Where Treasures Arise

” Mining Knowledge, Mining Sites, and the Spatial Rationalities of Mineral Resources in Qing China

Bibliographic Data

ID16860331
AuthorsXi Ma (0000-0001-8199-7620, Hunan University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume19
Issue3
Pages307-335
Publication date2025-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEast Asian Science Technology and Society An International Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1875-2152 • E-ISSN: 1875-2160
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/18752160.2024.2341527
OpenAlexW4401520898
LanguageEN
References cited50

A comparison between nineteenth-century Europe and Qing-dynasty Yunnan reveals how mining knowledge shaped ways of understanding and organizing mineral resources in space. In Europe, stratigraphic geology, prospecting technologies, and mapmaking generated new rationales to understand mineral resources and their distribution in space, a process entangled with the rise of the nation-state and its exercise of power over the qualities of its territory. In Qing China, due to the lack of modern mining and geological knowledge and the gulf between miners and officials, mineral resources and their distribution were understood purely by reference to mining sites, in particular chang (廠 mine, literally "factory"). Territorial administration, taxation, and transportation were the primary mechanisms utilized to organize these mining sites, and through them governments and officials controlled information on mineral resources and envisaged their spatial distribution. The map was not an authoritative tool for presenting mineral resources in space but instead demonstrated more the Qing's hegemony and local governance than the pursuit of precision. Drawing upon Margo Huxley's insights into spatial rationality, this study problematizes space in the epistemic understanding of mineral resources in a pre-modern context and reassesses historical implications of the legibility of nature for political rationalities governing natural things

Archaeology · China · Context (archaeology · Corporate governance · Distribution (mathematics · Economics · Geography · Hegemony · Management · Mineral resource classification · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Rationality · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law · Geology

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