HIST 325 - History of Technologies in Imperial and Modern China: 1500-2000

In this course, we will explore the development of technologies from imperial China through the end of the twentieth century. Rather than a chronological overview, we will discuss one thematic topic each week by reading translated primary sources together with secondary literature. These topics include but are not limited to cartography, hydraulic engineering, printing, communication technologies, and medicine. The focus is on China, but its neighbors, Japan and Korea, and China’s encounter with the West will also be discussed. How technologies evolved in a non-Western society and how Indigenous technological traditions struggled for “modernity” in the twentieth century constitute the two themes of this course. By examining the trajectory of technological development in China, we will probe two broad questions: how to approach technology as a social construct rather than as a value-free existence, and how technology in turn plays a crucial role in the making of an interconnected modern world.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2026-27
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.