Abstract:

This lecture investigates how transnational scientific and geographical exchanges between China, Brazil, and British Burma contributed to the dual processes of nation-building and empire-building in the nineteenth century. Drawing on archival sources from China, Brazil, Myanmar, and Great Britain, it centers on two interconnected case studies: Fu Yunlong’s intelligence-gathering mission to South America and the cartographic expeditions along the Sino-Burmese borderlands. By foregrounding the agency of both state and non-state actors, it demonstrates how intelligence-gathering missions, border negotiations, and the establishment of Qing legations in Europe catalyzed the production, transfer, and negotiation of knowledge systems. These undertakings simultaneously advanced broader political, territorial, and settler-colonial objectives. Moving beyond nation-centered narratives, the lecture broadens the analytical lens on the global circulation of scientific and geographical knowledge. It further contributes to ongoing theoretical and methodological debates on settler colonialism, a concept typically grounded in Euro-American experiences. In doing so, it highlights the dynamic roles that Asian and South American actors played in shaping the expanding global networks of expertise, diplomacy, and migration.

Speaker:

Eric Vanden Bussche is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. His research and teaching examine the historical and contemporary dimensions of border disputes in East and Southeast Asia, as well as the transnational processes shaping Chinese immigration to Brazil. He is co-editor of Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China’s Majority (University of California Press, 2012) and co-author of 《巴西与中国：世界秩序变动中的双方关系》 (世界知识出版社, 2001). He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an M.A. from Beijing University. He is currently working on a project titled “The Making of a ‘New China’ in the Tropics: Geographical Knowledge and Chinese Migration to Brazil, 1870s-1900s.”

Organizer:
Prof. Dominic Sachsenmaier, University of Göttingen