Challenges to fieldwork before 1914 and today: Adaptation, Omission, Rediscovery

John Chappell and, before him, Lord Curzon have reminded us that much can be gained from reviewing earlier writings and from listening to interruptions and silence.1 In January 2010, I discovered with amazement a wealth of unpublished observations while scrutinizing the drafts of maps made by the productive and flamboyant Dr. Sven Hedin (1865–1952). Secluded for decades in the National Archives of Sweden, Hedin’s precise information on the vegetation types, soil and water qualities, animal tracks, former shorelines, and abandoned settlements of Tibet and Xinjiang would have been valuable for the elaboration of a theory on climate change in extreme environments..

Les blancs du Tibet : histoire des solutions adoptées pour résoudre le plus magnifique problème de la géographie

Cet article traite d'un demi-échec dans l'histoire des blancs de cartes. Une tentative de revivification lexicale, sans pour autant aboutir, suffit à modifier les mécanismes d'évaluation de la découverte géographique. Un géographe prestigieux a désigné d'un nom désuet l'espace qu'il a exploré, avant de voir ses travaux rejetés par ses collègues. L'objet de la dispute, qui oppose en 1909 la Royal Geographical Society de Londres (RGS) et le docteur Sven Hedin, le champion des écoles de géographie de l'Europe continentale, est le Transhimalaya. Cette querelle redéfinit la mise en oeuvre des politiques scientifiques, un sujet dont l'importance justifie l'examen des codes de conduite auxquels les géographes adhèrent. Plus fondamentalement, je cherche à analyser les procédures de remplissage des blancs de carte qu'emploie la géographie savante de la Belle Epoque au moment même où l'acceptation implicite de ces pratiques n'apparaît plus comme allant de soi. Ce que j'étudie est donc moins la viabilité d'un nom que la viabilité des pratiques des géographes et des cartographes européens en Asie centrale

The intended perception of the Imperial Gardens of Chengde in 1780

The 'Record Written by the Emperor on the Mountain Manor to Escape the Heat' is a preface to an album of poems by the Qian Long Emperor (Qing Gaozong, r. 1735-96) illustrated by a series of engravings of vistas..

Journées suisses d'histoire

To comprehend the role of frontier and frontier-making in the scientific controversy on the "geographical pivot history," I will propose a short account of the remarkable topographical expeditions that explored the Gobi, Taklamakan, Qinghai and Kevir deserts

Railroad literature on suitable places : How the Japanese government railways forged an "old China" travel culture

This empirical study on advertising campaigns and the art of running trains in distant places finds its theoretical significance in a view of history where real and imagined geographies interact. The railroad companies of the Japanese Empire did much more than transport passengers and carry freight: their express trains embodied a particular view of a world centered on racial, nationalist and dynastic myths. Modernity as ideology and the everyday experience of colonialism combined in Manchuria to generate a particular perception of China as a decadent and romantic culture

«De la vertu au vice: l’espace des loisirs à Macao (1910–1930)»

Je propose un jeu sur l'espace des loisirs, sur la célébration et le dénigrement d'une baie et d'une rue, sur le mariage et le divorce d'une ville et de son littoral, et sur les pratiques iconographiques de répétition et de répression. Puisque nous parlons de jeu, il nous faut des cartes et un tapis vert qui nous sont précisément fournis par les établissements de Macao. Bien plus que tout autre participant, l'industrie du jeu a en effet dirigé les changements dramatiques qu'a connus Macao au cours du XXe siècle. Dramatique n'est pas un terme trop faible pour qualifier l'évolution toute en contradictions de l'image de soi, de l'identité collective, de la conception de la modernité, et de la stratégie suivie par Macao pour éviter la marginalité

The Swiss contributions to the international development of cartography: The Eduard Imhof Era

My paper is about a project that will examine Switzerland's participation, during five decades, in the institutional and intellectual emancipation of the map-based sciences. I intend to provide a thematic and dispassionate account of the achievements of Swiss cartography and cartographers, and document the crucial initiatives a Swiss academic took to develop cartography worldwide. In the course of my analysis of Professor Eduard Imhof's interactions with his foreign colleagues, I will add cultural as well as technical perspectives to the interpretation of contemporary progress in the mapping sciences. For the Swiss school of cartography, the Imhof era (1920-1970) was more formative than the bet-ter-studied Dufour and Siegfried Maps period (1845-1926). Despite the contentious political environment of his time, E. Imhof (1895-1986) used his personal charisma to systematically encourage cooperation worldwide. Through the seminars he led and the International Cartographic Association he created and chaired, E. Imhof federated the cartographers from across the world. I will explain how by 1970, on the eve of the digital revolution, he had forged a common professional identity and improved modes and venues to communicate across the discipline. Eduard Imhof will thus allow us to touch on two important themes in science and society: the geography of knowledge and the adoption of new theories, standards and methods by the international scientific community

University of Nottingham School of Contemporary Chinese Studies Brownbag Seminar

The French philosophers Gilles Deleuze (1925-95) and Félix Guattari (1930-92) gathered two seminal texts in On The Line. In "Rhizome," Deleuze and Guattari introduced a new kind of thinking, which is both nondialectical and non-hierarchical, substituted pragmatic and free-floating logic to our usual binary, oppositional, and exclusive logic model, and offered an early template to understand the internet. In "Politics," Deleuze and Guattari envisaged society as a series of lines, reinvented politics as a process of flux whose outcome is always unpredictable, and suggested that the creativity and multiplicity of its flows can redirect and question capitalism. According to On The Line, China always rebounds after most of the country is destroyed. China starts up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines, when it is shattered at a given spot. A rupture occurs in China whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight. After each rupture, there is a danger that China will stratify again everything, from Taoist resurgences to communist concretions. China experts can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and bad. China has valued the making of flat spaces, traditionally for food production and today for profit-making in the well-connected global economy. China's vision of state-building has always been at odds with the physical reality of a country rich in hills and mountains. We have had so far thirty centuries of unsustainable development

Globalizing Macau. The Emotional Costs of Modernity (1910-1930)

This chapter deals with the ambiguity that political authorities feel toward culture and history when they are pressed to enlarge and modernize urban infrastructures. I will discuss the strategy followed by the Harbour Works Department of Macau as the city sought to reposition itself as an international trade centre. I examine Macau's spatial transformation between 1910, when a progressive regime came to power in Lisbon, and 1930, when the first extension phase of the Porto Exterior facilities was completed