Pamela Kyle Crossley

Who is Pamela Kyle Crossley?

Pamela Kyle Crossley is an historian of modern China, northern Asia, and global history. She is author of The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800: An Interpretive History, as well as influential studies of the Qing dynasty and leading textbooks in global history. Crossley is known for an interpretation of the source of twentieth-century identities. In her view overland conquest by the great empires of early modern Eurasia produced a special form of rulership which gave high priority to the institutionalization of cultural identity. Crossley suggests that these concepts were encoded in political practice and academic discourse on "nationalism," and prevailed till the end of the twentieth century.