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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Trains in Late Qing Print Culture

This module examines how artists represented trains in print media, primarily in the pages of Dianshizhai huabao—a late Qing Dynasty pictorial printed in Shanghai between 1884 and 1898—and how those representations can help us understand popular approaches to science, technology and development in late Qing China. Occupied by a number of European powers, Shanghai in the late 19th century was a nexus of global exchange of commodities, capital and culture.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, images of trains appearing in the pictorial depicted this new marvel of transportation as a new way of moving, a symbol of the potential dangers of western science and empire, and a stark contrast to a landscape previously unmarred by steam technology. Depictions of trains in the pictorial also situate them within the knowledge industry: a new mode of seeing and understanding the world, as well as being a new medium through which the world was put on display and rendered understandable.

The images of trains appearing in Dianshizhai huabao speak more to a changing social landscape than they do to a landscape physically changed by railroads. Envisioned through GIS mapping tools, the railway lines in this module would appear as little more than points on a map from any scale that renders their geographic context recognizable. Were they to be spatially represented with the fourth dimension of time factored in, one of the railway lines would actually disappear before its representation in print. Naturally, images and news of trains circulated globally and crossed cultures much more readily than actual trains. What these trains do represent is a shift in the imagination of the Sinosphere. China's imagined role as presider over a pax Sinica in which surrounding polities recognized the superiority of a Confucian world order through offerings of tribute and the adoption of the sinitic script as their language of statecraft. The deterioration of the Sinosphere is presented in part as a domestic shift characterized by the emergence of hybrid spatial hierarchies. The rectilinear form of the train and its billowing plumes of smoke stand in stark contrast to the “traditionally” rendered landscape that comprises their setting.

This module can be navigated by clicking on the links at the bottom of each page, or by following the links in the “contents” section at the end of an examination of a given image. Because of the difficulty of finding a full version of Qing-era reprints that include legible text (and were available in 2020), I have had to make use of multiple reprint editions. Metadata for all images from Dianshizhai include the universal reference number appearing in Ye Hanming et. al. 2014. These are cited in metadata as “Tongjian# xxxx.”

For more, see this analysis of Dianshizhai at the MIT Visualizing Cultures website from Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Rebecca Nedostup.

Click here for a list of references for this module, which is also available from the module's Conclusion page.

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Imperial Japan up in the Air
The advent of aviation in the early twentieth century opened up an uncertain and contingent space of the Japanese empire, in between borders that did not so neatly align between land, sea, and air. This new form of transportation superseded earlier networks of ships and rail, extending the Japanese empire westward, from Manchukuo to Inner Mongolia, and beyond.
This module examines how the aerial perspective, as made possible by aviation, helped Japanese occupiers imagine the Eurasian continent in its geographical vastness, and yet how their terrestrial limitations ultimately failed to sustain control over this space. For imperial Japan, the Manchuria Aviation Company (J. Manshūkoku kōkū kabushiki kaisha), founded in 1932, would become the predominant presence over Inner Asia during the wartime era.
The first pathway, Reading ManAir Magazine, delves into the modern spaces created by the Manchuria Aviation Company through its in-house magazine, ManAir (J. Mankō). The Manchuria Aviation Company advertised its services by portraying its technological prowess and geographical reach. The corporation also sold the concept of flight with images of the modern woman and, as the Pacific War intensified, militarized children. ManAir intentionally conflated patriotic duty and its profit motive, using nationalism as a vehicle to drive its commercial viability.

The second pathway, Eurasian Expansion, explores how Japanese air control outpaced its land occupation, as the Manchuria Aviation Company flew farther into the Republic of China and made alliances with Mongol princes. The territory surveyed by the Manchuria Aviation Company was sprawling, their mode of vision, exclusive: besides Japanese endorsements and Chinese critiques, indigenous reactions to these aerial incursions, for the most part, did not exist.
Finally, the third pathway, Technologies of the Gaze, focuses on the seemingly objective renderings of the land produced by aerial photographs, developed in the ‘dark room’ of Japanese imperialism. This form of visual technology both fueled and followed geographical understandings of the Asian continent in the 1930s and 40s.

Click here for a list of references for this module, which is also available from the module's Conclusion page.
Conclusion: Invasion Mapped
“Mapping Invasion” considers a micro-history of a (non) event, namely the potential use of biological weapons in Northern Vietnam. Like the trains in Qing print culture examined by Nathaniel Isaacson, Việt Minh authors drew on material elements of biological warfare and imaginary geographies of imperialism to inform audiences and motivate actions. During the First Indochina War, the Việt Minh created cartographies of exposure and attempted to place bodies, chemicals, and microbes not only in space but in time. Focusing on Vietnamese responses to biological warfare reveals that mapping and mobilities (of the geobody and body) were key to this warfare and local responses to it.
After the end of the First Indochina War, the Việt Minh for the most part dropped discussion of biological warfare until the 1960s, when South Vietnamese and United States actions revived fears of biological and chemical warfare. During what is known among most Americans as the Vietnam War, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the US military (verifiably) employed tear gas, herbicides, and other chemicals against communist insurgents and the general population of the Republic of Vietnam. While looking back we can be fairly certain that biological weapons (strictly defined) were not used, either during the First or Second Indochina Wars, this was by no means evident at the time. Việt Minh leaders took the threat of biological weapons very seriously and were not merely faking charges for propaganda purposes.
Path A explores charges of biological warfare leveled during the Korean War. Such charges provided a model for those formulated by the Việt Minh against the French. This path also considers what various cartographic representations of Northern Vietnam have to say about the geographical imaginations that were available to Vietnamese intellectuals and political leaders. Path B encourages users to construct an understanding of biological warfare in Northern Vietnam during the First Indochina War. While looking back we can be fairly certain that biological warfare did not take place, it was not clear that this was the case at the time. I want to unsettle module viewers and convince them that at the very least Việt Minh leaders, including Tôn Thất Tùng, took the threat of biological weapons seriously and were not merely faking charges for propaganda purposes. Path C encourages users to explore the fears surrounding biological warfare that helped motivate resistance. This path finally reviews a pamphlet that presents a history of Japanese and American imperialist's use of biological weapons and the Chinese patriotic hygiene movement launched in response.
Finally, a note on historiography. Some historians have begun to reflect on such Cold War histories of environmental warfare. Jim Fleming's Fixing the Sky has considered the history of weather modification techniques, including those used in the skies over Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, there has been much scholarship on the American and South Vietnamese use of herbicides, including books by Ed Martini and David Zierler. David Biggs's recent Footprints of War has considered how the landscapes of central Vietnam have been shaped during decades of war. Yet, there has been little work done on the local perspectives on, and experience of, environmental warfare. This includes the fear of biological weapons, and environmental warfare more generally, explored in this module. For more on environmental warfare during the twentieth century, you can see a list of references and websites cited in this module.