Pub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000380
Yun Xia
This article examines a transnational network of advocates for Kampō (traditional) medicine in Japan, occupied China, and Manchukuo during the Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945), shedding new light on collaborationism, Asianism, and the modernization of traditional medicine in East Asia. In the 1930s, despite deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations, the Kampō revival movement in Japan joined forces with the struggle to preserve traditional medicine in China. In 1938, the Association of East Asian Medicine was founded in Japan, gathering together Chinese, Korean, and Japanese advocates under the banner of ‘East Asian medicine’. This article delineates the evolution of what I call ‘medical Asianism’ and how it was institutionalized in different parts of the Japanese empire. Participants in this network differed in their priorities and ideological commitments, yet they tactfully utilized the Japanese imperial infrastructure and wartime circumstances to promote traditional medicine. Their work laid important intellectual and institutional foundations for the postwar development of traditional medicine across East Asia. This study also contributes to a more nuanced understandings of collaborationism. The type of collaboration examined in this article was preceded by a long history of intellectual exchange, based on a shared body of knowledge and morals, motivated by mutual empathy, and for a cause that was much valued in postwar Asia. As a result, unlike most Chinese collaborators who were prosecuted as ‘traitors’, protagonists in this study continued to prosper professionally and became valuable assets in the postwar rebuilding of Sino-Japanese relations.
{"title":"Simultaneously ‘national medicine’ and ‘East Asian medicine’: A cross-boundary network of medical exchange in wartime East Asia","authors":"Yun Xia","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000380","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines a transnational network of advocates for Kampō (traditional) medicine in Japan, occupied China, and Manchukuo during the Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945), shedding new light on collaborationism, Asianism, and the modernization of traditional medicine in East Asia. In the 1930s, despite deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations, the Kampō revival movement in Japan joined forces with the struggle to preserve traditional medicine in China. In 1938, the Association of East Asian Medicine was founded in Japan, gathering together Chinese, Korean, and Japanese advocates under the banner of ‘East Asian medicine’. This article delineates the evolution of what I call ‘medical Asianism’ and how it was institutionalized in different parts of the Japanese empire. Participants in this network differed in their priorities and ideological commitments, yet they tactfully utilized the Japanese imperial infrastructure and wartime circumstances to promote traditional medicine. Their work laid important intellectual and institutional foundations for the postwar development of traditional medicine across East Asia. This study also contributes to a more nuanced understandings of collaborationism. The type of collaboration examined in this article was preceded by a long history of intellectual exchange, based on a shared body of knowledge and morals, motivated by mutual empathy, and for a cause that was much valued in postwar Asia. As a result, unlike most Chinese collaborators who were prosecuted as ‘traitors’, protagonists in this study continued to prosper professionally and became valuable assets in the postwar rebuilding of Sino-Japanese relations.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140234425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000434
Jonathan Henshaw
The Japanese empire’s occupation of China during the Second World War left a complex and bitter legacy in postwar Chinese society. This article examines the occupation and its legacies at the grassroots, taking university students in Nanjing as a case study in occupation history and ‘bottom-up’ wartime commemoration. These young people, who studied at National Central University (NCU) under the Japanese-backed Reorganized National Government of Wang Jingwei, organized three protest movements between 1940 and 1945, defying puppet authorities, Japanese forces, and, after the war, the returning Chongqing Nationalist government, as they campaigned against corruption, opium sales, and discriminatory treatment over their status as ‘bogus students’ who supposedly received Japanese ‘enslavement education’ from a collaborationist regime. In the 1980s, after decades of marginalization under the People’s Republic of China, these former protestors began holding reunions, documenting their experiences, and campaigning for recognition from Nanjing University, which eventually recognized them as alumni. Drawing primarily on privately printed alumni memoirs and commemorative volumes, this article positions the protests in the history of youth activism in Nanjing. That NCU students were able to rehabilitate themselves was due to their own organizational prowess and a sympathetic reception from the leadership of a cash-strapped Nanjing University, though the interests of fellow alumnus Jiang Zemin and the Communist Party-state still set the parameters of historical memory. In this, the example of the Nanjing students complicates the top-down role of the state, as described in much previous scholarship on Chinese wartime commemoration, in producing politically motivated nationalist narratives of wartime history.
