“Animals” in Republican China: The Logistics of Science and the Rise of a Scientific Category
In: Asian Review of World HistoriesSearch for other papers by Ying-kit Chan in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
The first decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of an elite class of Chinese scientists who were educated in Europe and North America and occupied positions of authority in China. Historians of science have used the concept of scientific nationalism to frame the phenomenon and discuss how patriotism had motivated Chinese scientists to produce modern science in order to strengthen their nation. This article focuses on the logistics of science, which can help conceptualize modern Chinese science as not only a situated knowledge but also a broad, distilled context of “pure” transactional value – that of naming, displaying, and managing animals and epizootic diseases. Through the lens of “animals” as an emerging scientific category, the article examines how conceptual and epistemological shifts resulted from new urban, curatorial, and scientific practices, all of which transformed animals into an object of expert analysis in Republican China.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Amelung, Iwo, ed. 2020. Discourses of Weakness in Modern China: Historical Diagnoses of the “Sick Man of East Asia.” Frankfurt: Campus.
-
Andrews, Roy Chapman. 1924. “Introduction” to Blue Tiger, by Harry R. Caldwell. New York: Abingdon Press.
-
Beckert, Sven. 2001. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896. New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Bello, David A. 2016. Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China’s Borderlands. New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Bickers, Robert A., and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom. 2009. “Shanghai’s ‘Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted’ Sign: Legend, History, and Contemporary Symbol.” China Quarterly 142: 444–466.
-
Bing Zhi 秉志. 1915. “Shengwuxue gailun 生物學概論 [An outline of biology].” Kexue 科學 1: 78–84.
-
Bing Zhi 秉志. 2006. Bing Zhi wencun 秉志文存 [The writings of Bing Zhi], vol. 3. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.
-
Buck, Peter. 1980. American Science and Modern China, 1876–1936. New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Caldwell, Harry R. 1924. Blue Tiger. New York: Abingdon Press.
-
Chan, Ying-kit. 2015. “The Great Dog Massacre in Late Qing China: Debates, Perceptions, and Phobia in the Shanghai International Settlement.” Frontiers of History in China 10(4): 645–667.
-
Chang, Hao. 1987. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890–1911). Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Chen, Huaiyu. 2023. In the Land of Tigers and Snakes: Living with Animals in Medieval Chinese Religions. New York: Columbia University Press.
-
Chen Ming 陳明, Wang Hongwei 王洪偉, and Wang Siming 王思明. 2019. “Zhaojian yu tansuo: Minguo shiqi de Zhongguo xumu shouyi xuehui (1936–1949) 肇建與探索: 民國時期的中國畜牧獸醫學會 (1936–1949) [On the establishment and development of the Chinese Association of Animal Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, 1936–1949].” Ziran bianzhengfa tongxun 自然辯證法通訊 41(6): 62–68.
-
Claypool, Lisa. 2005. “Zhang Jian and China’s First Museum.” Journal of Asian Studies 64(3): 567–604.
-
Coggins, Chris. 2002. The Tiger and the Pangolin: Nature, Culture, and Conservation in China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
-
Corbett, Jim. 1944. Man-Eaters of Kumaon. Bombay: Oxford University Press.
-
Dunstan, Helen. 1998. “Official Thinking on Environmental Issues and the State’s Environmental Role in Eighteenth Century China.” In Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History, edited by Mark Elvin and Liu Ts’ui-jung, 585–616. Hong Kong: HKU Press.
-
Elman, Benjamin A. 2004. “Naval Warfare and the Refraction of China’s Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure, 1865–1895.” Modern Asian Studies 38(2): 283–326.
-
Elman, Benjamin A. 2005. On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.
-
Fan, Fa-ti. 2004. British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
-
Fan, Fa-ti. 2013. “Circulating Material Objects: The International Controversy Over Antiquities and Fossils in Twentieth-Century China.” In The Circulation of Knowledge Between Britain, India, and China: The Early-Modern World to the Twentieth Century, edited by Bernard Lightman, Gordon McOuat, and Larry Stewart, 209–236. Leiden: Brill.
-
Fan, Fa-ti, and John Mathew. 2016. “Negotiating Natural History in Transitional China and British India.” BJHS Themes 1: 43–59.
-
Finney, Vanessa, Jarrod Hore, and Simon Ville. 2022. “Chains of Custody, Oceans of Instability: The Precarious Logistics of the Natural History Trade.” Journal of World History 33(1): 103–137.
-
Frank, Caroline. 2011. Objectifying China, Imagining America: Chinese Commodities in Early America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Fu, Jia-Chen. 2018. The Other Milk: Reinventing Soy in Republican China. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
-
Glover, Denise M., Stevan Harrell, Charles F. McKhann, and Margaret Byrne Swain, eds. 2011. Explorers and Scientists in China’s Borderlands, 1880–1950. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
-
Greene, J. Megan. 2023. “The National Scientific Imperative in Wartime China and the Complex Motivations of Individual Scientists.” Asian Review of World Histories 11(1): 62–89.
