British Naturalists in Qing China

"Fan reconstructs and explains the aims, methods, and achievements of naturalists' research in a China coming to grips with Western powers. He investigates how natural history, horticulture, Chinese export art, folk knowledge, and Sinology converged in the scientific representation of the natural history of China. Scientific practice and knowledge took shape, as he shows, in the cultural "borderlands," during a critical period in Sino-Western relations."--Jacket.