| This dissertation examines the research of British naturalists in China in relation to the history of natural history, of scientific imperialism, and of Sino-Western relations by tracing the scientific activities from a long historical perspective and in a broad cultural context. The dissertation attempts to explain how British naturalists in China and their Chinese “associates” explored, studied, and represented China's natural world within the social and cultural context of late Qing China. At one level, it seeks to reconstruct and describe the purpose, process, results, and institutional base of the naturalists' research in a China that was beginning to come to grips with Western powers. I examine the boundary drawing and power negotiations among different groups involved in the activities. At another level the dissertation tries to trace and tease out the strands of knowledge traditions that converged in the scientific representations of the natural history of China. It unfolds the interplay between the discourse of natural history and that of practical knowledge (e.g. horticulture), Chinese export art, Chinese folk knowledge, and sinology. My ultimate goal is to explain the formation of scientific practice and knowledge in cultural borderlands during a critical period of Sino-Western relations.; The first part of the dissertation discusses the research of British naturalists in Canton, the only Chinese port open to Western maritime trade between 1757 and 1842. I argue that the context of the China trade is crucial to our understanding of British investigations into China's natural world. The second part covers the period from the opening of the treaty ports in the wake of the Opium War (1839–42) to the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. I identify and examine three prominent and interrelated dimensions of British research into China's natural history, namely, the formation of an empire of scientific information, the co-development of research in sinology and natural history, and the increasing activity of exploration and fieldwork. |
