Introduction -- Fueling industrialization in the age of coal -- Ferdinand von Richthofen and the geology of empire -- Lost and found in translation : geology, mining, and the search for wealth and power -- Engineers as the agents of science and empire, 1886-1914 -- Nations, empires, and mining rights (1895-1911) -- Geology in the age of imperialism, 1890-1923 -- Epilogue
Summary
From 1868-1872, German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen went on an expedition to China. His reports on what he found there would transform Western interest in China from the land of porcelain and tea to a repository of immense coal reserves. By the 1890s, European and American powers and the Qing state and local elites battled for control over the rights to these valuable mineral deposits. As coal went from a useful commodity to the essential fuel of industrialization, this vast natural resource would prove integral to the struggle for political control of China. Geology served both as the ha
