Doctoral Dissertation Research: "Discovering China: Science, Imperialism, and Nationalism in the Chinese Frontier"

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation research improvement grant, which was funded by way of the Science, Technology and Society program, will be used to explore the intellectual works and varied expeditions of foreign and Chinese scientists between 1911 and 1951. The research will focus on scientists who researched the geology, paleontology, anthropology, and archaeology of China's northwestern and southwestern frontiers. This vast space, encompassing Xinjiang, Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, Sichuan, and Yunnan, had historically not only been a geographical border zone, but also a zone of cross-cultural encounters. The research of foreign and Chinese scientists in the frontier in the first half of the 20th century resulted in the discovery of prehistoric cultures and the famous Peking Man, as well as in pioneering work in ethnological studies on the frontier regions non-Han people. This project examines how concerns with human civilization, the individual search for intellectual identity, and national interests motivated these scientists to explore the Chinese frontier; and how ideas were exchanged and shared among scientists in certain intellectual networks. Ultimately, it highlights the tensions between participating in global scientific community and the desire for the indigenization of imported knowledge systems experienced by Chinese scientists. This project argues that ideas and debates in the international scientific arena had a great impact on the formation of the concept of modern "China" as originated in North China and the notion of "Chinese" as a multi-ethnic group. Moreover, it contends that Euro-American scientific imperialism and Sinocentrism were not antagonistic. The approach of this project elucidates the entangled histories of Chinese nationalism and scientific imperialism, and demonstrates that the frontier is a space for contestation against the "myth" of China. It also sheds new light on the intellectual history of science and social history of scientists of modern China.