Knowing Manchuria

"Knowing Manchuria places the creation of knowledge about nature at the center of our understanding of one of the world's most contested borderlands. At the intersection of China, Russia, Korea, and Mongolia, Manchuria is known as a site of war and environmental extremes, where projects of political control intersected with projects designed to make sense of Manchuria's multiple environments. Covering over 500,000 square miles (comparable in size to all the land east of the Mississippi) Manchuria's landscapes included temperate rain forests, deserts, prairies, cultivated plains, wetlands, and Siberian taiga. Ruth Rogaski reveals how paleontologists and indigenous shamans, and many others, made sense of the Manchurian frontier. She uncovers how natural knowledge and thus "the nature of Manchuria" itself changed over time, from a sacred "land where the dragon arose" to a global epicenter of contagious disease; from a tragic "wasteland" to an abundant granary that nurtured the hope of a nation"--

Making sense of nature in one of the world’s most contested borderlands. According to Chinese government reports, hundreds of plague-infected rodents fell from the skies over Gannan county on an April night in 1952. Chinese scientists determined that these flying voles were not native to the region, but were vectors of germ warfare, dispatched over the border by agents of imperialism. Mastery of biology had become a way to claim political mastery over a remote frontier. Beginning with this bizarre incident from the Korean War, Knowing Manchuria places the creation of knowledge about nature at the center of our understanding of a little-known but historically important Asian landscape. At the intersection of China, Russia, Korea, and Mongolia, Manchuria is known as a site of war and environmental extremes, where projects of political control intersected with projects designed to make sense of Manchuria’s multiple environments. Covering more than 500,000 square miles, Manchuria’s landscapes include temperate rainforests, deserts, prairies, cultivated plains, wetlands, and Siberian taiga. With analysis spanning the seventeenth century to the present day, Ruth Rogaski reveals how an array of historical actors—Chinese poets, Manchu shamans, Russian botanists, Korean mathematicians, Japanese bacteriologists, American paleontologists, and indigenous hunters—made sense of the Manchurian frontier. She uncovers how natural knowledge, and thus the nature of Manchuria itself, changed over time, from a sacred “land where the dragon arose” to a global epicenter of contagious disease; from a tragic “wasteland” to an abundant granary that nurtured the hope of a nation.

To a lively cast of international players that shaped Manchuria during the early twentieth century, At the Frontier of God's Empire adds the remarkable story of Alfred Marie Caubrière (1876-1948). A French Catholic missionary, Caubrière arrived in Manchuria on the eve of the Boxer Uprising in 1899 and was murdered on the eve of the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1948. Living with ordinary Chinese people for half a century, Caubrière witnessed the collapse of the Qing empire, the warlord's chaos that followed, the rise and fall of Japanese Manchukuo, and the emergence of communist China. Caubrière's incredible personal archive, on which Ji Li draws extensively, opens a unique window into everyday interaction between Manchuria's grassroots society and international players. His gripping accounts personalize the Catholic Church's expansion in East Asia and the interplay of missions and empire in local society. Through Caubrière's experience, At the Frontier of God's Empire examines Chinese people at social and cultural margins during this period. A wealth of primary sources, family letters, and visual depictions of village scenes illuminate vital issues in modern Chinese history, such as the transformation of local society, mass migration and religion, tensions between church and state, and the importance of cross-cultural exchanges in everyday life in Chinese Catholic communities. This intense transformation of Manchurian society embodies the clash of both domestic and international tensions in the making of modern China.

Sixty years on from the end of the Pacific War, Japan on Display examines representations of the Meiji emperor, Mutsuhito (1852-1912) and his grandson the Showa emperor, Hirohito who was regarded as a symbol of the nation, in both war and peacetime. Much of this representation was aided by the phenomenon of photography. The introduction and development of photography in the nineteenth century coincided with the need to make Hirohito’s grandfather, the young Meiji Emperor, more visible. Photo books and albums became a popular format for presenting seemingly objective images of the monarch, reminding the Japanese of their proximity to the Emperor, and the imperial family. In the twentieth century, these 'national albums’ provided a visual record of wars fought in the name of the Emperor, while also documenting the reconstruction of Tokyo, scientific expeditions, and imperial tours. Drawing on archival documents, photographs, and sources in both Japanese and English, this book throws new light on the history of twentieth-century Japan and the central role of Hirohito. With Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, the Emperor was transformed from wartime leader to peace-loving scientist. Japan on Display seeks to understand this reinvention of a more 'human’ Emperor and the role that photography played in the process.

Richly illustrated with over 100 images, this volume explores the role of photography in raising historical consciousness from a variety of geographic, cultural, and historical perspectives. 128 photos.

In 1644, the Manchus, a relatively unknown people inhabiting China's northeastern frontier, overthrew the Ming, Asia's mightiest rulers, and established the Qing dynasty, This book supplies a radically new perspective on the formative period of the modern Chinese nation.

This edited volume is first of its kind to document and critically analyse the changes took place snice China’s opening-up and reform and its impact on Dongbei, China’s North-East region, known for its remote and vast landscape, unique and othered culture, rich resources, mighty infrastructures and industries, geopolitical significance. Through presenting up-to-date and multidimensional case studies, the book covers three major aspects of Dongbei, which put people at the heart of our scholarly focus, namely people’s mediated life through traditional and new media; people’s social, cultural, and living spaces; artistic and fictional representations of people’s everyday life.

Meeting with volcanoes around the world, a volcanologist interprets their messages for humankind. In Mountains of Fire, Clive Oppenheimer invites readers to stand with him in the shadow of an active volcano. Whether he is scaling majestic summits, listening to hissing lava at the crater’s edge, or hunting for the far-flung ashes from Earth’s greatest eruptions, Oppenheimer is an ideal guide, offering readers the chance to tag along on the daring, seemingly-impossible journeys of a volcanologist. In his eventful career as a volcanologist and filmmaker, Oppenheimer has studied volcanoes around the world. He has worked with scientists in North Korea to study Mount Paektu, a volcano name sung in national anthems on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone. He has crossed the Sahara to reach the fabled Tiéroko volcano in the Tibesti Mountains of Chad. He spent months camped atop Antarctica’s most active volcano, Mount Erebus, to record the pulse of its lava lake. Mountains of Fire reveals how volcanic activity is entangled with our climate and environment, as well as our economy, politics, culture, and beliefs. These adventures and investigations make clear the dual purpose of volcanology—both to understand volcanoes for science’s sake and to serve the communities endangered and entranced by these mountains of fire.