{"title":"Overcoming a stigmatic past: National Central University students in Nanjing, China, and the politics of wartime history","authors":"Jonathan Henshaw","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000434","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Japanese empire’s occupation of China during the Second World War left a complex and bitter legacy in postwar Chinese society. This article examines the occupation and its legacies at the grassroots, taking university students in Nanjing as a case study in occupation history and ‘bottom-up’ wartime commemoration. These young people, who studied at National Central University (NCU) under the Japanese-backed Reorganized National Government of Wang Jingwei, organized three protest movements between 1940 and 1945, defying puppet authorities, Japanese forces, and, after the war, the returning Chongqing Nationalist government, as they campaigned against corruption, opium sales, and discriminatory treatment over their status as ‘bogus students’ who supposedly received Japanese ‘enslavement education’ from a collaborationist regime. In the 1980s, after decades of marginalization under the People’s Republic of China, these former protestors began holding reunions, documenting their experiences, and campaigning for recognition from Nanjing University, which eventually recognized them as alumni. Drawing primarily on privately printed alumni memoirs and commemorative volumes, this article positions the protests in the history of youth activism in Nanjing. That NCU students were able to rehabilitate themselves was due to their own organizational prowess and a sympathetic reception from the leadership of a cash-strapped Nanjing University, though the interests of fellow alumnus Jiang Zemin and the Communist Party-state still set the parameters of historical memory. In this, the example of the Nanjing students complicates the top-down role of the state, as described in much previous scholarship on Chinese wartime commemoration, in producing politically motivated nationalist narratives of wartime history.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140231724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000355
Naoko Kato
Qian Daosun (1887–1966) was imprisoned for collaborating with the Provisional Government in North China under Japanese occupation, and to this day he is labelled as hanjian (traitor). Yet, Qian was first and foremost a cultural literatus, librarian, and an exceptional translator with an in-depth understanding of Japanese culture and languages. This article examines the crucial role that Japan and the Japanese language played for Chinese cultural literati in their quest to save China. It also brings to the forefront the dilemmas and agonizing choices Qian faced in his attempt to promote Sino-Japanese cultural exchange in the midst of war, in particular as a librarian. Wartime libraries are highly contested sites of selection, destruction, censorship, preservation, confiscation, and knowledge production. An added layer of complexity was Japan’s cultural policy in China that promoted Japanese-language collections and governed libraries such as the Beijing1 Modern Science Library where Qian worked. What exacerbated Qian’s dilemmas was his upbringing, which led him to form close personal connections with like-minded Japanese literati. Lastly, this article revisits the hanjian label by comparing Qian’s fate to that of other librarians and returned students of Japan, such as May Fourth writer Lu Xun and patriotic bibliophile Zheng Zhenduo. By deliberately examining May Fourth writers alongside hanjian and Japanese intermediaries, the intention is to dismount arbitrary labels and divisions that have set them apart and against each other in the resistance versus collaboration dichotomy.
{"title":"Saving China and admiring Japan: Cultural traitor Qian Daosun","authors":"Naoko Kato","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000355","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Qian Daosun (1887–1966) was imprisoned for collaborating with the Provisional Government in North China under Japanese occupation, and to this day he is labelled as hanjian (traitor). Yet, Qian was first and foremost a cultural literatus, librarian, and an exceptional translator with an in-depth understanding of Japanese culture and languages. This article examines the crucial role that Japan and the Japanese language played for Chinese cultural literati in their quest to save China. It also brings to the forefront the dilemmas and agonizing choices Qian faced in his attempt to promote Sino-Japanese cultural exchange in the midst of war, in particular as a librarian. Wartime libraries are highly contested sites of selection, destruction, censorship, preservation, confiscation, and knowledge production. An added layer of complexity was Japan’s cultural policy in China that promoted Japanese-language collections and governed libraries such as the Beijing1 Modern Science Library where Qian worked. What exacerbated Qian’s dilemmas was his upbringing, which led him to form close personal connections with like-minded Japanese literati. Lastly, this article revisits the hanjian label by comparing Qian’s fate to that of other librarians and returned students of Japan, such as May Fourth writer Lu Xun and patriotic bibliophile Zheng Zhenduo. By deliberately examining May Fourth writers alongside hanjian and Japanese intermediaries, the intention is to dismount arbitrary labels and divisions that have set them apart and against each other in the resistance versus collaboration dichotomy.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140231629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000458
Chihyun Chang, Chiu-Ya Kao
This article discusses the continuity between cosmopolitan collaboration and wartime collaborationism from 1932–1941 by exploring the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS) and its international staff. The CMCS managed China’s international trade and directed the custom houses in northern China before 1937, and in occupied China and free China from 1937–1941. The customs revenues generated by this international trade were pledged to service China’s international obligations. This article argues that both Chinese and Japanese staff members’ activities to maintain the status quo could be considered as wartime collaborationism from the perspectives of Japan, Manchukuo, and the Collaborationist and Chongqing governments, but all parties tolerated their activities until the outbreak of the Pacific War. The reason for this was that all parties benefitted from the CMCS’s management of international trade and its implementation of international obligations which had existed since the mid-nineteenth century. This article situates wartime collaborationism within the long-existing institutional network that was welcomed as cosmopolitan collaboration in the prewar, wartime, and postwar periods, rather than treating it as a unique wartime setup and ideology. Such a view also illuminates the postwar exchange of personnel and cooperation among former enemies, which grew out of prewar collaboration and wartime collaborationism.
