Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Lightning Wires: The Telegraph and China's Technological Modernization, 1860-1890

Lightning Wires: The Telegraph and China's Technological Modernization, 1860-1890

Baark, Erik

Hardcover

Series: Contributions in Asian Studies

EconomicsTechnology & EngineeringGeneral Asian History

ISBN10: 0313300119
ISBN13: 9780313300110
Publisher: Praeger
Published: Mar 18 1997
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.15
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Baark examines the transfer of telegraph technology to China in the late nineteenth century. He shows how the initial Chinese rejection of the telegraph as an inconvenient technology contributed to violent conflicts between foreigners and the Chinese, but that this resistence gradually gave way to an assimilation of the telegraph into Chinese society.

The transfer and assimilation of advanced technology has been an important challenge for China's modernization for more than a century. Baark examines some of the dilemmas faced by Chinese modernizers of the yangwu (Western affairs) movement from the 1860s to the 1890s. Telegraph technology emerged in the West on the basis of scientific discoveries in electricity in the early nineteenth century, and was greeted with enthusiasm by governments and the public alike.

The Chinese attitudes to the telegraph, however, were informed by entirely different political and cultural priorities. Baark examines the tensions which existed between the Chinese and the foreign companies seeking to extend telegraph technology to East Asian cities, and he shows how the domestic network was shaped by indigenous social and cultural forces. This book will be of considerable interest to historians of modern China, technology, and economic development.

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