Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Barend Noordam

Barend Noordam is a historian of Ming China, specializing in global military history, the history of science and technology, and knowledge circulation between early modern East Asia and Europe. Barend Noordam studied History and China Studies at the university of Leiden, and later pursued a PhD. The topic of his dissertation dealt with the Neo-Confucianization of the military profession in late Ming China, as seen through the lens of the career of military commander Qi Jiguang (1528-1588). Barend Noordam has since held postdoctoral fellowships at the Free University of Berlin and the Hebrew University of Barcelona. From 2019 to 2023, he was a postdoctoral researcher on the Aftermath of the East Asian War of 1592-1598 project, which was based at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. As part of the Aftermath of the East Asian War-project, Barend traced the development, textual consolidation, and diffusion of military technology in Ming China and Chosŏn Korea. The Imjin War, or East Asian War of 1592-1598 as it is known, is of specific significance for the history of (military) science and technology in East Asia, because it provides a fruitful mirror and counterpart to similar developments taking place in contemporary early modern Europe with its endemic interstate wars. As part of the Research Training Group “Ambivalent Enmity”, Barend will trace the collection, compilation, and circulation of Chinese knowledge about Japan in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In this time frame, the late Ming empire was beset by several military threats of different natures that were perceived and coded as “Japanese” by Chinese officials and the court. These threats included the multiethnic Wokou piracy raids of the mid-sixteenth century, but also the full-scale invasion of Korea by the Japanese warlord and unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), known as the Imjin War. Barend’s research project, titled “Through the Lens of the Wokou: Producing Knowledge about Japan in the Late Ming Empire,” will look at the kind of knowledge that was collected, how it circulated, and at which levels of the Chinese bureaucracy and society this knowledge was received. Furthermore, he will look at how this knowledge impacted the self-image of the Ming Chinese at different levels of society.