The ‘Mystery’ of Lop Nor: Empire, Geographical ‘Problems’ and Climate Change on the Silk Roads

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, rumours of a large lake in Central Asia provided the material for a vexing ‘problem’ in imperial geography. That Lop Nor existed – or at least once had – was indicated by information in Chinese chronicles. However, identifying the lake proved challenging, not least because it did not always appear to have been located in the same place. Attracting romanticised epithets like ‘mysterious’ and ‘wandering’, Lop Nor became an important site for imperial scientific speculations about climatic stability and change. This article considers investigations by Russian, British, Swedish and American geographers (as well as the key roles of Loplyk brokers such as Ördek, who located the ancient city of Loulan that had once graced the shores of the lake and been abandoned in the face of changing habitability). In turn, the article examines the way Lop Nor was bound up in the formation of imperial imaginaries of the ‘Silk Roads’, as well as incorporated by geographers like Peter Kropotkin and Ellsworth Huntington into theories of desiccation and climate change within recent human history. More widely, considering debates over Lop Nor allows for an examination of the role of imperial geographical ‘problems’ in the history of climate sciences and the development of geography as a discipline.