruce Cumings |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bruce |
| FAMILY NAME | Cumings |
| SIGNATURE | CUMINGS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 87 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 286 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
It's Called a Forgotten War, So People Don't Pay Attention: An Interview with Bruce Cumings
Bruce Cumings, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, spoke with Haeyoung Kim of the Korea Policy Institute on August 23, 2023 about the current geopolitical landscape in East Asia, prospects for U.S.-Korea relations, and intellectual interventions made over the course of his career
What Is in a Rim: Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea
Korea, A Unique Colony: Last to be Colonized and First to Revolt
This article discusses Japan's colonization of Korea in the context of world time. Korea was a unique colony as it was one of the last to be colonized in the world. Japanese colonizers pushed a heavy-handed "military policy", mainly because of the sharp resistance at their accession to power in the period 1905-1910. In 1919 when mass movements swept colonial and semi-colonial countries, including Egypt and Ireland, Koreans too rose up against Jap…
The Legacy of Japanese Colonialism in Korea
Colonial Formations and Deformations: Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam
Boundary Displacement: The State, the Foundations, and International and Area Studies During and After the Cold War
Japan and Northeast Asia into the Twenty-first Century
Trump, Kim, and an Uncanny Diplomatic Opening
For all his bluster, Donald Trump may have recognized what US strategy long refused to acknowledge: North Korea is ready to discuss denuclearization in exchange for recognition and respect
Carter J. Eckert. Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea: The Roots of Militarism, 1866–1945
Korea sits uncomfortably next to Japan, which has invaded the peninsula many times, most importantly in 1592 and 1876, the latter time a case of gunboat diplomacy that set a pattern for the eventual annexation of Korea in 1910. If the past seventy years betray little evidence of Japan’s military tradition, until 1945 it was a defining characteristic of that country: samurai, bushido (the way of warriors), exemplary sword craftsmanship, and of cou…
The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace
American soldiers reside on more than nine hundred bases around the world, an archipelago of empire that remains invisible to their countrymen back home. Susan L. Carruthers shows that the idea of foreign occupation was anathema to Americans until World War II ended and they unexpectedly found themselves occupying areas of Germany, Japan, and other countries. The United States had mounted almost two dozen foreign occupations since 1815, but the t…
Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power
America is the first world power to inhabit an immense land mass open at both ends to the world’s two largest oceans—the Atlantic and the Pacific. This gives America a great competitive advantage often overlooked by Atlanticists, whose focus remains overwhelmingly fixed on America’s relationship with Europe. Bruce Cumings challenges the Atlanticist perspective in this innovative new history, arguing that relations with Asia influenced our history…
Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman
Dean Acheson, often considered to be the greatest secretary of state in the twentieth century (even by Henry Kissinger), liked to say that statesmanship consisted of “the apprehension of imponderables.” Foreign policy decisions are complicated and intricate, always based on imperfect information, and their genesis ultimately resides in the intuitive feel of the statesman for particular situations and structured outcomes. For Greg Grandin, Kissing…
Japan viewed from interdisciplinary perspectives: History and prospects
Part I: Is This Really Globalization? Chapter 1: Borders of 'American Citizens' Created in a More Globalized World: The Significance of the Transpacific Steamship Route for Asian Immigration to the Unites States in the Late 19th Century, Yuki Ooi Chapter 2: Symbiotic Relationship between Japan's Status in the World and Changes in the Nature of Medical Insurances from the 1920s to the Early 1940s, Yoneyuki Sugita Chapter 3: Japanese Identity in a …
No Substitute for Plain Wisdom
This is a wonderful book, far more revealing – even revelatory – than anyone might expect from the diaries of a famous, and famously private, public figure. In spite of its length, you want to read more. I found myself coming back to the book frequently, each time with a new understanding of George Frost Kennan. The book has a masterly introduction by Frank Costigliola—I wouldn't change a word—who also edited and annotated these diaries with just…
Violet Ashes: A Tribute to Chris Marker
This essay examines the destructive air war over North Korea from 1950 to 1953 and asks why this enormous atrocity is either unknown or forgotten in the United States, while it remains a burning memory in North Korea—one that deeply affects Korean attitudes toward US citizens. The essay high-lights the remarkable work of Chris Marker, who died in 2012, one day after his ninety-first birthday. A well-known photographer, filmmaker, and artist, he v…
China's Bullying No Match for US Pacific Power
