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John Fryer and the Shanghai Polytechnic: making space for science in nineteenth-century China†

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

David Wright
David Wright
Affiliation:
47 Townsend Close, Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 0XE
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The introduction of modern Western science into late imperial China naturally involved the creation of new linguistic spaces through the translation of science textbooks and the formation of a modern scientific lexicon, but it also required translation in another, physical, sense through the creation of institutions whereby the new system of practices and ideas could be transmitted. The Shanghai Polytechnic, opened in 1876 under the direction of John Fryer, was promoted as an academy for the ‘extension of learning’; this paper explores the role John Fryer and his Polytechnic played in making space for science in late nineteenth-century China.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1996

References

1 For the general issues in this paper, see Peake, Cyrus, ‘Some aspects of the introduction of modern science into China’, Isis (1934), 22, 173–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin, ‘Western impact on China through translation’, Far Eastern Quarterly (1954), 13, 305–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fairbank, John K., The Influence of Modern Western Science and Technology on Japan and China, Rome, 1955Google Scholar; Dolby, R. G. A., ‘The transmission of science’, History of Science (1977), 15, 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Teng, Ssu-yü and Fairbank, John K., China's Response to the West: A Documentary Survey 1839–1923, Cambridge, MA, 1979Google Scholar; Ting-yee, Kuo and Kwang-ching, Liu, ‘Self-strengthening: the pursuit of Western technology’, The Cambridge History of China (ed. Fairbank, J. K.), 7 vols., Cambridge 1978–1996, x (1), 491–542Google Scholar; and Reardon-Anderson, James, The Study of Change: Chemistry in China 1840–1949, Cambridge, 1991.Google Scholar On intellectual space for science in late imperial China, see Porter, Jonathan, ‘The scientific community in early modern China’, Isis (1982), 73, 269Google Scholar; Reynolds, David C., ‘Redrawing China's intellectual map: images of science in nineteenth-century China’, Late Imperial China (1991), 12, 27–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Yuezhi, Xiong, Xixue Dongjian yu wan Qing shehui [The Eastward movement of Western studies and late Qing Society], Shanghai, 1994Google Scholar, the latter the most comprehensive treatment of the subject yet to appear in Chinese or English.

2 I have based my use of the term ‘translation’ on Latour, Bruno, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Milton Keynes, 1987, 117.Google Scholar I am indebted to Andrew Grout for bringing Latour's work to my attention.

3 Originally meaning ‘vapour’ or ‘breath’, it came to mean something akin to the Stoic pneuma, although in truth there is no Western equivalent.

4 See Needham, Joseph et al. , Science and Civilisation in China, 6 vols., Cambridge, 1954–1996, ii, 216ff.Google Scholar; Yoke, Ho Peng, Li, qi and shu: An Introduction to Science and Civilisation in China, Hong Kong, 1985Google Scholar; and Sivin, Nathan, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China, Ann Arbor, 1987CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 2 for explanations of the basic concepts of Chinese science.

5 Wright, Arthur F., ‘The Chinese language and foreign ideas’, in Studies in Chinese Thought (ed. Wright, A. F.), Chicago, 1953, 286–303.Google Scholar These techniques included: the use of already-existing terms to ‘match the meaning’ (a method known as geyi); transliteration, using a restricted group of transcriptor characters; and the creation of some completely novel terms where geyi might mislead the unwary.

6 Needham, , op. cit (4)Google Scholar, and Sivin, , op. cit. (4).Google Scholar

7 Latour, , op. cit. (2), 108.Google Scholar

8 As Sivin, op. cit. (4) has pointed out, in traditional China there was no field of study co-extensive with what we should call ‘science’, so my use of the term ‘science paradigm’ should be taken to include the main concepts of what we now term ‘Chinese science’.

9 The only precedent for such an immense influx of foreign thought was the coming of Buddhism from the first century AD. See Zürcher, E., The Buddhist Conquest of China, Leiden, 1972.Google Scholar

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11 Fryer, John to Fryer, George, 15 03 1870Google Scholar, FP: Box 1 Folder 1.

12 The Fryers were originally Wesleyans, but Fryer's father split from the Wesleyan Church to set up his own sect, which seems to have been Arminian in character (Fryer, John, ‘The life of John Fryer Snr. of Hythe, Kent, England’Google Scholar, FP: Carton 3, 9). See Harrison, A. W., Arminianism, London, 1937, ch. 8Google Scholar, and Young, David, F. D. Maurice and Unitarianism, Oxford, 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for accounts of the beliefs of the nineteenth-century Arminians. John Fryer himself worked for the Anglicans in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but in a letter written in 1885 indicated that by the late 1870s he had become a follower of Unitarianism, FP: Box 1 Folder 6.

13 Fryer, , ‘Life of John Fryer Snr.’Google Scholar, FP: Carton 3, 15.

14 Fryer, John, ‘Reminiscences of life in China’Google Scholar, FP: Carton 3, 2.

15 Fryer, , ‘Reminiscences’Google Scholar, FP: Carton 3, 3.

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20 Fryer, John to RevVenn, H., 4 07 1865Google Scholar, Church Missionary Society Archives (CMS), University of Birmingham Library, C CH/038/4. Anna was supposed to have been seduced by the captain of the ship, ‘under the influence of a drug of strong aphrodisiacal properties’.

