Science in Transnational Settings: Knowledge Exchange in Expeditions in 1920s Republican China

Abstract

The 1920s to the 1930s in Republican China witnessed rising academic interest in exploring Chinas frontier regions, both from abroad and within the nation. This paper examines the nature of foreign exploration in China at that time and the resulting exchange of knowledge that shaped sciences development worldwide. The exchange was facilitated through an elite network of international specialists in Beijing, while Chinese academics and local residents became increasingly indispensable to foreign investigatorsthanks to their local knowledge and control over the sites. Together, they not only contributed to the establishment of indigenous scientific institutions but advanced the geology, archaeology, and paleoanthropology fields internationally. However, the nominally objective work of Western scholars often masked hegemonic inclinations, both explicit and implicit, which tended to vary according to the country sponsoring each investigator. By the late 1920s, rising Chinese objections to foreign exploration caused conflicts between imperialist motivations and nationalistic powers. Thus, it would be equally a reductionist reading of history to simply assume Republican Chinas intelligentsia were the victims of imperialist aggression or to draw a rosy picture of transnational collaboration. This paper suggests that early twentieth-century Republican China offers a rich example of the intersection of scientific internationalism, imperialism, and nationalism.