|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
From the 1850s until the mid-twentieth century, a period marked by
global conflicts and anxiety about dwindling resources and closing
opportunities after decades of expansion, the frontier became a
mirror for historically and geographically specific hopes and
fears. From Asia to Europe and the Americas, countries around the
world engaged with new interpretations of empire and the deployment
of science and technology to aid frontier development in extreme
environments. Through a century of political turmoil and war, China
nevertheless is the only nation to successfully navigate the
twentieth century with its imperial territorial expanse largely
intact. In Birth of the Geopolitical Age, Shellen Xiao Wu
demonstrates how global examples of frontier settlements refracted
through China's unique history and informed the making of the
modern Chinese state. Wu weaves a narrative that moves through time
and space, the lives of individuals, and empires' rise and fall and
rebirth, to show how the subsequent reshaping of Chinese
geopolitical ambitions in the twentieth century, and the global
transformation of frontiers into colonial laboratories, continues
to reorder global power dynamics in East Asia and the wider world
to this day.
From the 1850s until the mid-twentieth century, a period marked by
global conflicts and anxiety about dwindling resources and closing
opportunities after decades of expansion, the frontier became a
mirror for historically and geographically specific hopes and
fears. From Asia to Europe and the Americas, countries around the
world engaged with new interpretations of empire and the deployment
of science and technology to aid frontier development in extreme
environments. Through a century of political turmoil and war, China
nevertheless is the only nation to successfully navigate the
twentieth century with its imperial territorial expanse largely
intact. In Birth of the Geopolitical Age, Shellen Xiao Wu
demonstrates how global examples of frontier settlements refracted
through China's unique history and informed the making of the
modern Chinese state. Wu weaves a narrative that moves through time
and space, the lives of individuals, and empires' rise and fall and
rebirth, to show how the subsequent reshaping of Chinese
geopolitical ambitions in the twentieth century, and the global
transformation of frontiers into colonial laboratories, continues
to reorder global power dynamics in East Asia and the wider world
to this day.
From 1868-1872, German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen went on
an expedition to China. His reports on what he found there would
transform Western interest in China from the land of porcelain and
tea to a repository of immense coal reserves. By the 1890s,
European and American powers and the Qing state and local elites
battled for control over the rights to these valuable mineral
deposits. As coal went from a useful commodity to the essential
fuel of industrialization, this vast natural resource would prove
integral to the struggle for political control of China. Geology
served both as the handmaiden to European imperialism and the
rallying point of Chinese resistance to Western encroachment. In
the late nineteenth century both foreign powers and the Chinese
viewed control over mineral resources as the key to modernization
and industrialization. When the first China Geological Survey began
work in the 1910s, conceptions of natural resources had already
shifted, and the Qing state expanded its control over mining
rights, setting the precedent for the subsequent Republican and
People's Republic of China regimes. In Empires of Coal, Shellen
Xiao Wu argues that the changes specific to the late Qing were part
of global trends in the nineteenth century, when the rise of
science and industrialization destabilized global systems and
caused widespread unrest and the toppling of ruling regimes around
the world.
From 1868–1872, German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen went on
an expedition to China. His reports on what he found there would
transform Western interest in China from the land of porcelain and
tea to a repository of immense coal reserves. By the 1890s,
European and American powers and the Qing state and local elites
battled for control over the rights to these valuable mineral
deposits. As coal went from a useful commodity to the essential
fuel of industrialization, this vast natural resource would prove
integral to the struggle for political control of China. Geology
served both as the handmaiden to European imperialism and the
rallying point of Chinese resistance to Western encroachment. In
the late nineteenth century both foreign powers and the Chinese
viewed control over mineral resources as the key to modernization
and industrialization. When the first China Geological Survey began
work in the 1910s, conceptions of natural resources had already
shifted, and the Qing state expanded its control over mining
rights, setting the precedent for the subsequent Republican and
People's Republic of China regimes. In Empires of Coal, Shellen
Xiao Wu argues that the changes specific to the late Qing were part
of global trends in the nineteenth century, when the rise of
science and industrialization destabilized global systems and
caused widespread unrest and the toppling of ruling regimes around
the world.
|
|