Empires of coal : fueling China's entry into the modern world order, 1860-1920 / Shellen Xiao Wu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wu, Shellen Xiao, 1980- author.

Series:

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coal mines and mining--China--History--19th century.

Coal mines and mining.

Coal mines and mining--China--History--20th century.

Mines and mineral resources--China--History--19th century.

Mines and mineral resources.

Mines and mineral resources--China--History--20th century.

Geology, Economic--China--History--19th century.

Geology, Economic.

Geology, Economic--China--History--20th century.

China--History--1861-1912.

China.

China--History--1912-1928.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (281 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 1890's, 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 1910's, 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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Fueling Industrialization in the Age of Coal

2. Ferdinand von Richthofen and the Geology of Empire

3. Lost and Found in Translation: Geology, Mining, and the Search for Wealth and Power

4. Engineers as the Agents of Science and Empire, 1886–1914

5. Nations, Empires, and Mining Rights, 1895–1911

6. Geology in the Age of Imperialism, 1890–1923

7. Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Series list

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780804794732

0804794731

OCLC:

905696208