Empirical adventurers : Science and imperial exploration in East Tibet, 1900-1949

Chamberlain, Timothy George (2025) Empirical adventurers : Science and imperial exploration in East Tibet, 1900-1949. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis examines the interlinked themes of science and empire in contested territories at the imperial margins. Specifically focussing upon the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, where British, Russian, and Chinese imperialist interests impinged upon Tibetan autonomy in the first half of the twentieth century, this dissertation demonstrates how a group of Westerners utilised scientific societies and institutions, as well as commercial and governmental organisations, and the mediums of the popular and academic press, to create a particular culture of exploration which was rooted in a Western imperialist worldview, primarily in order to further their own social advancement and professional reputations. Using socio-historical methodologies of microhistory and the ‘biographical turn,’ this thesis argues that individual lives simultaneously examined in isolation and in aggregate illuminate how individuals cohered through both conscious and unconscious systems of networking to create a ‘frontier milieu’ which thereby influenced a globalising ‘project’ of empire. The thesis examines the role and relationships between professional and amateur scientific societies and analyses the presence of official and unofficial agents of empire in the borderlands. It discusses the ways in which authorial authority was contested by female and indigenous writers, and examines the role of archiving and collecting in the creation of personal legacies. Previous studies of Westerners in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands have tended to focus upon individuals in isolation or in comparison to only one or two similar persons. This dissertation attempts to survey a broad range of social backgrounds and the diverse professions which characterised those individuals who chose to situate themselves in the ‘contact zone’ located on the cultural and geopolitical boundaries of imperial and colonial control in the borderlands of West China and East Tibet. Key words: science, empire, networks, borderlands, biography, microhistory, systems of knowledge, cultures of exploration.

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