Seeking papers on application of Chinese natural knowledge

We are seeking several additional participants for a two-part symposium on ‘Putting Chinese natural knowledge to work in the long eighteenth century’ that has been accepted for the 24th ICHSTM in Manchester, July

2013 (http://ichstm2013.com/). The details of the symposium and speakers already signed are available below.

If you are interested in participating in this symposium, please contact Alexandra Cook at cookga@hku.hk before 30 September 2012. Please include a paper title, abstract (max. 2500 characters *including* spaces), email address and affiliation details.

Symposium description:

This symposium looks at the application of Chinese natural knowledge in a range of fields during the long eighteenth century, precisely the era when China closed itself off from foreigners.

Much scholarly attention has been devoted to the early-modern European interest in Chinese philosophy, institutions, history, language, and gardens; similarly, the activities of the Society of Jesus in China, including its work in astronomy, geography, and mathematics, have received considerable attention.

However, there has been less sustained research on the ways in which China contributed to natural knowledge even when contact with outsiders was limited. For example, it has been assumed that botanists of the ‘centre’ such as Linnaeus named Chinese and other plants of the ‘periphery’ with no regard to local Chinese understandings, but this was not in fact the case; a local understanding of a plant’s use, as in the case of ginseng, could still become a global understanding.  A complex process of translation and transformation of natural knowledge was therefore underway even in the relatively limited encounters that were possible after China largely closed itself off from foreign contact in the mid-eighteenth century.

We are particularly interested in how Chinese natural knowledge came to be known and used outside its place of origin in fields such as agronomy, horticulture, forestry, and botany.  Contributions might examine practices in agronomy or horticulture, histories of key commodities, or important figures in the acquisition and transformation of Chinese natural knowledge in the eighteenth century. Given China’s self-imposed isolation in the middle of the century, studies of data collection would be of particular relevance.

Pehr Osbeck’s trip to China (1750-52) and information management in eighteenth-century natural history

Bettina Dietz, Hong Kong Baptist University

As chaplain on a ship of the Swedish East India Company, Linnaeus’

student, Pehr Osbeck, reached south China in 1751. Wherever circumstances permitted, he went on land to collect natural objects and to make natural history observations about a region that was a tabula rasa for natural history in general, and the project of Linnaean botany in particular.

This paper will address how a characteristic feature of the knowledge-making process of eighteenth-century natural history was reflected in the publication of the accumulated material; namely, the insight that in the rapidly growing field of natural history, and botany in particular, projects with large regional, let alone global, aspirations were, by their nature, works in progress. They could not be accomplished by an individual scholar, nor achieved in a single, one-off publication because of the continuing stream of new information and the many inevitable errors that constantly demanded correction.

‘Different orders of secrets? German perceptions of Chinese alchemy and pharmacy’

Hjalmar Fors, University of Uppsala

This paper will discuss perceptions of Chinese alchemy and Chinese medicinal plants among Europeans engaged in alchemy in an around medical and pharmaceutical professions.  It is concerned with views of Chinese

trade- and medicinal secrets, alchemy, and extraordinary inventions.

While the Jesuits were prolific gatherers and publishers of information, their version of China was not the only one propagated in early modern Europe.  The study will concentrate mainly on Protestant, i.e. Lutheran, actors.

German and Scandinavian alchemists, apothecaries, physicians, surgeons and artisans travelled all over the world. They worked for the Russian state, and manned the ships of the Dutch East India Company. The paper will examine to what extent the understanding of Chinese natural knowledge among these groups was conditioned and created by European perceptions, priorities and pursuits. Did cultural conditioning prevent early-modern Germans and Europeans at large from accessing, or even discussing the vast and influential alchemical traditions of East Asia and China on any deeper level?

‘Tea, consumption and natural history in the 18th century’

Hanna Hodacs

What can tea tell us about how knowledge of the natural world moved between China and Europe in the 18th century? Two contradictory stories seem to exist. One is about naturalists failing to orchestrate planned transfers of the tea bush. This species was only successfully re-located in the early 19th century (and initially only within Asia), in spite of multiple attempts to bring seeds and seedlings to Europe and the Atlantic world. Meanwhile, however, there is another story about the exponential growth in knowledge about different varieties and qualities of tea as a consumer good in Europe, in response to the growing imports of Chinese tea by the European East India Companies. In my paper I will analyse the overlapping stories of how knowledge about the tea plants, its cultivation and the different qualities of the finished product moved between Asia and Europe in the 18th century.