-
Halsey, Stephen R. 2023. “Chinese Environmental History: A Manifesto.” Asian Review of World Histories 11(1): 8–36.
-
Hambleton, Luke. 2013. “An Ambush of Tigers: A Socio-Ecological History of the Ming-Qing Fujian Tiger Menace.” In Chinese History in Historical Perspective, edited by Yongtao Du and Jeff Kyong-McClain, 103–120. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
-
Hevia, James L. 1994. “Loot’s Fate: The Economy of Plunder and the Moral Life of Objects ‘From the Summer Palace of the Emperor of China.’” History and Anthropology 6(4): 319–345.
-
Hout, Claire. 2015. “The Dog-Eared Dictionary: Human–Animal Alliance in Chinese Civilization.” Journal of Asian Studies, 74(3): 589–613.
-
Jacobs, Justin M. 2020. The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Jacobs, Karen, Chantal Knowles, and Chris Wingfield, eds. 2015. Trophies, Relics, and Curios? Missionary Heritage from Africa and the Pacific. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
-
Jiang, Lijing. 2016. “Retouching the Past with Living Things: Indigenous Species, Tradition, and Biological Research in Republican China, 1918–1937.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 46(2): 154–206.
-
Jin, Xiaoxing. 2019. “Translation and Transmutation: The Origin of Species in China.” British Journal for the History of Science 52(1): 117–141.
-
Kang, Xiaofei. 2006. The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press.
-
Kim, Kwangmin. 2016. Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Lam, Tong. 2011. A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900–1949. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Lee, Haiyan. 2014. The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Lei, Sean Hsiang-lin. 2014. Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Lei, Fumin. 2020. “Tso-Hsin Cheng: The Founder of Modern Ornithology and Zoogeography in China.” Protein & Cell 11(12): 859–861.
-
Leibold, James. 2007. Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and Its Indigenes Became Chinese. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Li Qingshan 李青山. 2015. “Zhongguo jindai (1840–1949 nian) shouyi gaodeng jiaoyu suyuan ji fazhan 中國近代 (1840?1949年) 獸醫高等教育溯源及發展 [The origins and development of veterinary education in modern China (1840–1949)].” PhD dissertation, China Agricultural University.
-
Li Qingshan 李青山 and Wang Ming 汪明. 2020. “Zhongguo jindai (1840–1949 nian) shouyi gaodeng jiaoyu fazhan 中國近代 (1840?1949年) 獸醫高等教育發展 [The development of higher education in veterinary medicine in modern China, 1840–1949].” Zhongguo shouyi zazhi 中國獸醫雜志 56(4): 120–123.
-
Lin Zheng 林崢. 2022. Gongyuan Beijing: Wenhua shengchan yu wenxue xiangxiang 公園北京: 文化生產與文學想象 [Park Beijing: Cultural production and literary imagination]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.
-
Macpherson, Kerrie L. 1987. A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai, 1843–1893. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
-
Meng Anhua 孟安華 and Wang Xiuli 王秀莉. 2021. “Cong jiuxue dao xinxue, cong keju dao kexue: qude keju gongming de woguo jindai shengwuxue xianqu 從舊學到新學, 從科舉到科學: 取得科舉功名的我國近代生物學先驅 [The pioneers of biology in modern China who passed the civil service examinations].” Shengwuxue jiaoxue 生物學教學 46(8): 76–78.
-
Mikhail, Alan. 2014. The Animal in Ottoman Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Mueggler, Erik. 2011. The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Nappi, Carla. 2009. The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
-
Pemberton, Neil, and Michael Worboys. 2007. Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Rabies in Britain, 1830–2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Perdue, Peter C. 2009. “Nature and Nurture on Imperial China’s Frontiers.” Modern Asian Studies 43(1): 245–267.
-
Puga, Rogerio Miguel. 2012. “The First Museum in China: The British Museum of Macao (1829–1834) and Its Contribution to Nineteenth-Century British Natural Science.” Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, series 3, 22(3–4): 575–586.
-
Regal, Brian. 2002. Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for the Origins of Man. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
-
Reynolds, Douglas R. 1993. China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.
-
Reynolds, Valrae, and Amy Heller. 1983. Tibetan Collection, vol. 1: Introduction. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum.
-
Rhoads, Edward J. M. 2011. Stepping Forth into the World: The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872–81. Hong Kong: HKU Press.
-
Schafer, Dagmar, Martina Siebert, and Roel Sterckx. 2019. “Knowing Animals in China’s History: An Introduction.” In Animals Through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911, edited by Roel Sterckx, Martina Siebert, and Dagmar Schafer, 1–19. New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Schlesinger, Jonathan. 2017. A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Schmalzer, Sigrid. 2008. The People’s Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Schwartz, Benjamin I. 1964. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
-
Sheets-Pyenson, Susan. 1987. “Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums During the Late Nineteenth Century.” History of Science 25(3): 279–300.
