Mesrob Vartavarian, Fellow, Harvard Asia Center

Mesrob Vartavarian studied history at UCLA (BA/MA) and Cambridge (Ph.D.) and began his career as a scholar of early colonial South Asia but has since shifted his research focus to security questions relating to the Asia-Pacific since 1945. His interests also include American foreign relations, praetorian politics, and borderland insurgencies by ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia.

Current Project:

“Strategic Recalibrations: America’s Early Cold War Alliances in Rimland Asia.” (article-length study in preparation).

Representative Publications:

“Circulating Soldiers: Asian Military Labor across the American Pacific.” Journal of Asian Studies (forthcoming, 2021).

“Disaggregating Colonialism: Recent Trends in Philippine Muslim Studies.” Journal of Asian Studies 80, no. 1 (2021): 227-238.

“Warriors and Colonial Wars in Muslim Philippines Since 1800.” In Farish A. Noor and Peter Carey, eds., Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021): 243-271.

“Praetorian Network Politics in the Philippines.” International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 84 (2019): 14-15.

“Warriors and States: Military Labour in Southern India, circa 1750-1800.” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (2019): 313-338.

“Imperial Ambiguities: The United States and Philippine Muslims.” South East Asia Research 26, no. 2 (2018): 132-146.

“Rodrigo Duterte and the Philippine Presidency: Rupture or Cyclicity?” International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 80 (2018): 10-11.

“Pacification and Patronage in the Maratha Deccan, 1803-1818.” Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 6 (2016): 1749-1791.