Stephen R. Platt is an American historian and writer. He is currently a professor of Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[1]

Platt holds a PhD in Chinese history from Yale University (2004). His area of expertise is in modern China, especially in the nineteenth century and the Qing dynasty's foreign relations.^[2]

In 2007 he published Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China.^[3]

Platt's books Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom and Imperial Twilight (examine East-West relations in China during the 19th century, focusing on the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) and the period leading up the First Opium War (1800-1842).^{[citation needed]}

He published Imperial Twilight in 2018, and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom in 2012.^[3]

Platt has also written for The New York Times, Chinafile, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and Late Imperial China.^[3]

• 2004 Theron Rockwell Field Prize (Yale University) for dissertation Hunanese Nationalism and the Revival of Wang Fuzhi, 1839-1923 ^{[citation needed]}
• 2012 Cundill Prize in History winner for Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom^[4]
• 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize shortlist for Imperial Twilight^[5]

• Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China  (Harvard University Press, 2007).
• Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Knopf, 2012)
• Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018)