The field of technological history has expanded dramatically in recent years, and this is nowhere more evident than in the study of China. Cultures of Knowledge, edited by Dagmar Schäfer, is a superbly nuanced exploration of the place and transmission of technological knowledge in China. Carefully and coherently structured, and with uniformly high-quality contributions from a diverse group of scholars, this book is also a paradigmatic example of how conference volumes should be written. The focus of the book is on the ways in which “practical knowledge” (a term that the book deliberately uses instead of “technology”) circulated within China from the tenth to the eighteenth century and how that history might be used to revise existing assumptions about the nature and the role of technology in Western culture. It develops this approach by dividing its chapters among four sections representing interrelated yet distinct aspects of knowledge creation and transmission. In each section, a set of chapters on China is followed by a discussion written by a historian of Western technology.
The first section, titled “Internode” (communication), contains William T. Rowe's “Political, Social and Economic Factors Affecting the Transmission of Technical Knowledge in Early Modern China” and Dagmar Schäfer's “Silken Strands: Making Technology Work in China.” The second section, titled “Imperial Court” (appropriation), contains Heping Liu's “Picturing Yu Controlling the Flood: Technology, Ecology, and Emperorship in Northern Song China” and Luo Wenhua's “Sympathetic Relations: Foreign Craftsmen at the Qing Court.” The third section, titled “Agora” (aggregation), contains Anne Gerritsen's “Ceramics for Local and Global Markets: Jingdezhen's Agora of Technologies,” Susan Naquin's “Temples, Technology, and Material Culture,” and Joachim Kurtz's “Framing European Technology in Seventeenth-Century China: Rhetorical Strategies in Jesuit Paratexts.” Finally, the fourth section, titled “Scholarly Arts” (documentation), contains Martina Siebert's “Making Technology History,” Martin Hofmann's “The Biographer's View of Craftsmanship,” and Francesca Bray's “Chinese Literati and the Transmission of Technological Knowledge: The Case of Agriculture.” While the scholarship is uniformly excellent and the analysis impressive, the most notable aspect of the volume is its attention to language. This is part of the volume's effort to find more universally applicable approaches to the history of technology and to avoid the biases of a Western cultural model. Even the use of the term “practical knowledge” and the titles of the four parts are designed to avoid any possible Eurocentric taint. Similarly, in describing the actual place and practice of technology in society, the authors are cautious about the inherent bias of Chinese scholars and officials, and the nearly overwhelming force of the immense written record they left behind.
Space permits only brief mentions of two of the contributions, by Liu Heping and Anne Gerritsen, though all are deserving of extensive discussion. Both these authors demonstrate the relationship between the imperial court, with all its attendant textual trappings influencing our historical perspective, and the very real technological difficulties of carrying out critical functional tasks. In a certain sense they represent the poles of imperial connection framed in this book, between direct imperial involvement in Liu's case and a more arm's-length involvement in Gerritsen's. Liu's chapter explains how the frequency of water-control problems during the Northern Song dynasty directly involved emperors in repairing and managing dikes, rivers, and canals. This, in turn, led to frequent references in texts and images to Yu the Great taming the waters. The technology of water control and images of Yu became intimately linked with imperial power and rulership. Technology, ecology, politics, culture, and art all came together to serve quite different interests.
Gerritsen's chapter focuses on the ceramic production center at Jingdezhen. Specifically, she is concerned to show not only how the imperial government intervened in porcelain production, but also how that manufacturing process was embedded in and affected local society. The complex manufacturing requirements involved a network of knowledge wherein skilled locals transmitted technical skills to a continuous flow of immigrants seeking work. Conditions were harsh, and the labor required to produce each pot was divided into some seventy separate tasks. Imperial control developed over time in combination with private kilns and an expanding trade network that came to include Europe as well. I was surprised to see Gerritsen refer to “blue and white” wares as a Yuan innovation made possible by the introduction of cobalt blue in that period when others, most recently Adam Kessler in Song Blue and White Porcelain of the Silk Road (Leiden: Brill, 2012), have shown that this style was in fact a Song invention. This is a minor quibble. The explication of industrial production at Jingdezhen is a tale well worth reading.
A few parting comments are in order. The nuances of language and analytic structure are so finely parsed and cautiously applied as to render any conclusions both limited and uncertain. Having left, or tried to leave, the old paradigms behind and having set out in a new direction, the authors have clearly not yet reached their final destination. The prospects for their ultimate success are certainly exciting. Sadly, it is not clear that changing the terms of the discussion really will change the underlying, Western-biased, questions. The volume authors try to decenter the Western experience by using it to “reflect” on China, rather than using it as a comparative measure. Ultimately, however, they still end up comparing the different modern trajectories of Chinese and European technology. The same could be said for the section names. Why employ the Greek word “agora” when terms such as marketplace or gathering place already have intrinsic semantic valence?
It is always exciting to read finely wrought scholarship like the material in this volume. Dagmar Schäfer and her collaborators have significantly advanced the field both in terms of content and theoretical sophistication. They have raised the bar for any future work on the subject.