21 Fryer, , ‘Life of Mrs Fryer’Google Scholar, FP: Carton 3, 5.

22 Fryer, John to RevVenn, H., 28 02 1865Google Scholar, CMS Archives, C CH/038/3.

23 One of his most famous students was the comprador and advocate of reform Zheng Guanying (1842–1923).

24 One touching letter to Anna survives, written in verse: ‘Oh could you but know what I undergo day after day in this place far away living alone unloved and unknown spending my live [life] in an unequal strife standing my ground till things shall work round…’, 8 November 1867, FP: Box 1 Folder 6.

25 Shanghai Xinbao (1854–72), the Chinese edition of the North China Herald, was edited successively by Marquis L. Wood, John Fryer and Young J. Allen. See Britton, Roswell S., The Chinese Periodical Press 1800–1912, Shanghai, 1933, 49.Google Scholar

26 Fryer, John to Fryer, George, 25 03 1867Google Scholar, FP: Box 1 Folder 1.

27 Teng, Ssu-yü and Fairbank, J. K., op. cit. (1), 64–5.Google Scholar

28 Fryer, John to Broadhurst Tootal, 28 04 1868Google Scholar, FP: Box 1 Folder 2.

29 John Fryer to Cousin Susy (no surname identified), 11 July 1868, FP: Box 1 Folder 3.

30 FP: Box 1 Folder 3.

31 For Xu Jianyin, see Wright, David, ‘Careers in Western science in nineteenth-century China: Xu Shou and Xu Jianyin’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1995), 5, 49–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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33 Fryer, John to Susy, Cousin, 11 07 1868Google Scholar, FP: Box 1 Folder 3, 2.

34 Fryer, John to Fryer, George, 7 12 1869Google Scholar, FP: Box 1 Folder 4.

35 Fryer, John to Uncle and Aunt, 1 11 1869Google Scholar, FP: Box 1 Folder 4.

36 Daniel Jerome Macgowan (1814–93) arrived in China in 1843.

37 See Elman, Benjamin, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China, Cambridge, MA, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Published in 1855 by the medical missionary Benjamin Hobson (1816–73).

39 Fryer, John, ‘Scientific terminology: present discrepancies and the means of securing uniformity’, Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China Held at Shanghai, May 7–20, 1890, Shanghai, 1890, 531–49.Google Scholar The books translated at the Jiangnan Arsenal mainly related to military technology, but also included works on the fundamental sciences such as optics, chemistry and electricity. See the appendix to Bennett, A. A., John Fryer: The Introduction of Western Science and Technology in Nineteenth-Century China, Cambridge, MA, 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fryer's translations include works on chemistry, physics, navigation, etc.

40 Fryer, John, ‘Science in China’, Nature (1881), 24, 56.Google Scholar

41 Biggerstaff, Knight, ‘The T'ung Wen Kuan’, The Chinese Social and Political Science Review (1934), 18, 307–40.Google Scholar

42 Medhurst, Walter, North China Daily News, 5 03 1874Google Scholar, cited in Fryer, John, First Report of the Shanghai Polytechnic Institution and Reading Rooms, Shanghai, 1875, 4.Google Scholar Other accounts of the Shanghai Polytechnic may be found in Biggerstaff, Knight, ‘Shanghai Polytechnic Institution and Reading Room: an attempt to introduce Western science and technology to the Chinese’, Pacific Historical Review (1956), 250, 127–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Ermin, Wang, Shanghai Gezhi Shuyuan zhilüe [An account of the Shanghai Polytechnic], Hong Kong, 1980.Google Scholar

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47 Fryer, , op. cit. (42), 9Google Scholar, and Gezhi Huibian (1877), 2, 6b–7b.Google Scholar

48 Rev. C. W. Mateer ran Dengzhou College in Shandong Province, which provided the most extensive science curriculum of any missionary school in China.

49 Fryer, John, Second Report of the Chinese Polytechnic and Reading Rooms, Shanghai, 1878, 7.Google Scholar

50 Fryer, , op. cit. (49), 7.Google Scholar

51 Fryer, , op. cit. (49), 8.Google Scholar

52 Fryer, , op. cit. (49), 7.Google Scholar

53 Zhili was the province surrounding the capital. Li Hongzhang (1823–1901), the leading Chinese statesman of the late nineteenth century, was involved in most of the self-strengthening projects from the early 1860s onwards.

54 North China Herald, 15 03 1877, 261.Google Scholar

55 Gezhi Huibian (1876), 1, 11b–12a.Google Scholar Yet more impressive machinery would not have impressed the envoy Liu Xihong who visited the Polytechnic on his way to Britain, and wrote that, with its distasteful emphasis on the practical, it ought to be called a ‘Hall of the Arts’ [yi lin zhi tang] rather than an ‘Academy for the Extension of Knowledge’. Xihong, Liu, ‘Yingyao siji’ [Private notes on a journey to Britain], in Zou xiang shijie congshu [The Going Out into the World Collection] (ed. Shuhe, Zhong), Changsha, 1986, 50–1.Google Scholar

56 Fryer, John, ‘Third report on the Chinese Polytechnic Institution and Reading Rooms’, North China Herald, 18 04 1883, 432–4.Google Scholar

57 Fryer, , op. cit. (56), 433.Google Scholar

58 Fryer, , op. cit. (56), 433.Google Scholar

59 Fryer, , op. cit. (56), 433.Google Scholar

60 Fryer, John, ‘Fourth report of the Chinese Polytechnic Institution and Reading Rooms’, North China Herald, 10 07 1885, 44–5, on 44.Google Scholar

61 Fryer, , op. cit. (60), 44.Google Scholar

62 Fryer, , op. cit. (60), 44.Google Scholar

63 Fryer, , op. cit. (60), 44.Google Scholar

64 John Fryer to the [unnamed] Head of the Unitarians, n.d., probably 1885, FP: Box 1 Folder 6.

65 Li San-po, , ‘Letters to the Editor in John Fryer's Scientific Magazine’, Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Taibei (1974), 4, 729–77.Google Scholar For the contemporary state of British science journals, see Brock, W. H., ‘The development of commercial science journals in Victorian Britain’, in Development of Science Publishing in Europe (ed. Meadows, A. J.), Amsterdam, 1980, 95–122.Google Scholar

66 See Fryer's report on the Depot in North China Herald, 28 12 1897, 702–3.Google Scholar

67 The essays are collected in Tao, Wang (ed.), Gezhi keyi huibian, Shanghai, 1897Google Scholar, and reports on the essays may be found in the North China Herald, 25 01 1888, 100–1Google Scholar; 20 July 1889, 85–6; 1 November 1889, 536–7; and 14 April 1893, 513–14. The essays are a rich source of information on how contemporary Chinese observers saw the influx of Western ideas, technology and science, and contain, amongst other things, some of the earliest references in Chinese to Charles Darwin (e.g. ibid. 4.1a, 4.6a, 4.9b, 4.16a and 5.42b). The very earliest Darwin reference, in another Chinese journal, is as ‘Dayun’ in Shen Bao (21 August 1873), 2 and again as ‘Duierping’ in Dixue qianshi, Shanghai, 1873, 13.16a, the latter being a Jiangnan Arsenal translation of Lyell's Elements of Geology (6th edn) by Hua Hengfang and Daniel Jerome Macgowan (1814–93). There is also a brief account of the Darwinian theory in an anonymous article (possibly by Fryer himself), enigmatically entitled ‘Huntun shuo’ [On chaos] in Gezhi Huibian (1877), 2, 6a–7a.Google Scholar See also Pusey, James Reeves, China and Charles Darwin, Cambridge, MA, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 Bennett, , op. cit. (39), 58.Google Scholar

69 Fryer, , op. cit. (60), 45.Google Scholar

70 North China Herald, 15 08 1890, 196Google Scholar; Gezhi Huibian (1890), 5, 45a–46bGoogle Scholar and ibid. (1890), 5, 43a–43b.

71 North China Herald, 16 07 1897, 128.Google Scholar

72 North China Herald, 21 02 1896, 287.Google Scholar

73 Luan Xueqian collaborated with Fryer on Huaxue weisheng lun [On chemistry and health], a translation of Johnston, J. W., The Chemistry of Common LifeGoogle Scholar, published between 1876 and 1881 in Gezhi Huibian. Luan Xueqian also ran the Chinese Scientific Book Depot after Fryer left China.

74 This text had been translated from Wells, David, Principles and Applications of Chemistry, New York, 1862Google Scholar, by John Fryer and Xu Shou and published by the Jiangnan Arsenal in 1871.

75 Xueqian, Luan, ‘Gezhi shuyuan jiaoyan huaxue ji’ [A note on the teaching of chemistry at the Shanghai Polytechnic], Kexue [Science] (1924), 8, 430–2.Google Scholar

76 Mathematics questions had been allowed by an imperial edict in 1887. See Barber, W. T. A., ‘A Chinese examination paper’, North China Herald, 7 07 1888, 15.Google Scholar

77 See Sin-wai, Chan, An Exposition of Benevolence: The Jen-hsueh of T'an Ssu-t'ung, Hong Kong, 1984Google Scholar, and Wright, David, ‘Tan Sitong and the ether reconsidered’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University (1994), 57, 551–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 Fryer, John, ‘The commerce of China’, 22 10 1898Google Scholar, FP: Carton 1, 29.

79 Daojing, Hu, ‘Shanghai rushuguanshi’ [A history of Shanghai libraries] in Shanghai Shi Tongzhiguan Qikan (1935), 4, 1356–7.Google Scholar

80 ‘Shijian shi jianyan zhenli de weiyi biaozhun’ [Practice is the sole criterion of truth], Guangming Ribao, 11 05 1978, 1.Google Scholar

81 Lizhi, Fang, Bringing Down the Great Wall: Writings on Science, Culture, and Democracy in China, New York, 1990.Google Scholar