Beijing's grabs for puny islands have alarmed and alienated smaller countries in the region. But Washington doesn't need to “pivot” to Asia–it's been in charge there for decades
Biting the Hand That Feeds You: Why the “Intelligence Function” of American Foundation Support for Area Studies Remains Hidden in Plain Sight
This article argues that in the early Cold War period a symbiotic relationship existed between the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations, the Central Intelligence Agency and other American security agencies, and various universities and academics. The information on this relationship is now abundant, but the article argues that most academics do not want to probe into these ties, or even acknowledge them. Part of the reason is the price one …
Back to Basics? The Recurrence of the Same in Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital
Without any doubt, Vivek Chibber's Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital is a bomb. Through the critique of the foundational works of the Indian Subaltern Studies group , Chibber's questioning pierces right into the anti-universalism core of Subaltern Studies and the postcolonial enterprise. Focusing on the historically and empirically grounded works of Ranajit Guha and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Chibber juxtaposes their interpretation of Europ…
In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War
Journal Article In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War Get access Melinda L. Pash. (New York: New York University Press, 2012. xii, 337 pp. $35.00.) Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 1, June 2014, Page 320, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau212 Published: 01 June 2014
Why Did So Many Influential Americans Think North Korea Would Collapse
IntroductionIf your enemy is the sine qua non of effective warfare and diplomacy, the United States has been badly served by those who claim expertise on Korea in Washington. It is now twenty years since a bipartisan consensus emerged inside the Beltway that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would soon or explode, a mantra that began with Bush I and lasted through Clinton and Bush II, right down to the present. This was the hidden …
North Korea's Dynastic Succession
In 2012, Kim Jong-il, the “beloved leader” of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, died. As power passed to his son Kim Jong-un (the third generation of the Kim family to exercise dominion over the now impoverished nation), intelligence analysts and media pundits began their inevitable cycle of conjecture, anticipating power struggles and the possibility for a fundamental political realignment in the region. In this essay, Brian Cumings sug…
China Hand: An Autobiography
In this wry and insightful memoir, distinguished American diplomat John Paton Davies, Jr. describes his upbringing and wartime adventures in Asia, encounters with key twentieth-century figures from Mahatma Gandhi to Joseph Stalin, and how he carried on after his Foreign Service career was cut short by McCarthyism.
The Kims' Three Bodies: Communism and Dynastic Succession in North Korea
The North's philosophy of rule bears close resemblance to what Koreans traditionally said about their kings—or what Hegel said about the German monarch
North Korea's Dynastic Succession
Historians rightfully insist on learning from history. Indeed, history tends to repeat itself - just as mankind stubbornly tends to ignore that fact. Bruce Cumings' historical take on the succession issue in the DPRK is thus an important and welcome addition to the many different voices that have tried to make sense of what is happening and to provide a glimpse into the future. However, as an economist I know the risks of applying, implicitly or …
Dominion From Sea to Sea: America's Pacific Ascendancy
Dominion From Sea to Sea differs from my other books in that it does not have so much to say about Korea or East Asia. Obviously my books on the Korean War have Korean history as the centerpiece, and even my book of essays, Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relation, is a Korea-centric examination of U.S. relations with China, Japan and Korea. Nevertheless, this new book could not have been written without the years of experie…
The origins and development of the Northeast Asian political economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences
Theories of the product cycle, hegemony, and the world system are used to analyze the creation and development of the Northeast Asian political economy in this century. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have each developed in a particular relationship with the others; the three taken together form a hierarchical, constantly interacting political-economic unit. During the period of colonial rule Japan was unique in building an imperial economic unit …
The origins of the Korean War
Boundary displacement: Area studies and international studies during and after the cold war
In this article I propose to examine the displacement and reordering of the boundaries of scholarly inquiry in the postwar period in two phases: the first, the determining burst of academic work that began during World War II but vastly expanded in the early years of the Soviet-U.S. confrontation, which is the necessary prelude to understanding the second phase, namely the contemporary revaluation of American studies of the rest of the world occa…
The Korean Crisis and the End of 'Late' Development