-
Shen, Grace Yen. 2014. Unearthing the Nation: Modern Geology and Nationalism in Republican China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Smith, Joanna Handlin. 2009. The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Songster, E. Elena. 2018. Panda Nation: The Construction and Conservation of China’s Modern Icon. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Sterckx, Roel. 2002. The Animal and the Daemon in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press.
-
Sun Wei 孫煒. 2022. “Bing Zhi ‘kexuejia zhi jingshen’ sixiang yanjiu 秉志 “科學家之精神” 思想研究 [A study on Bing Zhi’s thinking about the ‘essence of scientists’].” PhD dissertation, University of Science and Technology of China.
-
Swislocki, Mark. 2012. “Imagining Irreconcilability: Cultural Differentiation through Human–Animal Relations in Late Qing Shanghai.” positions 20(4): 159–189.
-
Tai, Li-Chuan. 2017. “Shanghai’s Zikawei Museum (1868–1952): Jesuit Contributions to the Study of Natural History in China.” Asia Major 30(1): 109–141.
-
Tai, Li-Chuan. 2021. “The Shanghai Museum and the Introduction of Taxidermy and Habitat Dioramas into China, 1874–1952.” Archives of Natural History 48(1): 111–130.
-
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1984. Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets. New Haven: Yale University Press.
-
Valenti, Federico. 2023. “What Did It Take to Be a Chong? Profile of a Polysemous Character in Early China.” In Insect Histories of East Asia, edited by David A. Bello and Daniel Burton-Rose, 3–20. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
-
Vedal, Nathan. 2020. “From Tradition to Community: The Rise of Contemporary Knowledge in Late Imperial China.” Journal of Asian Studies 79(1): 77–101.
-
Wagner, Rudolf G. 2017. “‘Dividing up the [Chinese] Melon, guafen 瓜分’: The Fate of a Transcultural Metaphor in the Formation of National Myth.” Journal of Transcultural Studies 8(1): 9–122.
-
Wang Tingting 王婷婷. 2022. “Minguo shiqi xibei fangyichu yanjiu (1933–1945) 民國 時期西北防疫處研究 (1933–1945) [Research on the Northwest Epidemic Prevention Department in the Republic of China (1933–1945)].” MA thesis, Lanzhou University.
-
Wang, Zuoyue. 2002. “Saving China Through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China.” Osiris 17: 291–322.
-
White, David Gordon. 1991. Myths of the Dog-Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Wissing, Douglas A. 2004. Pioneer in Tibet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Wonders, Karen. 1993. Habitat Dioramas: Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.
-
Wu, Shellen Xiao. 2015. Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860–1920. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Yang, Jui-sung. 2017. “Where Does the ‘Lion’ Come From? On the Origin of Liang Qichao’s ‘Sleeping Lion’ Symbol.” Chinese Historical Review 24(2): 131–145.
-
Yang Qunrong 楊群榮 and Zheng Huaijie 鄭懷傑. 2014. “Zheng Zuoxin: Zhongguo zhi de liang da faxian 鄭作新: 中國雉的兩大發現 [Zheng Zuoxin: Two great discoveries of the Chinese pheasant].” Senlin yu renlei 森林與人類 3: 90–93.
-
Zeleny, Chien-Ling Liu. 2022. “From chi-gou 瘈狗 to chi-bing 瘈病 (From ‘Mad Dogs’ to Rabies): Pastorians and Public Health in Republican China.” International Review of Environmental History 8(1): 21–40.
-
Zhang, Qiong. 2022. “The Infrastructure of Science Making in Early Modern China.” Asian Review of World Histories 11(1): 90–129.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 825 | 825 | 38 |
| Full Text Views | 24 | 24 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 77 | 77 | 7 |
“Animals” in Republican China: The Logistics of Science and the Rise of a Scientific Category
In: Asian Review of World HistoriesSearch for other papers by Ying-kit Chan in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
The first decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of an elite class of Chinese scientists who were educated in Europe and North America and occupied positions of authority in China. Historians of science have used the concept of scientific nationalism to frame the phenomenon and discuss how patriotism had motivated Chinese scientists to produce modern science in order to strengthen their nation. This article focuses on the logistics of science, which can help conceptualize modern Chinese science as not only a situated knowledge but also a broad, distilled context of “pure” transactional value – that of naming, displaying, and managing animals and epizootic diseases. Through the lens of “animals” as an emerging scientific category, the article examines how conceptual and epistemological shifts resulted from new urban, curatorial, and scientific practices, all of which transformed animals into an object of expert analysis in Republican China.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 825 | 825 | 38 |
| Full Text Views | 24 | 24 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 77 | 77 | 7 |
