Unearthing the Nation
Modern Geology and Nationalism in Republican China
272 pages
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3 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2013
Questions of national identity have long dominated China’s political, social, and cultural horizons. So in the early 1900s, when diverse groups in China began to covet foreign science in the name of new technology and modernization, questions of nationhood came to the fore. In Unearthing the Nation, Grace Yen Shen uses the development of modern geology to explore this complex relationship between science and nationalism in Republican China.
Shen shows that Chinese geologists—in battling growing Western and Japanese encroachment of Chinese sovereignty—faced two ongoing challenges: how to develop objective, internationally recognized scientific authority without effacing native identity, and how to serve China when China was still searching for a stable national form. Shen argues that Chinese geologists overcame these obstacles by experimenting with different ways to associate the subjects of their scientific study, the land and its features, with the object of their political and cultural loyalties. This, in turn, led them to link national survival with the establishment of scientific authority in Chinese society.
The first major history of modern Chinese geology, Unearthing the Nation introduces the key figures in the rise of the field, as well as several key organizations, such as the Geological Society of China, and explains how they helped bring Chinese geology onto the world stage.
The first major history of modern Chinese geology, Unearthing the Nation introduces the key figures in the rise of the field, as well as several key organizations, such as the Geological Society of China, and explains how they helped bring Chinese geology onto the world stage.
Zuoyue Wang, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
“Grace Yen Shen’s Unearthing the Nation is a rich, innovative, and finely crafted historical study of Chinese geology and society during the Republican period. It creatively combines political history, cultural analyses, and the history of science in tracing the development of the Chinese geoscientific community and related institutions, with special attention to the transnational dimensions of the enterprise. It will be recognized as a major contribution not only to the history of Chinese geology but also to modern Chinese history and the history of modern science in general.”
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