The Asian economic crisis has created a watershed in contemporary history, where questions long buried by the demise of Western communism and a militant Left in the democratic countries amid an appallingly self-congratulatory liberal triumphalism, now come sharply to the fore. A systematic failure of capitalism has struck
Interest and Ideology in the Study of Agrarian Politics
Still the American Century
At the inception of the twenty-first century—not to mention the next millennium—books on ‘the American Century’ proliferate monthly, if not daily. We now have The American Century Dictionary , The American Century Thesaurus , and even The American Century Cookbook ; perhaps the American Century baseball cap or cologne is not far behind. With one or two exceptions, the authors celebrate the unipolar pre-eminence and comprehensive economic advantag…
Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century
Journal Article Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century. By Bruce Cumings. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. vi, 280 pp. $27.95, ISBN 0-8223-2276-5.) Get access Nick Cullather Nick Cullather Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 1, June 2000, Pages 315–316, https://doi.org/…
In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War
Journal Article In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War Get access Melinda L. Pash. (New York: New York University Press, 2012. xii, 337 pp. $35.00.) Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 1, June 2014, Page 320, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau212 Published: 01 June 2014
On the History and Practice of Unilateralism in East Asia: Or, the More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same
This paper argues that multilateralism continues to be weak in East Asia, an outcome that traces back to the post‐World War II settlement and the Korean War. Hot war and cold war divisions hindered (and often completely blocked) horizontal relations and communications among the East Asian countries. Most diplomatic communication was vertical, that is, from the foreign ministries in Tokyo, Seoul, Manila or Taipei to Washington and back again. This…
Old and new Korean wars
As I write this we have come off one week when it looked as if we might have another war in Korea, and the next week when peace broke out between Washington and Pyongyang as a result of Jimmy Carter's meetings with Kim Il Sung. This pattern of crisis followed by relaxation has lasted at least since the spring of 1993, when North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. During the entire period most Americans and esp…
The Political Economy of Chinese Foreign Policy
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This paper was presented in an earlier version at the panel on Domnestic Sour(es of Foreign Polic , A merican Political Scienee A ssociation Annual Meeting, September 1-4, 1977. 1 am indebted to the following people for their helpful comments: Joseph Esherick, Thomas Ferguson, Edward Friedman, Peter Gourevitch, James Kurth, James Palais, John Starr, and James Townsend. The reader might also be advised that all U.S. Central Intellig…
Reflections on Schurmann's theory of the state
Were Marx alive today he might be moved to comment on how quickly the next "revolution" materialized, that is to say, how quickly certain disciples of his, like Lenin and Stalin, substituted political organization and the power of the state for the proletariat as the agency of revolution. Perhaps Marx would recognize that the state merited more attention than he gave it, for in this century it seems clear that state power has functioned more auto…
The life of a Korean communist
During thirty-six years of Japanese colonial rule, millions of Koreans left their homeland to live in exile in China and Russia. The best devoted themselves to a struggle against Japan that lasted until 1945. Beginning with the “Righteous Army” that resisted Japanese aggression before the annexation in 1910 and whose survivors retreated to fight in Manchuria, through the massive March First Independence Movement and the subsequent establishment o…
Reflections on Schurmann's theory of the state
Were Marx alive today he might be moved to comment on how quickly the next "revolution" materialized, that is to say, how quickly certain disciples of his, like Lenin and Stalin, substituted political organization and the power of the state for the proletariat as the agency of revolution. Perhaps Marx would recognize that the state merited more attention than he gave it, for in this century it seems clear that state power has functioned more auto…
Introduction to the supplement
Today the American press focuses on what might be called the domestic consequences of United States policy toward Korea. We read about the troop withdrawal issue, the unfolding Korea Lobby scandal, and, perhaps, Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) activities within the U.S. The following supplement, however, reminds us of the far worse consequences of American and Korean policies for those who remain within Korea. It was the U.S. CIA which …
The Political Economy of Chinese Foreign Policy
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This paper was presented in an earlier version at the panel on Domnestic Sour(es of Foreign Polic , A merican Political Scienee A ssociation Annual Meeting, September 1-4, 1977. 1 am indebted to the following people for their helpful comments: Joseph Esherick, Thomas Ferguson, Edward Friedman, Peter Gourevitch, James Kurth, James Palais, John Starr, and James Townsend. The reader might also be advised that all U.S. Central Intellig…
