This paper surveys the development of the history of modern Manchuria as a field of scholarly inquiry in Western academia and outlines some of the significant research findings. Until the 1990s, academic research on modern Manchuria consisted mainly of economic histories analyzing the rapid economic growth in the 1930-40s, political and military histories in contemporary Chinese historical contexts, and studies on Manchuria as part of Japanese imperial expansion. This trend methodologically and thematically changed at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It also marked the postmodern and poststructuralist turn in the Western intellectual world. The new direction includes borderland history, which highlights modern Manchuria as a transnational and transcultural place. The borderland studies, in theoretical pursuit of boundaries and cultures, focus on how Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and other people interacted and competed in Manchuria. The cultural turn in the field of history and the rise of cultural studies promoted researchers to examine how modernity and power were culturally represented in literature, film, art, architecture, and urban planning (with a focus primarily on Manchukuo). Other works, deeply associated with Michel Foucault’s theory of governmentality and biopolitics, either analyze racial discourse in Manchukuo, or investigate scientific, technical, medical knowledge, and the intellectuals who supported Manchukuo governance. Due to its theoretically rich implication and relatively good accessibility of primary sources, 1930-40s Manchuria has dominated the field, while Manchuria after 1949 remains mostly barren. Modern Manchuria will attract Western scholars’ attention based on its historical implications in contemporary East Asian politics.