The last two years have seen the publication of two important monographs on geology and its role in China’s modernization. While Shellen Wu’s account contrasts with Grace Shen’s more explicit rejection of the colonial model of scientific transmission (Grace Shen, Unearthing the Nation, 2014), in Empires of Coal Wu foregrounds the role of German imperialism in shaping Chinese conceptualizations of the underground. She argues that the Qing state’s embrace of the central role of coal in industrialization marked China’s entry into “an international community of nations, which viewed control over natural resources as an irrefutable part of sovereign power and responsibility” (p. 31). Wu presents a rich picture of the translation of science as a social activity, and vividly demonstrates the intricate ties between the activities and ideas of German experts and the nationalist aspirations of late Qing policymakers and scholars. Wu responds seriously to Benjamin Elman’s call to revise our stereotypical impressions of the Self-Strengthening Movement (1861-1895) as a failure narrative (Benjamin Elman, “Naval Warfare,” 2003). In this revisionist account, the Qing dynasty emerges as a “far more successful empire than has been acknowledged” which attempted “direct state intervention and control over the exploitation of natural resources” (p. 193) by the last decade of its existence in the 1900s.
Business historians will find most interesting Wu’s description of the role of German technicians and engineers in Chinese businesses (chapter 4), and the interactions between new ideas of resources and German imperial expansion in East Asia (chapter 5). With the former, the overproduction of technical graduates from German institutions in the late nineteenth century led to an aggressive effort on the part of the Bismarckian state to promote German candidates in the global market for technical expertise. The success of Germans in capturing key technical positions at major Chinese state-run enterprises in turn contributed to the sale of German machinery and supplies. With the forced lease of Qingdao (Kiautschou) in 1898, Germany’s goal became one of controlling the mining resources of the port’s hinterland in the Shandong peninsula to supply the rapidly-growing Shanghai market, which was dependent on overseas coal. To illustrate the scale of German interest, German investments in Qingdao exceeded 200 million marks ($50 million) (p. 149), which far exceeded the equivalent sum for Africa.
By stressing that the Germans and the Chinese “operated with essentially the same motivation” (p. 150), namely the control over mineral resources, Wu presents a convincing critique of nationalist historiography that sees the eventual demise of German colonial agencies such as the Shandong Bergbau Gesellschaft (Shandong Mining Company) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Bergbau u. Industrie in Auslande (German Company for Industry and Mining Abroad) as representing a Chinese victory. Rather, Chinese successes in reclaiming mining rights in Shandong were mostly superficial, and the focus on nationalism obscures important global connections which late nineteenth-century ideas of industrialization highlighted. Other chapters in the book describe the intellectual history of mining in China (chapter 1), the pioneering activities of Prussian geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen which set the framework for Chinese geology (chapter 2), efforts to translate European and German geology into Chinese (chapter 3), and a concluding chapter that points to the legacy of von Richthofen’s geology as a stimulus for the activities of the China Geological Survey in the early twentieth century (chapter 6).
Although German participation in the production of knowledge and the Chinese market for foreign experts was often backed by the German state (pp. 102–03), prior to the German seizure of Qingdao in 1898, it is arguable that German activities in China were as much a case of participation in the open market for expertise as it was one of direct imperialism. In this respect, they were similar to Sino-German relations after 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles removed Germany’s extraterritorial privileges. Similarly, although Japan is frequently mentioned in the text, in Wu’s account the influence of Japan is all too often taken for granted. In particular, the casual suggestion that Japan’s influence in China amounted to indirect German influence requires more substantiation. In spite of the high percentage of German foreign advisers in Japan during the early stages of Japanese industrialization (p. 101), Japanese scientists did not take their ideas solely from Germany. Rather, the Japanese state and businesses searched for models of industrialization from a wide range of European nations, at the same time that their employment of foreign advisers was remarkably brief. The domestic appropriation of Chinese geology in the first half of the twentieth century that Wu alludes to in her closing chapter suggests that the Chinese and Japanese experiences were actually similar in this respect, even if there was a lag time between Japan and China’s efforts to assimilate Western practices. Perhaps the decision to end the book in 1920 prevents Wu from exploring this story more fully, in particular the important question of how Chinese participation in global science and the energy-based world order ended up shaping the order itself.
Although historians of capitalism will appreciate Wu’s sensitivity to the role played by German technicians, engineers, and scientists in an account backed by rich German-language archival materials, Chinese actors are restricted to a more conventional cast of well-known provincial governors and scholars. It is still tempting to wonder whether more could be done to locate middle-level actors who shared German technicians’ engagement with business and technical problems. For example, it would be interesting to learn more from the intriguing case of a mining bureau founded by local literati and administrators in Hunan province, which the author noted “did succeed in repelling foreign encroachment” (pp. 146–47). There are a number of minor editing errors, for example, the Chinese term for “statecraft” (p. 13). Finally, while the author’s attempt to integrate Chinese mining into debates in global economic history (for example, the arguments of Kenneth Pomeranz, Kaoru Sugihara, and Prasannan Parthasarathi) is valuable, she could have gone further than illustrating the importance of mining by engaging in a more sustained discussion on how the Chinese experience of mining and appropriation of geology contribute to our understanding of broader issues such as labor-intensive industrialization.
Despite these comments, Wu’s account is one of the most important works to date to put German and Chinese history into conversation since William Kirby, Germany and Republican China, 1984. This is especially important given the tendency to overlook continental European perspectives in works on nineteenth-century Chinese history, and the growing historiography on German capitalism in the global context. The author’s adept handling of the institutional complexities of nineteenth-century Germany combined with her sound knowledge of late imperial Chinese intellectual trends is a great strength of the work, and makes this a valuable contribution to the history of Asia-Europe relations and global business history.
