Moving Towards the Frontier: Migrating Miners ... Qing" w/ Wang

Tin played a crucial role in both everyday life and the empire's monetary system, but its significance has been largely overlooked in contemporary scholarship. This talk explores the transformation of tin mining and knowledge production in China from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, focusing on the geographical shift of mining centers from China proper to frontier regions such as Yunnan and Southeast Asia. This transition, prompted by the Qing government’s restrictive mining policies in China proper, reflected a deliberate response to the failures of mining administration during the Ming dynasty.

The study highlights how this shift reshaped knowledge production and statecraft. As mining administration transitioned from court eunuchs to county-level bureaucrats, mining expertise became increasingly decentralized and localized. These local officials, trained in Confucian classics, acquired substantial technical and managerial knowledge, adapting to the demands of mining operations. By the nineteenth century, high profile officials like the provincial governor of Yunnan Wu Qijun began to exemplify this transformation. His An Illustrated Account of Mines and Smelters of Yunnan (1844) represents a systematic effort to centralize and codify localized mining knowledge for state use. This research offers a nuanced perspective on how the Qing empire navigated the challenges of local security, economic growth, and resource extraction, revealing the intricate interplay between governance and technological knowledge in the transformation of mining administration.

Speaker's Bio:
Yijun Wang is an Assistant Professor of History at New York University, specializing in the history of science, technology, and material culture in early modern and modern China. She earned her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University. Her book project, The Tin Centuries, explores the intersection of governance, technology, and political economy in late imperial China. It examines how various actors in Qing China responded to increasing global pressures on natural resource extraction, while the state sought to manage profound social and political transformations.

Yijun’s scholarship includes articles and book chapters on mining technology, Qing court material culture, and artisanal practices, such as “Transcribing Mining Technology for the Empire” (British Museum Research Publications, 2024) and her co-authored work on Qing accounting systems. She has held fellowships from prestigious institutions, including the ACLS, the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University.

Host or Publisher Center for East Asian Studies