DISSERTATION PROJECT

History as a Resource for the Future:
Translation of Agricultural Knowledge and Reception of Antiquities in the Late Qing

How can a future radically different from any past experiences be made imaginable for present action? This is a question that the reformers of the late Qing faced in their endeavors to modernize China. With research on this period usually focusing on attempts at technological, military or institutional modernization, the agricultural challenges and reform efforts are rarely discussed, even though recurring food shortages posed immense problems. In the eyes of the reformists, further intensifying agriculture with the help of Western methods and knowledge was the only way to increase productivity. Thus, amid the reformist spirit of the 1890s, the first Chinese periodical dedicated exclusively to agriculture, the Nongxue bao 農學報 (1897–1906), was launched. Its authors and editors were confronted with the challenge of making foreign scientific concepts more easily comprehensible for a wide audience – and looked to the past for guidance. This paper examines the translation strategies they employed, especially the use of terms derived from the ancient Chinese context. How did this process of using the old to convey the new impact the translated scientific concepts and, more specifically, their temporality? I argue that the agricultural, economic and political terms drawn from antiquity were first resorted to in order to make the foreign-inspired knowledge and reforms more palatable, underwent significant semantic change in the process and were finally replaced by Japanese neologisms. At the end of this process, the past lost its value as a model for present action, leaving the future as a blank sheet to be inscribed by present actors.

ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES

Presentations

• “History as a Resource for the Future: Agricultural Reforms and Reception of Antiquities in Late Imperial and Early Republican China”. XXXVIth Annual Conference „Selbstbilder– Fremdbilder“ of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Chinastudien e.V. (DVCS), University of Hamburg, Germany, Nov 21, 2025.