Many thanks!

We are seeking several additional participants for a two-part symposium on ‘Putting Chinese natural knowledge to work in the long eighteenth century’ that has been accepted for the 24th ICHSTM in Manchester, July

2013 (http://ichstm2013.com/). The details of the symposium and speakers already signed are available below.

If you are interested in participating in this symposium, please contact Alexandra Cook at cookga@hku.hk before 30 September 2012. Please include a paper title, abstract (max. 2500 characters *including* spaces), email address and affiliation details.

Symposium description:

This symposium looks at the application of Chinese natural knowledge in a range of fields during the long eighteenth century, precisely the era when China closed itself off from foreigners.

Much scholarly attention has been devoted to the early-modern European interest in Chinese philosophy, institutions, history, language, and gardens; similarly, the activities of the Society of Jesus in China, including its work in astronomy, geography, and mathematics, have received considerable attention.

However, there has been less sustained research on the ways in which China contributed to natural knowledge even when contact with outsiders was limited. For example, it has been assumed that botanists of the ‘centre’ such as Linnaeus named Chinese and other plants of the ‘periphery’ with no regard to local Chinese understandings, but this was not in fact the case; a local understanding of a plant’s use, as in the case of ginseng, could still become a global understanding.  A complex process of translation and transformation of natural knowledge was therefore underway even in the relatively limited encounters that were possible after China largely closed itself off from foreign contact in the mid-eighteenth century.

We are particularly interested in how Chinese natural knowledge came to be known and used outside its place of origin in fields such as agronomy, horticulture, forestry, and botany.  Contributions might examine practices in agronomy or horticulture, histories of key commodities, or important figures in the acquisition and transformation of Chinese natural knowledge in the eighteenth century. Given China’s self-imposed isolation in the middle of the century, studies of data collection would be of particular relevance.

Pehr Osbeck’s trip to China (1750-52) and information management in eighteenth-century natural history

Bettina Dietz, Hong Kong Baptist University

As chaplain on a ship of the Swedish East India Company, Linnaeus’

student, Pehr Osbeck, reached south China in 1751. Wherever circumstances permitted, he went on land to collect natural objects and to make natural history observations about a region that was a tabula rasa for natural history in general, and the project of Linnaean botany in particular.

This paper will address how a characteristic feature of the knowledge-making process of eighteenth-century natural history was reflected in the publication of the accumulated material; namely, the insight that in the rapidly growing field of natural history, and botany in particular, projects with large regional, let alone global, aspirations were, by their nature, works in progress. They could not be accomplished by an individual scholar, nor achieved in a single, one-off publication because of the continuing stream of new information and the many inevitable errors that constantly demanded correction.

‘Different orders of secrets? German perceptions of Chinese alchemy and pharmacy’

Hjalmar Fors, University of Uppsala

This paper will discuss perceptions of Chinese alchemy and Chinese medicinal plants among Europeans engaged in alchemy in an around medical and pharmaceutical professions.  It is concerned with views of Chinese

trade- and medicinal secrets, alchemy, and extraordinary inventions.

While the Jesuits were prolific gatherers and publishers of information, their version of China was not the only one propagated in early modern Europe.  The study will concentrate mainly on Protestant, i.e. Lutheran, actors.

German and Scandinavian alchemists, apothecaries, physicians, surgeons and artisans travelled all over the world. They worked for the Russian state, and manned the ships of the Dutch East India Company. The paper will examine to what extent the understanding of Chinese natural knowledge among these groups was conditioned and created by European perceptions, priorities and pursuits. Did cultural conditioning prevent early-modern Germans and Europeans at large from accessing, or even discussing the vast and influential alchemical traditions of East Asia and China on any deeper level?

‘Tea, consumption and natural history in the 18th century’

Hanna Hodacs

What can tea tell us about how knowledge of the natural world moved between China and Europe in the 18th century? Two contradictory stories seem to exist. One is about naturalists failing to orchestrate planned transfers of the tea bush. This species was only successfully re-located in the early 19th century (and initially only within Asia), in spite of multiple attempts to bring seeds and seedlings to Europe and the Atlantic world. Meanwhile, however, there is another story about the exponential growth in knowledge about different varieties and qualities of tea as a consumer good in Europe, in response to the growing imports of Chinese tea by the European East India Companies. In my paper I will analyse the overlapping stories of how knowledge about the tea plants, its cultivation and the different qualities of the finished product moved between Asia and Europe in the 18th century.

 Many thanks!