{"title":"Cosmopolitan collaboration and wartime collaborationism: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and its staff, 1932–1941","authors":"Chihyun Chang, Chiu-Ya Kao","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000458","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article discusses the continuity between cosmopolitan collaboration and wartime collaborationism from 1932–1941 by exploring the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS) and its international staff. The CMCS managed China’s international trade and directed the custom houses in northern China before 1937, and in occupied China and free China from 1937–1941. The customs revenues generated by this international trade were pledged to service China’s international obligations. This article argues that both Chinese and Japanese staff members’ activities to maintain the status quo could be considered as wartime collaborationism from the perspectives of Japan, Manchukuo, and the Collaborationist and Chongqing governments, but all parties tolerated their activities until the outbreak of the Pacific War. The reason for this was that all parties benefitted from the CMCS’s management of international trade and its implementation of international obligations which had existed since the mid-nineteenth century. This article situates wartime collaborationism within the long-existing institutional network that was welcomed as cosmopolitan collaboration in the prewar, wartime, and postwar periods, rather than treating it as a unique wartime setup and ideology. Such a view also illuminates the postwar exchange of personnel and cooperation among former enemies, which grew out of prewar collaboration and wartime collaborationism.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140234110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000367
Craig A. Smith
This article examines Zhang Wojun (1902–1955) and the memory of his ‘collaboration’ with Japan during the Second World War. A Taiwanese-born writer and educator who lived in Beijing for 25 years, his drifting identity was full of ambiguities. Although he was one of the key intellectuals behind Taiwan’s New-Old Literatures Debate and responsible for introducing many May Fourth ideas to Taiwan, he also played an important role in bringing Japanese literature and thought into Chinese discourse during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. During the war, he continued to teach in Beijing and travelled to Japan to attend the Greater East Asia Writers’ conferences. Some of his works from this period call for the Chinese people to support the empire and eradicate Western culture and literature from Asia, but many of his writings also indicate a strong sense of Chinese nationalism. This article considers the memories of Zhang, his various intellectual contributions, and his oeuvre, arguing that his collaboration must be understood and contextualized within his intellectual landscape through a research methodology that examines continuities and change across decades of his life and work.
{"title":"From collaboration to commemoration: Zhang Wojun and the ambiguities of identity for intellectuals from Taiwan","authors":"Craig A. Smith","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000367","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines Zhang Wojun (1902–1955) and the memory of his ‘collaboration’ with Japan during the Second World War. A Taiwanese-born writer and educator who lived in Beijing for 25 years, his drifting identity was full of ambiguities. Although he was one of the key intellectuals behind Taiwan’s New-Old Literatures Debate and responsible for introducing many May Fourth ideas to Taiwan, he also played an important role in bringing Japanese literature and thought into Chinese discourse during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. During the war, he continued to teach in Beijing and travelled to Japan to attend the Greater East Asia Writers’ conferences. Some of his works from this period call for the Chinese people to support the empire and eradicate Western culture and literature from Asia, but many of his writings also indicate a strong sense of Chinese nationalism.\u0000 This article considers the memories of Zhang, his various intellectual contributions, and his oeuvre, arguing that his collaboration must be understood and contextualized within his intellectual landscape through a research methodology that examines continuities and change across decades of his life and work.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140233363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-04DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000392
Joel Littler
The popular genre of sung and spoken performance—naniwabushi—was the biggest ‘craze’ during the first decade of the twentieth century in Japan. This article uncovers how Miyazaki Tōten (1870–1922), a revolutionary and thinker who became a naniwabushi balladeer, was instrumental in the rise of naniwabushi as a popular art form during the Russo-Japanese transwar period (1902–1909) and used it to engage in a practice of nihilist democracy. In using a transwar frame to examine the content, audiences, and contemporary reports of his performances, this article concludes that Miyazaki Tōten created ‘new’ naniwabushi to deliberately link the techniques and rhetoric of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement from the 1880s to the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). He used naniwabushi to articulate his concepts of autonomous freedom, nihilism, and anarchist communitarianism in a time usually characterized by the heavy suppression of dissent. It counters the impression of the wholesale embrace of nationalism and support for Japanese imperialism and shows how Japan’s urban poor engaged in political discourse through popular entertainment that was critical of Japanese imperialism.
