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Introduction

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Western Technology and China’s Industrial Development

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Abstract

In 1842, British guns and ships defeated the Qing dynasty of China in what has since been known as the Opium War. Given the superiority of Western armament, one might have presumed that the experience would have prompted the Qing government to acquire the new technology which played a significant role in its defeat. Yet, the Qing government only did so after another Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s. Historians blame that delay on the Qing government being in its decline, inept in facing up to the technological challenge. That argument culminated in John King Fairbank’s Western stimulus-China response model and dominated the Modern Chinese History field before it gave way to the skepticism bred by the distrust of “Orientalism”. The contemporary China historian is more likely to seek an explanation for Qing China’s woeful experiences in the hands of foreign powers in the internal socio-economic or political dynamics. Nevertheless, elements of political ideology, sometimes referred to as Confucianism, education, politics, and economy have not yielded an explanation either for Qing China’s technological backwardness or for its tardiness in taking up the new technology coming from the West. This book is driven by an urge to break that impasse. While, like many China historians, I do not accept that the technological imbalance of the mid-nineteenth century between China and the West necessarily reflected backwardness that may be generalized to many other aspects of Chinese culture, I begin from the position that that imbalance is undeniable. China historians, much like some of the Qing dynasty officials they criticize, do not seem to appreciate the fact that the history of technology has to be studied in relation to its techno-scientific settings.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Prominent examples are Ssu-yü Teng and John King Fairbank, China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954); and John Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).

  2. 2.

    Joseph Needham, “Pre-Natal History of the Steam-Engine,” Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 35:1 (1962), pp. 3–58.

  3. 3.

    For the history of the cylinder-piston pump, see Graham Hollister-Short, “On the Origins of the Suction Lift Pump,” History of Technology 15 (1993), pp. 57–75; Graham Hollister-Short, “The Formation of Knowledge Concerning Atmospheric Pressure and Steam Power in Europe from Aleotti (1589) to Papin (1690),” History of Technology 25 (2004), pp. 137–150; M. T. Wright, “On the Lift Pump,” History of Technology 18 (1996), pp. 13–37; H. Floris Cohen, “Inside Newcomen’s Fire Engine, or: The Scientific Revolution and the Rise of the Modern World,” History of Technology 25 (2004), pp. 111–132.

  4. 4.

    L.T.C. Rolt, Tools for the Job: A History of Machine Tools to 1950 (London: HMSO Publications Centre, 1986); Nathan Rosenberg, “Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry,” The Journal of Economic History 23:4 (1963), pp. 414–443; Robert S. Woodbury, Studies in the History of Machine Tools (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1973). The idea of interchangeable parts was invented by the French general Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval, who intended to standardize weapons with standardized parts in 1765. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson, then the United States Minister to France, witnessed the French gunsmith Honoré Blanc assembling a musket from uniformly produced parts and saw the potential of interchangeability in arms production. He brought the idea to the United States. However, the realization of interchangeability was only realized by the increasingly high precision of the late nineteenth century machine tools. See Ken Alder, Engineering Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France 1663–1815 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, Maryland, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).

  5. 5.

    R.F. Tylecote, A History of Metallurgy (London: Institute of Materials, 1992); R. Chadwick, “The Working of Metals,” in Charles Singer et al. (eds.) A History of Technology vol. 5 The Late Nineteenth Century, c1850–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 605–635.

  6. 6.

    An overview of the history can be found in Ken Baynes and Francis Pugh, The Art of the Engineer (Guildford, England, 1981). For the role of technical drawings in manufacturing, see David McGee, “From Craftsmanship to Draftsmanship: Naval Architecture and the Three Traditions of Early Modern Design,” Technology and Culture 40 (1999), pp. 209–236; Ken Alder, Engineering Revolution: Arms, and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 136–143. For the development of technical drawing techniques, see Peter Jeffrey Booker, A History of Engineer Drawing (London: Northgate Publishing Co., 1979).

  7. 7.

    D.S.L. Cardwell, From Watt to Clausius: The Rise of Thermodynamics in the Early Industrial Age (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971); Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998).

  8. 8.

    Catherin Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China 1550–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

  9. 9.

    Paul Rule, “Towards a History of the Chinese Rites Controversy,” in David E. Mungello (ed.), The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1994), pp. 249–266.

  10. 10.

    Hua Jueming, Zhongguo gudai jinshu jishu: tong he tie zaojiu de wenming (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, 1999).

  11. 11.

    I am grateful to Drs. Wang Cheng-hua and Lai Hui-min of Academia Sinica and Ms. Chang Li-tuan of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, who point out to me that artisans of the Qing court could have used the lathe to produce delicate ball-shaped objects. Unfortunately, the tools are still nowhere to be seen. It is possible that the Jesuits and the European artisans who served in the imperial court introduced machine tools to imperial workshop artisans. Catherine Pagani has documented the Jesuits and European clocksmiths had produced clocks and watches for the Qing court and officials. However, she does not discuss the clock making tools. Chinese artisans do not seem to have further developed the principle of the lathe in producing larger metal machine parts. Catherine Pagani, Eastern Magnificence and European Ingenuity: Clocks of Late Imperial China (Ann Arbor, 2001).

  12. 12.

    Joanna Waley-Cohen, “China and Western Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century,” American Historical Review 98:5 (1993), pp. 1525–1544.

  13. 13.

    Chouban yiwu shimo, Xianfeng reign, 71:12a.

  14. 14.

    Chouban yiwu shimo, Xianfeng reign, 71:17ff; 72:9b–10b; 72:11a. The complete title of the Zongli yamen was Zongli geguo tongshang shiwu yamen (the Office for General Management of Trade and Affairs with All Countries).

  15. 15.

    The phrase “self-strengthening” is taken from the Book of Change (Yi jing): “The movement of heaven is full of power. Thus, the gentleman strengthens himself ceaselessly.” Kwang-ching Liu, “The Beginnings of China’s Modernization,” in Samuel C. Chu and Kwang-Ching Liu (eds.), Li Hung-chang and China’s Early Modernization (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 5–6.

  16. 16.

    Chouban yiwu shimo, Tongzhi reign, 25:10b.

  17. 17.

    Chouban yiwu shimo, Tongzhi reign, 23:1a.

  18. 18.

    Knight Biggerstaff, The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961) and Xiong Yuezhi, Xixue dongjian yu wanqing shehui (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1994).

  19. 19.

    Xiong Yuezhi, Xixue dongjian yu wanqing shehui, pp. 493–550; Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900, pp. 360–368.

  20. 20.

    For the rise of regionalism, see Stanley Spector, Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Regionalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964) and Franz Michael, “State and Society in Nineteenth Century China,” World Politics 7:3 (1955), pp. 419–433.

  21. 21.

    Zhongguo shixuehui (ed.), Yangwu yundong, vol. 4 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1961), p. 14.

  22. 22.

    Although some senior officials rejected the idea of railway building per se, Li Hognzhang and Shen Baozhen, then the director of the Fuzhou Navy yard, considered that China must adopt railways. Chouban yiwu shimo, Tongzhi reign, 53:5a; Chouban yiwu shimo, Tongzhi reign, 55:13a–14a.

  23. 23.

    Throughout the 1870s, the visibility of the newspaper’s advertisements for various machinery, especially that for the cotton spinning and weaving industry, was high. The number of similar advertisements significantly decreased in the 1880s but the discussion of industry surfaced again in the early 1890s.

  24. 24.

    Kwang-ching Liu, “Steamship Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century China,” Journal of Asian Studies 18:4 (1959), pp. 438–439; Wang Jingyu, “Shijiu shiji waiguo qinhua qiye zhong de huashang fugu huodong,” in Huang Yiping, Zhongguo jindai jingjishi lunwen xuan (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1985), p. 197.

  25. 25.

