Cameron Foltz

Cameron Foltz is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. His research examines the intersections of religion, governance, and territoriality in Inner Asia, with a focus on the environmental and political histories of the Tibetan plateau. Broadly, his work engages questions of sovereignty, monastic institutions, and the transformation of frontier zones through religious and economic exchange.

His book project, “Constructing Qinghai: Pastoralist Settlement, Monastic Territorialization, and State Incorporation (1724–1935),” argues that Tibetan pastoralists territorialized the Blue Lake (Chinese: Qinghai hu; Tibetan: Tsongönpo; Mongolian: Kokenuur) grasslands through the establishment of permanent monasteries. The monasteries’ integration of Tibetan pastoralists as their patron communities, their wider religious networks, and their role in taming local territorial deities remade the Blue Lake region. The Tibetan communities funded monastery construction through the sale of their sheep’s wool during an international wool boom (c. 1880–1929) fueled by US carpet production. After the collapse of the Qing Empire in 1912, the wool trade drew the Xining-based Ma militarists into the Blue Lake region. Ma Qi (1869–1931) and his brother and son, Ma Lin (1876–1945) and Ma Bufang (1903–1975), engaged in their own practice of territorialization that sought to secure their place in the nascent Republic of China. This process resulted in the establishment of Qinghai Province in 1929. However, the Chinese administrative presence on the Blue Lake grasslands was hollow and contingent upon the monastic territorialization established by Tibetan pastoralists.

Support for his research has been provided by Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia, and the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund.