Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University #: Carbon Technocracy

Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University #: Carbon Technocracy
Victor Seow
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Hardback
h229 x 152mm - 376pg
18 Mar 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780226721996
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A penetrating look at the deep links between energy extraction and technocratic governance through the history of what was once East Asia' s biggest coal mine. The coal-mining town of Fushun in China' s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit, once the largest in East Asia. Across the twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun' s purportedly "inexhaustible" carbon resources. Today, the depleted pit remains a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and to the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality. In Carbon Technocracy, Victor Seow uses the remarkable story of the Fushun colliery to chart how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state. Taking coal as an essential feedstock of national wealth and power, Chinese and Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and industrialists pursued intensive energy extraction and deployed new technologies like open-pit mining and hydraulic stowage to maximize their hauls. At the same time, as much as these mine operators idealized the might of the machine and the fossil fuels that drove it, their extractive efforts nevertheless relied heavily on human labor. Under the carbon energy regime, countless workers here and elsewhere would be subjected to both the productivist demands of states and markets and the dangers of an increasingly exploited earth. Although Fushun is no longer the coal capital it once was, the pattern of aggressive fossil-fueled development that enabled its ascent endures. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by the profligate consumption of carbon, it holds urgent lessons. This is a groundbreaking exploration of how the mutual production of energy and power came to define industrial modernity and the wider world that carbon made.

A Buddhist Sensibility: Aesthetic Education at Tibet's Mindroeling Monastery
Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia
China's War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842-1965
Common Ground: Tibetan Buddhist Expansion and Qing China's Inner Asia
Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860-1960
Isolating the Enemy: Diplomatic Strategy in China and the United States, 1953-1956
Learning to Rule: Court Education and the Remaking of the Qing State, 1861-1912
Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives
Sound of Salvation, The: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China

"A brilliant account of energy and empire, industrial hubris, and ecological destruction told through the story of the coal capital of China. Providing an alternative global history of technology, the book argues for a distinctive understanding of the role of fossil-fuel energy in shaping the political order of East Asia in the age of carbon. " -- Timothy Mitchell, author of Carbon Democracy "Impressive in scope and significance, Carbon Technocracy offers compelling evidence of the historical relationship between the fossil fuel economy and the rise of the modern nation-state in China and beyond. Readers will gain a fresh understanding of the roots of fossil fuel addiction and its consequences, which encompass not only ecological destruction but also violent exploitation of laborers and increased state capacity for social control. Through a rich historical excavation centered in one Manchurian coal mine, Seow demonstrates in no uncertain terms why we must look beyond technocratic solutions as we struggle to survive the climate crisis. " -- Sigrid Schmalzer, author of Red Revolution, Green Revolution "Seow shows that civilizations built on coal undermine their own foundations with each strike of the shovel. His exploration of carbon technocracy highlights how the desire for technological progress and development runs along a deep seam of violence. Profoundly humane and thoughtful. " -- Kate Brown, author of Manual for Survival "Focusing on the history of the Fushun coal mine in Northeast China, this engaging book traces the worlds that coal made across twentieth-century East Asia. Shifting seamlessly from the abstract structures of states and economies to the everyday lives of engineers and workers, Seow tells the story of the big science, big engineering, and big technology that made up the carbon foundation of both Imperial Japan and Communist China. A probing account of the origins and challenges of the climate crisis. " -- Louise Young, author of Japan' s Total Empire "Drawing on an impressive range of sources, Seow reveals the intertwined stories of the Fushun colliery and the succession of state regimes that have drawn on Fushun' s material (and even rhetorical) power, from the contestation among Chinese, Russian, and Japanese interests at the turn of the last century through the consolidation of the People' s Republic of China. The clarity of Seow' s thinking, the felicity of his prose, and the significance of his topic will ensure a large audience among modern East Asian historians, energy historians, and the many scholars in environmental studies and environmental humanities who focus on carbon-driven climate change. Clearly written and very thoughtfully conceived. " -- Thomas G. Andrews, author of Killing for Coal
Victor Seow is assistant professor of the history of science at Harvard University. A historian of technology, science, and industry, he specializes in China and Japan and in histories of energy and work.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780226721996
Published: 18 Mar 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Format: Hardback
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Pages: 376

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