Author of the “People’s Trilogy”, who used provincial party archives to put the Great Famine’s death toll at 45 million
A Dutch historian of modern China, author of The People's Trilogy, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize.
A Dutch historian who taught at SOAS in London before becoming a professor at the University of Hong Kong. Mao’s Great Famine (2010), drawing on provincial party archives opened in the 2000s, estimated that at least 45 million people died of hunger, violence and overwork during the Great Leap and argued that the famine was the result of state violence rather than natural disaster or planning error; it won the Samuel Johnson Prize. The Tragedy of Liberation (1949–1957) and The Cultural Revolution (1962–1976) completed the trilogy. His figures and interpretation are contested; other scholars put the famine’s toll between 15 and 36 million.
Career Timeline
- 2006–Chair professor of humanities, University of Hong Kong