Science in a Chinese Entrepôt

British Naturalists and Their Chinese Associates in Old Canton

Bibliographic Data

ID3924780
AuthorsFa-Ti Fan, Fa‐ti Fan (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume18
Pages60-78
Publication date2003-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueOsiris (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/649377
OpenAlexW2031758914
LanguageEN
Citations received9

This essay examines the scientific research of British naturalists and their Chinese associates in the port city of Canton (Guangzhou) in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Due to China's strict foreign policy, British research into the horticulture and natural history of China depended heavily on the urban environment of Canton as a global entrepôt. The city was a hub for maritime trade and a contact zone of cultural encounters. The naturalists, who were mostly employees of the English East India Company, broadened their social and commercial relationships with the local Chinese to include scientific inquiry and reconfigured the urban spaces into fieldwork sites. This article discusses the connections between science and urban practices in a maritime entrepôt and proposes revisions to a number of usual assumptions in the current historiography of science and the city

Archaeology · China · Economy · Geography · Historiography · Chinese history and philosophy · Engineering · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine

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