43,706 research outputs found
‘Throwing Light on Natural Laws’:Meteorology on the China coast, 1869-1912
No full textThis essay outlines the development of the modern meteorological infrastructure in China, and the competing agendas of different centres for metrological research and weather forecasting between 1869 and the fall of the Qing dynasty. It explores how Britons and Americans in Chinese government employ in the Maritime Customs Service worked with Jesuit scientists at Shanghai’s Zikawei Observatory to establish a scientific as well as a practical meteorological system in China, and it looks at how both groups engaged with the ambitions and pretensions of British colonial science, notably in the British colony at Hong Kong. The paper outlines the processes of collection, analysis and dissemination of data to scientists and to mariners, and the inter-related roles of new technology -- notably the telegraph and telephone – and new infrastructures – notably the lighthouse network developed by the Customs after 1869. Bringing China within the field of scientific knowledge by generating and disseminating data, and establishing an effective storm warning system for China coast shipping, was the objective of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Customs, as he developed the system. The data generated is important today for climate scientists, and the story of its development provides a case study of the growth of a transnational scientific network in the late nineteenth century, and the incorporation of information and data from China into the wider domain of Western science
Q&A: Robert Bickers, Author of The Scramble for China
No full textSeveral months ago, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914, Robert Bickers’ fascinating new book. Published in the United Kingdom and most other parts of the world in February, this work will be released in the United States later this month. In anticipation, I caught up with Robert (an old friend and sometime co-author of mine, as well as a past contributor to China Beat) and asked him some questions about the book. A stylishly written and carefully researched work, it contains everything from lively accounts of battles to insightful ruminations on the very different ways some pivotal events and incidents (e.g., the looting of artifacts from Beijing palaces) are remembered inside and outside of China. It also includes an illuminating discussion of the origins and spread of the treaty-port system. This makes it fitting that he sent his answers to the questions I emailed him (I only caught up with him virtually, as he was across the Pacific from me during our interview) while gazing out at the Huangpu River, the most important waterway in Shanghai, the most celebrated and notorious of China’s onetime treaty ports
Forthcoming conference of Prof. Robert Bickers at the ENS – IAO on March, 26, 2013
No full textPre-conference information. Prof. Robert Bickers (Bristol University) will give a conference on March, 26, 2013 at the ENS – IAO (Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon – Institute for East Asian Studies). The program and details about the conference will soon be delivered. Prof. Bickers: a specialist in modern China dedicated to visual history Prof. Robert Bickers (Bristol University) specialises in modern China, and the history of colonialism, and in particular of the British empire and its relat..
Britain and China, and India, 1830s-1940s
No full textBritish China was in origin an off-shoot of British India, most notoriously it was the prime market for India opium, and through the tea trade a key factor in British Indian revenues. This essay explores the history of this triangular relationship, and the ways in which the British story in China between the 1830s and 1947 was shaped by its Indian roots and connections. Opium was supplanted after the 1910s by imperial security considerations as the key factor in the relationship. Throughout the period the agency of individual migrants from the subcontinent remained important in how the relationship functioned. By examining Sino-British relations through this prism, the chapter demonstrates the complexity and multifaceted nature of what was always much more than a ‘bilateral’ relationship
"To Serve And Not To Rule":British Protestant Missions and Chinese Nationalism, 1927-1931
No full textRobert Bickers et Christian Henriot (dir.) New Frontiers : Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842-1933
No full textRoux Alain. Robert Bickers et Christian Henriot (dir.) New Frontiers : Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842-1933 . In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 57ᵉ année, N. 4, 2002. pp. 1092-1094
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