Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860–1920 by Shellen Xiao Wu (review)

The last two years have seen the publication of two important monographs on geology and its role in China’s modernization. While Shellen Wu’s account contrasts with Grace Shen’s more explicit rejection of the colonial model of scientific transmission (Grace Shen, Unearthing the Nation, 2014), in Empires of Coal Wu foregrounds the role of German imperialism in shaping Chinese conceptualizations of the underground. She argues that the Qing state’s embrace of the central role of coal in industrialization marked China’s entry into “an international community of nations, which viewed control over natural resources as an irrefutable part of sovereign power and responsibility” (p. 31). Wu presents a rich picture of the translation of science as a social activity, and vividly demonstrates the intricate ties between the activities and ideas of German experts and the nationalist aspirations of late Qing policymakers and scholars. Wu responds seriously to Benjamin Elman’s call to revise our stereotypical impressions of the Self-Strengthening Movement (1861–1895) as a failure narrative (Benjamin Elman, “Naval Warfare,” 2003). In this revisionist account, the Qing dynasty emerges as a “far more successful empire than has been acknowledged” which attempted “direct state intervention and control over the exploitation of natural resources” (p. 193) by the last decade of its existence in the 1900s.

Business historians will find most interesting Wu’s description of the role of German technicians and engineers in Chinese businesses (chapter 4), and the interactions between new ideas of resources and German imperial expansion in East Asia (chapter 5). With the former, the overproduction of technical graduates from German institutions in the late nineteenth century led to an aggressive effort on the part of the Bismarckian state to promote German candidates in the global market for technical expertise. The success of Germans in capturing key technical positions at major Chinese state-run enterprises in turn contributed to the sale of German machinery and supplies. With the forced lease of Qingdao (Kiautschou) in 1898, Germany’s goal became one of controlling the mining resources of the port’s hinterland in the Shandong peninsula to supply the rapidly-growing Shanghai market, which was dependent on overseas coal. To illustrate the scale of German interest, German investments in Qingdao exceeded 200 million marks ($50 million) (p. 149), which far exceeded the equivalent sum for Africa.

By stressing that the Germans and the Chinese “operated with essentially the same motivation” (p. 150), namely the control over mineral resources, Wu presents a convincing critique of nationalist historiography that sees the eventual demise of German colonial agencies such as the Shandong Bergbau Gesellschaft (Shandong Mining Company) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Bergbau u. Industrie in Auslande (German Company for Industry and Mining Abroad) as representing a Chinese victory. Rather, Chinese successes in reclaiming mining rights in Shandong were mostly superficial, and the focus on nationalism obscures important global connections which late nineteenth-century ideas of industrialization highlighted. Other chapters in the book describe the intellectual history of mining in China (chapter 1), the pioneering activities of Prussian geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen which set the framework for Chinese geology (chapter 2), efforts to translate European and German geology into Chinese (chapter 3), and a concluding chapter that points to the legacy of von Richthofen’s geology as a stimulus for the activities of the China Geological Survey in the early twentieth century (chapter 6).

Although German participation in the production of knowledge and the Chinese market for foreign experts was often backed by the German state (pp. 102–03), prior to the German seizure of Qingdao in 1898, it is arguable that German activities in China were as much a case of participation in the open market for expertise as it was one of direct imperialism. In this respect, they were similar to Sino-German...