ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Astronomy across Empires: The Circulation and Contestation of Celestial Knowledge in Late Qing Science Fiction

• In Event: Histories of 19th and 20th Century Astronomy

English Abstract

This paper examines the trans-imperial circulation and contestation of astronomical knowledge in late Qing China through the lens of science fiction and popular scientific discourse. Drawing on key texts such as The Lunar Colony (Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo) by Huangjiang Diaosou, Tales of Mr. Braggadocio under the New Regime (Xin faluo xiansheng tan) by Xu Nianci, as well as scientific materials published in Gezhi Huibian and the astronomical translations of Li Shanlan and his collaborators, it could be explored how Western astronomy entered, transformed, and unsettled Chinese epistemological frameworks at the turn of the twentieth century.
Rather than being passively received, astronomical knowledge was actively mediated, reinterpreted, and fictionalised within a semi-colonial context shaped by imperial power asymmetries. In late Qing science fiction, celestial bodies such as the Moon and planets were not merely scientific objects but also symbolic spaces where political anxieties, technological fantasies, and imperial logics intersected. These narratives reveal a tension between the universal claims of Western science and localized efforts to reframe cosmic knowledge in the service of national renewal and cultural self-assertion.
With the introduction of modern astronomical knowledge into China, late Qing science fiction utilised modern astronomy to reshape perceptions of the world and the cosmos. This served as both a direct manifestation of knowledge hegemony and an expression of creative resistance within modern epistemology.

Author

• Zijian Xia, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg