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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Fan, Fa-Ti. British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Main Argument: This book "attempts to explain how Western (especially British) naturalists in China and their Chinese 'associates' explored, studied, and represented China's natural world in both local and global contexts" (2), employing the concept of "contact zone" or "borderlands" to "denote the intersecting zone between the temporal and spatial trajectories of peoples of different geographic origins, cultures, and histories" (3).
Historiographical Engagement: Empire theorists and historians, naturalists, historians of science
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples This history of British naturalists in Qing China is certainly part of scientific imperialism, but Fan argues that "if we want to know how scientific imperialism unfolded in in colonies and other non-Western parts of the world, we cannot ignore the indigenous people, their motivations, and their actions" (4).
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the origins of the horticulture and natural history trade in Old Canton, which "formed part of the circulation of aesthetics, information, wealth, goods, and other materlia and cultural productions in global maritime trade" (38). All the elements that made Canton the ideal trading city "proved to be crucial to British research into China's natural history," and with these elements in place, "British naturalists effectively reconfigured the entrepôt of Canton, turning it into a site of knowledge exchange and production" (39). In the 19thC the British surpassed the French as producers of natural historical knowledge about China; "their primacy in the China trade afforded them access to China's plans and animals, and every aspect of the enterprise–the men, the ships, the networks, with all their opportunities and limitations–were inextricably linked to the China trade" (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the adaptation, at the direction of British naturalists, of the Chinese export painting trade to the purpose of natural history illustrations, a practice that "constituted a site of cultural encounter, in which cross-cultural translation of ideas, aesthetics, and epistemology occurred," on top of the fact that these drawings were already, as a genre, situated in the borderlands between art and science (42). Fan concludes that "both sides were actively exploiting the opportunities brought about by the transaction, for their respective purposes," and that "both sides were cultural agents generating and circulating hybrid cultural productions"--hybrid not only in the sense of Chinese/European, but hybrid also in the sense that they mixed art/natural history/science (57). Moreover, in this era before the Opium Wars, these hybrid natural history drawings "should be seen as a synecdoche for the broad cultural contact that involved the exchange of goods and currency, the accommodation of tastes and ideas, the extension of human relations, and the encounter between empires" (ibid).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the British practice of economic botany after the first Opium War, which was a practice of outright colonialism and of informal empire found across British colonies, possessions, and spheres of influence, with the latter, Fan argues, being appropriate to the Chinese context; all were part of scientific imperialism. He notes that "the research into China's natural history epitomized the characteristics of British research on China in general: it aimed at producing 'factual' and 'useful' knowledge about China" for what James Hevia has called the "imperial archive," for the sake of knowledge that could be used to dominate and control the subject of knowledge, and for "British imperial surveillance and the exploitation of economic opportunities" (64). Naturalists, however, faced real limits in their ability to bring the power of their informal empire to bear on Chinese, highlighting the uneven penetration of British imperial power beyond the treaty ports. Fan argues that "the ideology and practice of collecting information about China…were interconnect with scientific imperialism and the naturalists' belief in the cognitive superiority of the modern Western tradition of factual knowledge" (ibid). As Fan notes, this belief in the universal validity of objective facts "asserted an epistemological authority, and it pointed toward an ideal and belief in bringing the natural world, regardless of national and other human boundaries under the lofty vantage point of truth" (90). The British naturalists were thus active empire-builders of an empire of information, an empire of facts, and moreover, facts that could be useful. All this fact-gathering was justified under the idea that this knowledge, once created in a framework that "privileged a specific way of defining nature, facts, and knowledge" (89), would eventually benefit the Chinese, who were presently too ignorant to take full advantage of their own natural resources.
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter compares the advent of the so-called "new botany" in Britain and its direct colonial possessions to the continued practice of "old botany" in China, with a twist from the emerging discipline of sinology–Fan argues that "Western research into Chinese writings about the natural world resulted in the formation of an (so to speak) interdisciplinary discourse between sinology and natural history" (92). Looking at the practice of British naturalists working with Chinese writings in China, Fan argues that the so-called textual practice of natural history remained relevant into the 19thC, challenging the conventional narratives of the evolution of the science in this C. The expanding colonial presence in China after the mid-19thC allowed naturalists "to incorporate their sinological learning into their natural history research," the results of which appeared distinctive, if not forbidding, to scholarly communities in Europe (119). That said, European naturalists up to and including Darwin himself drew on the Chinese natural history that was being excavated in their writings, and "the information contributed to the mapping of global biogeography" (ibid). Fan argues, moreover, that "the sinologist-naturalists practiced cross-cultural translation of knowledge" when they mined Chinese texts for information that they inserted into new contexts, giving that information new meanings. Although "the naturalists assumed that the cognitive and linguistic superiority of Western science and languages empowered them to dissect Chinese knowledge and to select the factual data from this knowledge," in the act of translation itself, "the process was informed by many factors that cannot be reduced to mere imperialist ideology, the European gaze, worldview, or any other broad epistemological units" (120, 121). No man is an empire, entire of itself.
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the practice of fieldwork among Victorian naturalists, which was for them a signal part of being a naturalist and also part of the Victorian mania for travel, which to them "was an exploration of time as well as space" (152). British naturalists traveling through Qing China were able to take advantage of its pre-existing infrastructures of travel, which did not stop the travelers and naturalists "from producing adventure narratives of conventional drama and turns of plot" (124). These travels were broadly represented by three categories--coastal survey, plant hunting, and field zoology--but all of them entailed mapping and inscription, both in the literal sense of those activities but also in the more metaphoric sense of the construction of space and the production of factual knowledge of place, relating it to pre-existing known spaces. In the hands of British naturalists, "mapping meant possessing. … It struggled to reconfigure the territories, perhaps more symbolic than geopolitical; it asserted, however indirectly, certain power relations. It strove to create an imperial space" (152). This was not an automatic or uncontested process, however, just as "the field naturalists' dependence on the natives' input rendered it difficult to seal the boundary between natural history and folk knowledge. The very action to explore the foreign land and to appropriate the indigenous knowledge entailed the influx of hybrid knowledge that resisted the naturalists' effort to categorize and discipline" (153). Similarly, native informants and collectors were able to bargain, and usually got what they wanted out of these deals.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Looking at his arguments and evidence so far, Fan concludes that "this study confirms the growing recognition of natural history as an inclusive, complex, extensive, and heterogeneous enterprise" (156). In China, "natural history cannot be fully understood when severed from this sociocultural continuum" of differing interests and groups who practiced various aspects of it. And the research of British naturalists "was very much conditioned by the social and cultural environment of the region of China in which they found themselves," just as the content of that research was shaped by the contributions and activities of their native informants, collaborators, and employees (157). However, the groups of Chinese who participated in these efforts have received short shrift in the literature up until now, perpetuating a Eurocentric view of the entire process. As Fan argues, "Whatever the power relations between the Western naturalist and the Chinese might have been, both sides tried to make sense of the encounters. And the relationships between the naturalists and the natives were not necessarily culture- or nation-bound. Historical actors negotiated their identities and roles just as we do" (ibid).
Critical assessment: I wish this book were longer and went into more detail, and that some of my favorite books on the same general topic, such as Hevia's English Lessons, had been around for him to reference and dialogue with when he was writing. That said, it's excellent, both for the dimensions it illuminates and for his insistence that reading the process of empire as entirely one-sided is incorrect.
Further reading: Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons; James Hevia, The Imperial Security State
Meta notes: No man is an empire, entire of itself.
Main Argument: This book "attempts to explain how Western (especially British) naturalists in China and their Chinese 'associates' explored, studied, and represented China's natural world in both local and global contexts" (2), employing the concept of "contact zone" or "borderlands" to "denote the intersecting zone between the temporal and spatial trajectories of peoples of different geographic origins, cultures, and histories" (3).
Historiographical Engagement: Empire theorists and historians, naturalists, historians of science
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples This history of British naturalists in Qing China is certainly part of scientific imperialism, but Fan argues that "if we want to know how scientific imperialism unfolded in in colonies and other non-Western parts of the world, we cannot ignore the indigenous people, their motivations, and their actions" (4).
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the origins of the horticulture and natural history trade in Old Canton, which "formed part of the circulation of aesthetics, information, wealth, goods, and other materlia and cultural productions in global maritime trade" (38). All the elements that made Canton the ideal trading city "proved to be crucial to British research into China's natural history," and with these elements in place, "British naturalists effectively reconfigured the entrepôt of Canton, turning it into a site of knowledge exchange and production" (39). In the 19thC the British surpassed the French as producers of natural historical knowledge about China; "their primacy in the China trade afforded them access to China's plans and animals, and every aspect of the enterprise–the men, the ships, the networks, with all their opportunities and limitations–were inextricably linked to the China trade" (ibid).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the adaptation, at the direction of British naturalists, of the Chinese export painting trade to the purpose of natural history illustrations, a practice that "constituted a site of cultural encounter, in which cross-cultural translation of ideas, aesthetics, and epistemology occurred," on top of the fact that these drawings were already, as a genre, situated in the borderlands between art and science (42). Fan concludes that "both sides were actively exploiting the opportunities brought about by the transaction, for their respective purposes," and that "both sides were cultural agents generating and circulating hybrid cultural productions"--hybrid not only in the sense of Chinese/European, but hybrid also in the sense that they mixed art/natural history/science (57). Moreover, in this era before the Opium Wars, these hybrid natural history drawings "should be seen as a synecdoche for the broad cultural contact that involved the exchange of goods and currency, the accommodation of tastes and ideas, the extension of human relations, and the encounter between empires" (ibid).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the British practice of economic botany after the first Opium War, which was a practice of outright colonialism and of informal empire found across British colonies, possessions, and spheres of influence, with the latter, Fan argues, being appropriate to the Chinese context; all were part of scientific imperialism. He notes that "the research into China's natural history epitomized the characteristics of British research on China in general: it aimed at producing 'factual' and 'useful' knowledge about China" for what James Hevia has called the "imperial archive," for the sake of knowledge that could be used to dominate and control the subject of knowledge, and for "British imperial surveillance and the exploitation of economic opportunities" (64). Naturalists, however, faced real limits in their ability to bring the power of their informal empire to bear on Chinese, highlighting the uneven penetration of British imperial power beyond the treaty ports. Fan argues that "the ideology and practice of collecting information about China…were interconnect with scientific imperialism and the naturalists' belief in the cognitive superiority of the modern Western tradition of factual knowledge" (ibid). As Fan notes, this belief in the universal validity of objective facts "asserted an epistemological authority, and it pointed toward an ideal and belief in bringing the natural world, regardless of national and other human boundaries under the lofty vantage point of truth" (90). The British naturalists were thus active empire-builders of an empire of information, an empire of facts, and moreover, facts that could be useful. All this fact-gathering was justified under the idea that this knowledge, once created in a framework that "privileged a specific way of defining nature, facts, and knowledge" (89), would eventually benefit the Chinese, who were presently too ignorant to take full advantage of their own natural resources.
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter compares the advent of the so-called "new botany" in Britain and its direct colonial possessions to the continued practice of "old botany" in China, with a twist from the emerging discipline of sinology–Fan argues that "Western research into Chinese writings about the natural world resulted in the formation of an (so to speak) interdisciplinary discourse between sinology and natural history" (92). Looking at the practice of British naturalists working with Chinese writings in China, Fan argues that the so-called textual practice of natural history remained relevant into the 19thC, challenging the conventional narratives of the evolution of the science in this C. The expanding colonial presence in China after the mid-19thC allowed naturalists "to incorporate their sinological learning into their natural history research," the results of which appeared distinctive, if not forbidding, to scholarly communities in Europe (119). That said, European naturalists up to and including Darwin himself drew on the Chinese natural history that was being excavated in their writings, and "the information contributed to the mapping of global biogeography" (ibid). Fan argues, moreover, that "the sinologist-naturalists practiced cross-cultural translation of knowledge" when they mined Chinese texts for information that they inserted into new contexts, giving that information new meanings. Although "the naturalists assumed that the cognitive and linguistic superiority of Western science and languages empowered them to dissect Chinese knowledge and to select the factual data from this knowledge," in the act of translation itself, "the process was informed by many factors that cannot be reduced to mere imperialist ideology, the European gaze, worldview, or any other broad epistemological units" (120, 121). No man is an empire, entire of itself.
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the practice of fieldwork among Victorian naturalists, which was for them a signal part of being a naturalist and also part of the Victorian mania for travel, which to them "was an exploration of time as well as space" (152). British naturalists traveling through Qing China were able to take advantage of its pre-existing infrastructures of travel, which did not stop the travelers and naturalists "from producing adventure narratives of conventional drama and turns of plot" (124). These travels were broadly represented by three categories--coastal survey, plant hunting, and field zoology--but all of them entailed mapping and inscription, both in the literal sense of those activities but also in the more metaphoric sense of the construction of space and the production of factual knowledge of place, relating it to pre-existing known spaces. In the hands of British naturalists, "mapping meant possessing. … It struggled to reconfigure the territories, perhaps more symbolic than geopolitical; it asserted, however indirectly, certain power relations. It strove to create an imperial space" (152). This was not an automatic or uncontested process, however, just as "the field naturalists' dependence on the natives' input rendered it difficult to seal the boundary between natural history and folk knowledge. The very action to explore the foreign land and to appropriate the indigenous knowledge entailed the influx of hybrid knowledge that resisted the naturalists' effort to categorize and discipline" (153). Similarly, native informants and collectors were able to bargain, and usually got what they wanted out of these deals.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Looking at his arguments and evidence so far, Fan concludes that "this study confirms the growing recognition of natural history as an inclusive, complex, extensive, and heterogeneous enterprise" (156). In China, "natural history cannot be fully understood when severed from this sociocultural continuum" of differing interests and groups who practiced various aspects of it. And the research of British naturalists "was very much conditioned by the social and cultural environment of the region of China in which they found themselves," just as the content of that research was shaped by the contributions and activities of their native informants, collaborators, and employees (157). However, the groups of Chinese who participated in these efforts have received short shrift in the literature up until now, perpetuating a Eurocentric view of the entire process. As Fan argues, "Whatever the power relations between the Western naturalist and the Chinese might have been, both sides tried to make sense of the encounters. And the relationships between the naturalists and the natives were not necessarily culture- or nation-bound. Historical actors negotiated their identities and roles just as we do" (ibid).
Critical assessment: I wish this book were longer and went into more detail, and that some of my favorite books on the same general topic, such as Hevia's English Lessons, had been around for him to reference and dialogue with when he was writing. That said, it's excellent, both for the dimensions it illuminates and for his insistence that reading the process of empire as entirely one-sided is incorrect.
Further reading: Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons; James Hevia, The Imperial Security State
Meta notes: No man is an empire, entire of itself.