    For more details, see Chi-kong Lai, “Li Hung-chang and Modern Enterprise: The China Merchants’ Company, 1872–1885,” in Samuel C. Chu & Kwang-ching Liu (eds), Li Hung-chang and China’s Early Modernization, pp. 216–247.

  26. 26.

    John Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, 1839–1895 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).

  27. 27.

    Li Hongzhang, Li Wenzhong gong quanji, memorials, 24:1ff.

  28. 28.

    It was common that Chinese merchants became shareholders in foreign-run shipping companies. Li Hongzhang considered that such behaviours did not conform to government policy. Li Honghzang, Li Wenzhong gong quanji, Memorial, 25:4a–5a.

  29. 29.

    Sun Yutang (ed.), Zhongguo jindai gongyeshi ziliao diyi ji 1840–1895 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1979, reprint of the 1957 edition), p. 567.

  30. 30.

    Apart from the China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company and the Kaiping Mines, the Shanghai Cotton Cloth Company was established through the same process. The promotion of the company started in 1878 but went into production in 1890. Zhang Guohui, Yangwu yundong yu jindai qiye (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1979), pp. 272–279.

  31. 31.

    Yangwu yundong, vol. 7, p. 203.

  32. 32.

    In 1896, in an attempt to avert the fate of the undertaking, the government’s put it under the management of Sheng Xuanhui, one of most successful Chinese entrepreneurs in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. However, Sheng and his foreign technicians only discovered the chemical composition of the Daye iron ore in 1904 and then started to reequip ironworks. In 1908, Shen merged the ironworks with the Daye Iron Ore and the Pingxiang Coal Mine, Hubei that provided coals to the ironworks and formed the Hanyeping Coal and Iron Company. For detailed discussions, see Albert Feuerwerker, “China’s Nineteenth Century Industrialization: the Case of the Hanyeping Coal and Iron Company, Limited,” in C. D. Cowan (ed.), The Economic Development of China and Japan: Studies in Economic History and Political Economy (New York: Praeger, 1964), pp. 79–110; Quan Hansheng, Hanyeping gongsi shilue (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1972).

  33. 33.

    Kwang-ching Liu and Ting-yee Kuo, “Self-strengthening: the Pursuit of Western Technology,” in Cambridge History of China vol. 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 491–542.

  34. 34.

    Scott L. Montgomery, Science in Translation: Movements of Knowledge through Cultures and Time (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000).

  35. 35.

    David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 139–142, 147–150.

  36. 36.

    Nathan Rosenberg, “The International Transfer of Technology: Implications for the Industrialized Countries,” in Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 245–279; Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini (eds.), Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europe, 1850–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

  37. 37.

    Phyllis Deane, “The Role of Capital in the Industrial Revolution,” Exploration in Economic History, 10 (1972), pp. 349–364; Francois Crouzet, “Capital Formation in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution,” in idem, Britain Ascendant: Comparative Studies in Franco-British Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 149–212; Rondo Cameron (ed.), Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967); Kozo Yamamura, “Japan 1868–1930: A Revised View,” in Steen Tolliday, The Economic Development of Modern Japan, 1868–1945: From the Meiji Restoration to the Second World War (Cheltenham: Elgar, 2001) vol. 2, pp. 168–187. More detailed discussion can be found in Rondo Cameron (ed.), Financing Industrialization, 2 vols. (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1992).

  38. 38.

    Masayoshi Sugimoto and David L. Swain, Science and Culture in Traditional Japan (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1989); Grant K. Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 1600–1853 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000); A. Querido, “Dutch Transfer of Knowledge Through Deshima: The Role of the Dutch in Japan’s Scientific and Technological Development During the Edo Period,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 3rd series, 18 (1983), pp. 17–37.

  39. 39.

    Hazel Jones, Live Machine: Hired Foreigners and Meiji Japan (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980). For the role of the education system in Japan’s technological development, see Toshio Toyoda (ed.) Vocational Education in the Industrialization of Japan (Tokyo, United Nations University Press, 1987).

  40. 40.

    Thomas C. Smith, Political Change and Industrial Development in Japan: Government Enterprise, 1868–1880 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968, reprint of 1955 edition); Tetsuro Nakaoka, “The European Industrial Economy and the Endogenous Development in Asia”, in Yamada Keiji (ed.), The Transfer of Science and Technology Between Europe and Asia (Kyoto & Osaka: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 1994); Kozo Yamamura, “Success Illgotten? The Role of Militarism in Japan’s Technological Progress,” The Journal of Economic History 31:1 (1977), pp. 113–135.

  41. 41.

    John R. Bartholomew, Formation of Science in Japan: Building A Research Tradition (Yale: Yale University Press, 1989); Richard Rubinger, “Education: From One Room to One System,” in Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman (eds.), Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 195–230; Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan: From the Seventeenth to the Twenty-first Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 71–157; Toshio Shishido, “Japanese Industrial Development and Policies for Science and Technology,” Science, New Series 219:4582 (1983), pp. 259–264; G.C. Allen, “Education, Science, and Economic Development of Japan,” Oxford Review of Education 4:1 (1978), pp. 27–36.

  42. 42.

    Thomas L. Kennedy, The Arms of Kiangnan: Modernization in the Chinese Ordnance Industry, 1860–1895 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1978); David Pong, Shen Pao-chen and China’s Modernization in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Basidi (Marianne Bastid), “Fuzhou chuanzheng ju de jishu yinjin,” Chuanshi yanjiu No.10 (1996), pp. 104–114.

  43. 43.

    Li Peide, “Lun Jiangnan zhizaoju juwu fenjia de jingyingshi yiyi,” Jindaishi xuekan 2 (2015), pp. 1–9; Jiangnan zhaochuanchangshi bianxiezhu, Jiangnan zhaochuanchang shi (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1975).

  44. 44.

    Zhang Zigao and Yang Gen, “Cong Huaxue chujie he Huaxue jianyuan kan Zhongguo zaoqi fanyi de huaxue shuji he huaxue minci,” in Yang Gen (ed.), Xu Shou he Zhongguo jindai huaxue shi (Beijing: Kexue jishu wenxian chubanshe, 1986), pp. 105–118; Zhang Hao, “Zai chuantong yu chuangxin zhijian: shijiu shiji de zhongwen huaxue yuansu minci,” Huaxue jiaoyu 59:1 (2001), pp. 51–59; Wang Yangzong, “A New Inquiry into the Translation of Chemical Terms by John Fryer and Xu Shou,” in Michael Lackner, Iwo Amelung, and Joachim Kurtz (eds.) New Terms for New Idea: Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 271–283.

  45. 45.

    Feng Shanshan, “Jindai xifang rexue zai Zhongguo de chuanbo, 1855–1902,”, Ph.D. thesis, Inner Mongolia Normal University (2019).

  46. 46.

    The word “movement” (yundong) as used in the phrase, “Self-strengthening Movement” (Ziqiang yundong), was introduced in the 1930s, most prominently by Jiang Tingfu. In his Modern Chinese History (Zhongguo jindai shi, Changsha, Hunan: Wenshi yanjiu hui, 1938), Jiang devoted a chapter to “Self-strengthening and its failure,” to present self-strengthening as modernization (jindai hua). He ascribed the failure of the movement to conservatism. Jiang eloquently presented the Self-strengthening Movement and its framework as a historical fact. See also Wang Xinzhong, “Fuzhou chuanchang zhi yange,” The Tsing Hua Journal 8:1 (1932), p. 6. and Jiang Tingfu, “Zhongguo yu jindai shijie de da bianju,” The Tsing Hua Journal 9:4 (1934), pp. 825–826.

  47. 47.

    Ian Inkster, “Prometheus Bound: Technology and Industrialization in Japan, China and India Prior to 1914 – A Political Economy Approach,” Annals of Science 45 (1988), p. 400.

  48. 48.

    Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1500–1900.

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    Hsien-ch’un Wang

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Wang, Hc. (2022). Introduction. In: Western Technology and China’s Industrial Development. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59813-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59813-4_1

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