Panel 10: Transformed Epistemology in Pre-modern and Modern China

Chair: Sijian Wang, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Panelists

Emma Hsu, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, “Fractal Episteme: Viewing the Macartney Mission with Distance and Angle”

Guanran Cui, Binghamton University, "Understanding Disease: Modern Medical Practice in China’s Plague Pandemic, 1917-1918."

Nakota DiFonzo, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, “For a World in the Making: Teaching Internationalism at the University of Shanghai, 1907–1952”

Sijian Wang, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, “Floating Frontiers: The Miaodao Archipelago and the Shaping of the Bohai Sea in the Qing Dynasty”

In the Theaetetus, Socrates expresses his epistemological confusion to Theodorus as follows: “Now this is just where my difficulty comes in. I can’t get a proper grasp of what on earth knowledge really is. Could we manage to put it into words?”1 In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault proposed that “knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised.”2 Socrates’ confusion and Foucault’s assertion resonate with the core question of this panel: How have imperialism, colonialism, early globalization, and modernization reshaped people’s understanding of the world, the formulation of knowledge, and the ways of acquiring knowledge in China during the 18th to 20th centuries? The papers of four participants aim to explore transitioning China and the intermingling of Eastern and Western perspectives through scientific, disease, educational and maritime lenses.

Emma Hsu’s research is part of a larger project in the “worlding” of East-West encounters, where “worlding” is defined as the ontological potential of “elsewhere” and “otherwise.” Her paper seeks to add new perspectives to the body of knowledge produced by Lord Macartney after his failed mission to the Qing empire in 1793.

Tapping into underutilized archival materials written by James Dinwiddie, the paper argues irregular and subjective experiences ultimately reflect an infinitely complex yet similar pattern. Through Dinwiddie’s added angle as a natural philosopher, his private daily journal can be compared against Macartney’s diaries. Additionally, temporal distance from the events is applied by comparing Dinwiddie’s records with the biographical memoir published in 1868 by his grandson, William J. Proudfoot. Combining the three perspectives, the paper attempts to contrast the similar yet subjective accounts to tease out differences in belief, specifically their attitudes, desires, and intentions. Zooming in on the moment of departure from China with the tripartite sources, this paper attempts to create space for the “otherwise” by highlighting the contesting nature of multiple subjective accounts.

A branch extended from the epistemology of science is the understanding of disease in pre-modern China. Guanran Cui’s research will focus on the 1917-1918 plague pandemic that broke out in Inner Mongolia and spread to Shanxi Province. In the early years of the Republic of China (ROC), although the central government enacted regulations governing the medical autopsy and the prevention of epidemics, the authority belonged to local governors. Therefore, the factional politics and local interests affected the understanding of the disease and ensuing reactions. In addition, many medical practitioners with modern medical concepts viewed people who did not comply with mandatory prevention measures as “ignorant of science”, while the modern measures rely heavily on state’s control over infected zones rather than scientific cures. A more essential case is a violent conflict at Fengzhen Town due to a non-compliant autopsy, which was conducted by an American pathologist who worked for the Rockefeller Foundation. Gazing upon “backward bodies”, the foundation’s global medical initiative certainly epitomized the medical modernity of subject-object. In conclusion, diseases have complicated social mechanisms, in which the inherent paradox of medical modernity plays a major role.

Education in 20th century China was directly related to the reformulation of epistemology. In Nakota DiFonzo’s article, it will be argued that the University of Shanghai (known in Chinese as Hujiang Daxue), an American Baptist university that operated in Shanghai from 1906 to 1952, crafted courses, promoted intercollegiate activities, and supported clubs on its campus to prepare its students to be informed and intentional participants in a Western-defined global society. This preparation wasespecially emphasized through curricula and events designed to train students to act as liaisons between China and the West. He employs English and Chinese archival sources from the United States and Taiwan, such as course catalogs, administrative meeting minutes, professors’ correspondence, student surveys, and newspaper articles to articulate the dimensions of this argument. This research aims to add contours to the current discourse on colonialism in China by demonstrating that, although Western colonialism undermined and oppressed significant numbers of Chinese, certain Western institutions, such as the University of Shanghai, were globalizing institutions that enabled some Chinese to become active actors in the transforming political, economic, and epistemological systems that characterized early and mid-twentieth-century China.

Spatial understanding is a crucial aspect of epistemology and is multidimensional. Sijian Wang’s research attempts to demonstrate how, in the construction and development of the Qing dynasty empire, official spatial discourse intertwined with local spatial knowledge, particularly how this is reflected in the understanding and description of a series of islands at the boundary between today’s Bohai and Yellow Seas. On Ming and Qing maps, the archipelago stretching between the Shandong Peninsula and the Liaodong Peninsula appears intermittently and is depicted differently on each map. These small islands at the margins of the Qing empire did not receive adequate attention. In popular writings, these islands are crucial maritime navigation markers and significant fishing grounds. During the transformation of the Qing Empire in the late 19th century, the state’s spatial understanding merged with local knowledge, utilizing European cartography to establish the Miaodao Archipelago’s position and the shape of the Bohai Sea. Influenced by international law and maritime rights, establishing the nation-state, driven by coastal defense and frontier construction objectives, reshaped the understanding of the ocean’s marginal spaces.