Xin Wen (文欣) is an historian of medieval China and Inner Asia (PhD Harvard University) and an associate professor in the Departments of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University. His first book, the prizewinning The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road (Princeton University Press, 2023), re-interprets the history of the Silk Road as a diplomatic (rather than a commercial) network, using multilingual documents (in Khotanese, Tibetan, Sogdian, and Uyghur, as well as Chinese) from the famous Dunhuang “library cave” to trace the arduous and often deadly journeys of diplomatic envoys across complex geographic, cultural, and linguistic frontiers. He also considers what motivated rulers to send these envoys, and assesses the economic, cultural, and political impacts of their long-distance journeys to paint a detailed and previously unknown picture of trans-Eurasian transportation and communication.
His current book project reconsiders the history of Chang'an, the "eternal capital" city of the two most enduring imperial dynasties, the Western Han (202 BCE - 8 CE) and the Tang (618-907 CE). In addition to delivering the second in this series of annual endowed lectures, Professor Wen will be sharing a pre-circulated paper for discussion at a lunchtime meeting with Medieval Studies faculty and graduate students. More information to follow!