Reconstructing the Stories of Rivers, Retelling the Historical Formation of Global Connectivity
Cover Story
From the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, as the global economy became much more integrated, contestations over new resources and markets became more violent. Leading imperial powers at the time, such as Britain, Germany, the United States, and Japan, competed to unlock the interiors of different continents to expand their sphere of resource extraction and capital penetration. The inland expansion of imperial presence hinged on contemporary infrastructural transformations, such as the extension of steam navigation along the inland waters of Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The existing scholarship on this historical process tells us more about how agents of imperial powers shaped these infrastructural transformations through technological and institutional innovations. We know very little about how varying environmental conditions and social groups on the ground interacted with the technological developments underlying the modern world.
Illustration of one of the most dangerous river rapids along the Upper Yangzi River, the Xin Rapid (新灘), and the lifeboat service in late Qing. Source: Luo Jinshen (羅縉紳), Xiajiang tukao (峽江圖考), 1883 Edition.
Prof. Yiying Pan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese History and Culture aims to fill this research gap through her research project, “Inland Artery of Global Connectivity: Infrastructural Remaking of the Upper Yangzi River in the Age of Global Steam Revolution.” This project offers the first integrated history about the infrastructural, ecological, and social transformations of the Upper Yangzi River as steam navigation developed along this once formidable river segment from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Synthesising new archival and fieldwork materials, this project asks how the relations among humans, technical constructions, and natural environments along the Upper Yangzi River were reorganised to sustain the steam shipping network in this peculiar inland waterscape.
Chart showing the distribution of different types of infrastructure (lifesaving stations, telegraph stations, signal stations) at the river rapids along the Upper Yangzi River. Source: Samuel Cornell Plant, Handbook for the Guidance of Shipmasters on the Ichang-Chungking Section of the Yangtze River, Shanghai: Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1920.
More specifically, this project will reconstruct the actions and agency of the diverse historical actors who mobilised these infrastructural transformations and investigate how regionally situated infrastructural projects reshaped broader notions of technology, environment, and global connectivity.
This project has been awarded an ECS Grant by the Research Grants Council in 2024. Based on this research, Prof. Pan published an article, “Rapids as Compasses: The Riverine Environment, Experiential Knowledge, and Steam Navigation on the Upper Yangzi River” in International Journal of Asian Studies in 2024. She will also deliver a talk about this project at the Annual Conference of the American Society of Environmental History in April 2025.
The monument in the photo is now located near the Xin Rapid in Yichang (宜昌), Hubei Province. It was built to commemorate Samuel Cornell Plant, the first Upper Yangtze River Inspector of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service. From 1900 to 1920, Plant was able to establish regular steam shipping service on the Upper Yangzi River by learning from and collaborating with a wide range of local shipping groups, including boat pilots, boat trackers, and rapids masters.
Photo taken by Prof. Pan during a field trip along the Upper Yangzi River in 2021.
