Climate Change: A Challenge to the Geographers of Colonial Asia
Journal
Perspectives
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2013-05
Author(s)
Abstract
In this paper, I will both challenge current assumptions held on progress in climate studies, and reexamine past assumptions on the environment of ancient civilizations. I will touch on important themes, such as science policy in the early 20th?century and the relationship that Europe had with colonial Asia and withthe past environment of China, Turkestan and Persia. With its uniquely rich collections and experts on Asia, London was assuming one hundred years ago the prime responsibility of mapping the natural history of a continent the ‘Britishers' had largely colonized. The Geological Survey of China, the British Survey of India, scholarly societies in Berlin and Paris, private libraries in Yale and Stockholm were the privileged venues where new information and concepts were created, exchanged, assessed and recast. The explorers sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society of London (RGS) built a professional network that connected the deserts of Central Asia to mighty Europe and nurtured a relationship between London and peripheral centers of knowledge production. Scientific travel was one tool among many to expand the British Empire and add to its prestige, but exploration results could become irrelevant if they somehow challenged the colonial order by proposing disquieting theories on past trends.
Since my objective is to deconstruct the notion on the stability of Asia that the geography community seemed to cherish one century ago, I must report on the ways in which fieldwork-based studies yielded a consensus that data on climate could not possibly back up. To examine the first debate geographers had on climate change I am intertwining scientific reports with the conceptual history of climate. Like Stephen Jay Gould, the main protagonist of the "Darwin Wars," I believe that biographies offer the most compelling way to present the emergence of theories that challenge conventional views. On the basis of extensive archives in London and Stockholm, I intend to provide a biographical account of the independent scholars who engaged a learned society as it disputed the existence and significance of climate change. Through them, I explain why and how the RGS challenged one key finding that emerged from repeated topographical expeditions - that the course of human history is linked to some degree to climate change and environmental crises?
Since my objective is to deconstruct the notion on the stability of Asia that the geography community seemed to cherish one century ago, I must report on the ways in which fieldwork-based studies yielded a consensus that data on climate could not possibly back up. To examine the first debate geographers had on climate change I am intertwining scientific reports with the conceptual history of climate. Like Stephen Jay Gould, the main protagonist of the "Darwin Wars," I believe that biographies offer the most compelling way to present the emergence of theories that challenge conventional views. On the basis of extensive archives in London and Stockholm, I intend to provide a biographical account of the independent scholars who engaged a learned society as it disputed the existence and significance of climate change. Through them, I explain why and how the RGS challenged one key finding that emerged from repeated topographical expeditions - that the course of human history is linked to some degree to climate change and environmental crises?
Language
English
Keywords
Climate change
colonial Asia
colonial geography
history of geography
history of cartography
environmental history
fieldwork
Lake Lop-nor
Taklamakan desert
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SHSS - Kulturen, Institutionen, Maerkte (KIM)
Refereed
No
Publisher
RFIEA
Publisher place
Paris
Volume
2013
Number
9
Start page
21
End page
23
Pages
3
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
215316