{"title":"A Song of Fallen Flowers: Miyazaki Tōten and the making of naniwabushi as a mode of popular dissent in transwar Japan, 1902–1909","authors":"Joel Littler","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000392","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The popular genre of sung and spoken performance—naniwabushi—was the biggest ‘craze’ during the first decade of the twentieth century in Japan. This article uncovers how Miyazaki Tōten (1870–1922), a revolutionary and thinker who became a naniwabushi balladeer, was instrumental in the rise of naniwabushi as a popular art form during the Russo-Japanese transwar period (1902–1909) and used it to engage in a practice of nihilist democracy. In using a transwar frame to examine the content, audiences, and contemporary reports of his performances, this article concludes that Miyazaki Tōten created ‘new’ naniwabushi to deliberately link the techniques and rhetoric of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement from the 1880s to the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). He used naniwabushi to articulate his concepts of autonomous freedom, nihilism, and anarchist communitarianism in a time usually characterized by the heavy suppression of dissent. It counters the impression of the wholesale embrace of nationalism and support for Japanese imperialism and shows how Japan’s urban poor engaged in political discourse through popular entertainment that was critical of Japanese imperialism.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139384278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-21DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x2300032x
Han Wang
This article examines how individual police officers in China interpret and justify the use of excessive force on social media through their WeChat Subscription Accounts (WSAs). Existing research examines how the police department uses social media to justify deadly force, but overlooks individual officers’ online justifications. Adopting a critical discourse analysis approach, this study analyses 211 articles commenting on a prominent case of police violence in China. The findings shed light on the online voice of Chinese frontline officers, revealing an ideology that defends the use of excessive force. The articles published in WSAs displayed strong empathy towards the involved officer; contested the characterization of the incident as police brutality by police officials, the public, and the media; and employed various strategies to justify the officer’s actions. The discussion section expands on these findings by drawing comparisons to justifications in the United States, emphasizing the distinctive dynamic between individual officers’ online expression and official police discourse in China, and offering insights for scholars examining online expression and digital nationalism in the Chinese context.
{"title":"Justifying the use of excessive force: A critical discourse analysis of Chinese police individual WeChat Subscription Accounts","authors":"Han Wang","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x2300032x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x2300032x","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how individual police officers in China interpret and justify the use of excessive force on social media through their WeChat Subscription Accounts (WSAs). Existing research examines how the police department uses social media to justify deadly force, but overlooks individual officers’ online justifications. Adopting a critical discourse analysis approach, this study analyses 211 articles commenting on a prominent case of police violence in China. The findings shed light on the online voice of Chinese frontline officers, revealing an ideology that defends the use of excessive force. The articles published in WSAs displayed strong empathy towards the involved officer; contested the characterization of the incident as police brutality by police officials, the public, and the media; and employed various strategies to justify the officer’s actions. The discussion section expands on these findings by drawing comparisons to justifications in the United States, emphasizing the distinctive dynamic between individual officers’ online expression and official police discourse in China, and offering insights for scholars examining online expression and digital nationalism in the Chinese context.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139252866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000410
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
{"title":"ASS volume 57 issue 6 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000410","url":null,"abstract":"An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135565279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000409
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
{"title":"ASS volume 57 issue 6 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000409","url":null,"abstract":"An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135565558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-25DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x23000288
Thomas Simpson
Abstract Despite the enormous size and economic and scientific significance of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River, questions of where and what it was generated successive waves of dispute from the mid-eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. Geographical discovery in the eastern Himalayan borderlands neither entailed the application of fixed theories and techniques, nor resulted from consistent flows of information along established channels. Europeans instead understood the region’s rivers in many different ways, influenced by sporadic deluges of data, competing forms of expertise, shifting imperatives of colonial political economy, unsettling encounters with various bodies of water, and heterogeneous Asian knowledge structures. Informants, infrastructures, and cosmologies of often-overlooked communities at imperial margins fundamentally reshaped European knowledge. Under these conditions, practitioners of spatial sciences came to thrive on the proliferation of models and objects of discovery rather than seeking definitive closure.
{"title":"Find the river: Discovering the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra in the age of empire","authors":"Thomas Simpson","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x23000288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x23000288","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Despite the enormous size and economic and scientific significance of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River, questions of where and what it was generated successive waves of dispute from the mid-eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. Geographical discovery in the eastern Himalayan borderlands neither entailed the application of fixed theories and techniques, nor resulted from consistent flows of information along established channels. Europeans instead understood the region’s rivers in many different ways, influenced by sporadic deluges of data, competing forms of expertise, shifting imperatives of colonial political economy, unsettling encounters with various bodies of water, and heterogeneous Asian knowledge structures. Informants, infrastructures, and cosmologies of often-overlooked communities at imperial margins fundamentally reshaped European knowledge. Under these conditions, practitioners of spatial sciences came to thrive on the proliferation of models and objects of discovery rather than seeking definitive closure.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135218798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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