Event Description
How did a mundane metal bind miners and officials to global capitalism and an emerging technocratic state? Tin was everywhere in early modern China—lining tea chests, shaping religious vessels, alloyed into coins. Yet beneath this ordinary metal lies a story of migration, technology, and governance. Join Yijun Wang as she discusses her new book, The Tin Centuries, which uncovers how tin connected miners in Yunnan and Southeast Asia, entrepreneurs and traders across oceans, and Qing officials confronting unprecedented demands on natural resources.
By following tin’s movement from mountains and islands to imperial mintage and treasuries, Wang discusses how the “social technology” of mining enabled Chinese migrant miners to establish large-scale operations and dominate extraction in the mountains of Southwest China and on Bangka, an island off the coast of Sumatra. At the same time, she shows how Qing bureaucrats turned mining administration into a crucible for technocratic statecraft in which practical skill stood alongside Confucian learning. In doing so, her book reveals how a seemingly humble metal reflected the changing trajectory of Qing statecraft and foreshadowed China’s path toward modernity within an expanding global economy.
Wang will be joined by a roundtable of scholars for a conversation on skills, migration, natural resources, and capitalism.
Event Speakers
- Kyoungjin Bae, Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Robyn d'Avignon, Associate Professor of History at New York University
- Rebecca Karl, Professor of History at New York University
- Dorothy Ko, Professor of History at Columbia University
- Yijun Wang, Assistant Professor of History at New York University
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. Registration for guests without an active New York University ID closes at 1 PM on October 27. Contact [email protected] or [email protected] for questions.
This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.
Sponsoring Organizations:
- Columbia University in the City of New York
- NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study
- The Graduate Center, City University of New York
- The New York Academy of Medicine
- The New York Academy of Sciences