The origins of the Korean War
Interest and Ideology in the Study of Agrarian Politics
The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947
The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina (1870-1940). Martin J. Murray
A short review
The Korean War is among the most unstudied of American postwar interventions in the Third World. In most libraries and bookstores you can learn far more about our role in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, or El Salvador in 1982, than you can about Korea, 1950. Yet the commitment of American power in Korea did not begin in 1950, but five years earlier; and it continues today in the form of 40,000 ground troops and at least 700 tactical nuclear weap…
High Technology and Ideology: America's Japan Mythology
The Origins of the Korean War. Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947
CHAPTER 13. The Legacy of Japanese Colonialism in Korea
The origins and development of the Northeast Asian political economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences
Theories of the product cycle, hegemony, and the world system are used to analyze the creation and development of the Northeast Asian political economy in this century. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have each developed in a particular relationship with the others; the three taken together form a hierarchical, constantly interacting political-economic unit. During the period of colonial rule Japan was unique in building an imperial economic unit …
Child of Conflict. The Korean-American Relationship, 1943-1953
South Korea
Research Article| April 01 1986 South Korea: Trouble Ahead? Bruce Cumings Bruce Cumings Associate Professor of International Studies, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington Bruce Cumings is the author of The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981) and the editor of The Korean-American Relationship, 1943–1953 (Seattle: U…
The Abortive Abertura: South Korea in the Light of Latin American Experience
I wish in this essay to peer through the Latin American looking glass, or abertura, to see what light may be shed on the ongoing struggle to democratize the South Korean political system. In Latin America the richest literature on the problems and prospects of democratization emerged along
The Origins of the Korean War Volume II: The Roaring of the Cataract 1947-1950
"Revising Postrevisionism," or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic History
Journal Article "Revising Postrevisionism," or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic History Get access Bruce Cumings Bruce Cumings Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Diplomatic History, Volume 17, Issue 4, October 1993, Pages 539–570, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1993.tb00599.x Published: 01 June 2007
War and Television
Journal Article War and Television. By Bruce Cumings. (London: Verso, 1992. viii + 309 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-86091-374-0.) Get access Susan Greene Susan Greene Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 2, September 1993, Pages 748–749, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080014 Published: 01 September 1993
Global Realm With No Limit, Global Realm With No Name
What Is a Pacific Century—and How Will We Know When It Begins
Essay| December 01 1994 What Is a Pacific Century—and How Will We Know When It Begins? Bruce Cumings Bruce Cumings Bruce Cumings is John Evans Professor of International History and Politics at Northwestern University, where he directs the Center for International and Comparative Studies. He has also taught at Swarthmore College, the University of Washington, and the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Origins of the Korean War, two vo…
Old and new Korean wars
As I write this we have come off one week when it looked as if we might have another war in Korea, and the next week when peace broke out between Washington and Pyongyang as a result of Jimmy Carter's meetings with Kim Il Sung. This pattern of crisis followed by relaxation has lasted at least since the spring of 1993, when North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. During the entire period most Americans and esp…
Kennan, Containment, Conciliation
Essay| November 01 1995 Kennan, Containment, Conciliation: The End of Cold War History Bruce Cumings Bruce Cumings Bruce Cumings is John Evans Professor of International History and Politics at Northwestern University, where he directs the Center for International and Comparative Studies. He is the author of The Origins of the Korean War, two volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981 and 1990), War and Television (London: Verso, 1992),…
Compromised in Korea: Redeemed by the Clinton Administrations
The Deng Xiaoping Era
Review of The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994 by Maurice Meisner.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Political science (60 works) · History (55 works) · Law (41 works) · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies (33 works) · Politics (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Law (20 works) · History (19 works) · Economics (17 works) · Geography (17 works)