Diversity and Progress: How Might We Picture Technology across Global Cultures?
On the morning of 28 March 1848, the people of London awoke to an astonishing sight. Moored at the East India Docks was a large Chinese sailing ship, or junk—the Keying. With a displacement of nearly 700 tons and length of 160 feet, the Keying had come from Hong Kong to London by crossing the Indian Ocean, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and sailing up the Atlantic. While Londoners were taken with its size, they were even more impressed with its seaworthiness: as the Illustrated London News (1848) observed, "She proved herself an excellent sea-boat; and her powers of weathering a storm equal, if not surpass, those of vessels of British build." Over the next few months thousands of British flocked to the docks to see this Chinese ship, not just because it was from the exotic Far East, but also because the Keying served as testimony to the power of Chinese shipping and shipbuilding. Just as the British were coming to believe that they ruled the seas, here was a reminder that China could be a potent maritime rival.
I begin with this image of the Keying in London to shake up how we typically think about the course of history and the movement of technology among cultures. Given our commonplace assumptions about Western history and technological development, a Chinese ship should not be sailing up the Thames in 1848: British industrialization and naval power were on the rise, and China was supposed to be on the wane. Even though the Chinese had launched a fleet of great ships to explore the world in the fifteenth [End Page 128] century, the standard story is that intrigue in the imperial court had brought an end to China's efforts at exploration and trade (Menzies, 2002). Yet here was the Keying at the East India Docks, suggesting that we need to examine our assumptions about the role of technology in history; technology did not always move from the West to the East, from industrial to nonindustrial economies.
But it is not just our assumptions about the past that need to be revised. As Japan, China, and India grow in industrial power and reshape global markets in the twenty-first century, historians and policy makers need to rethink their assumptions about technological diffusion. Already, vast amounts of goods and services move East to West, leading one to wonder if before long, ideas and innovation in technology will originate in China and India and then diffuse to Europe and America. Just as the British had to make sense of the Keying sailing up the Thames, so Americans and Europeans now must make sense of the container ships docking at Long Beach and Rotterdam, disgorging thousands of tons of products from China every day (Donovan & Bonney, 2006).
To revise our thinking about the movement of technology across history and cultures, we should consider our ideas about diversity and progress as they relate to technology. On the one hand, thanks to the work of anthropologists and historians of technology, we can appreciate the remarkable and diverse ways in which people across a variety of cultures use technology to shape their lives (Edgerton, 2007). From the pyramids of ancient Egypt to the boats of Pacific Islanders to the cell-phone networks established throughout the world today, it is clear that humans have long used technology in response to their needs, wishes, and dreams. Both historical and contemporary examples amply demonstrate that technology is not something uniquely created by the industrialized West; one need only recall that paper, the magnetic compass, and gunpowder all moved East to West along the Silk Road during the late Middle Ages. Hence, we need to recognize diversity in the creation and diffusion of technology.
Yet, on the other hand, many strongly believe that technology is essential to improving living conditions around the world...
