John Fryer: The Introduction of Western Science and Technology into Nineteenth-Century China

1968 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 688
Author(s):  
A. Feuerwerker ◽  
Adrian Arthur Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Western Science ◽  
John Fryer

scholarly journals From a Confucian Literati to a Military General: Li Hung Chang’s Views of Western Technology (1885-1896)

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Haixia Wang
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
State Power ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Historical Time

<p class="1Body">This paper focuses on Li Hung Chang (1823-1901)’s visit to England and America in 1896, to rethink and revaluate the importat role Li played at that historical time. Li Hung Chang toured Europe and America in 1896 as an imperial envoy of the first rank. Although some aspects of Li’s career and evaluation have been given monographic treatment, there is yet little study on his comments on his attitudes toward Western science and technology. This paper augues that if modernization is a matter of modern state power as an army, navy, or diplomatic corps, then Li was certainly a modernizer. But if modernization is a deeper process of organizational and institutional change, Li was not a determined modernizer. In fact, Li relied heavily on patronage even when he could exercise legitimate political power, in order to adovocate Self-Strengthening Movement.</p>

Converting the Hospital: British Missionaries and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Madagascar

Itinerario ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Mission Hospital

This paper examines the attempt of British missionaries on Madagascar to use medicine and the mission hospital as a way to convert the Malagasy people during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In their attempt to educate the Malagasy about the benefits of Western civilization, which was often defined through science as well as Christianity, missionaries were challenged by Malagasy culture and the local environment. To counter the ability of the Malagasy to challenge Western methods through their cultural beliefs and healing practices and so convert the Malagasy to Western ways, British missionaries had to carve out a space isolated from the Malagasy environment. Medicine, particularly the mission hospital, offered a space to champion Western science and Christianity. In their attempt to bring civilization to Madagascar, missionaries directly tied together science and Christianity while domesticating the space of the hospital.

scholarly journals Plantation Indigo and Synthetic Indigo: European Planters and the Redefinition of a Colonial Commodity

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 407-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prakash Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Industrial Manufacturing ◽  
Synthetic Product ◽  
Mode Of Production ◽  
Successful Integration ◽  
Plantation System

AbstractAs the nineteenth century drew to a close, European planters manufacturing indigo on colonial plantations in Bengal faced a major challenge from synthetic indigo. Synthetic indigo was a symbol of the successful integration of chemistry into industrial manufacturing that had occurred in the second half of the century, and it threatened to displace the colonial commodity. It also fundamentally challenged the colonial program of “improvement” that agricultural indigo represented, and the mode of production consisting of stewardship of plants and the extraction of a commodity within the plantation system. The planters pushed back on the synthetic product by emphasizing the merits of agricultural indigo. As part of this resistance, they claimed that the plant-based dye was “natural” and superior because it was produced through agriculture, and they pointed to the grounding of their methods of production in the layout of land and farming. They argued that when setting their product's value the market should give weight to its unique attributes and the extraordinary quality that nature had bred into the dye. This study reads in this response a critique of the growing ties between manufacturing and science and technology. The planters' critique was not a straightforward critique of the vicissitudes of market, but rather a fight to retain a place for the sort of exchanges and value that plant indigo growers were accustomed to dealing in. They viewed plantation manufacturing as wholesome and organic, and defended it in the name of nature.

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