Bréard A (2017)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2017
Publisher: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises
Edited Volumes: Human Mobility and the Circulation of Scientific and Technical Knowledge in Late Imperial China
Series: Bibliothèque de l'Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises
City/Town: Paris
Book Volume: XXXIX
Pages Range: 267 - 293
ISBN: 978-2-85757-077-6
After the Qing defeat to Japan in 1895, the latter came to be a major place of knowledge for those involved in reforming China. Andrea Bréard analyzes the careers of two individuals who each belonged to one of the two social groups involved in the modernization of statistics —a term whose multiple meanings at this particular historical juncture she discusses— as a tool for statecraft. Meng Sen 孟森 (1868-1937), then a young activist of constitutional reform studying law in Japan, translated from Japanese into Chinese a statistical manual, which became the first and most influential early twentieth century book on statistics in China. He promoted the introduction of social statistics, not only for the direct purpose of the state archives, but also as an objective tool for analyzing societal phenomena, that would then serve the legal, political and educational reform process. Shen Linyi 沈林一 (1866-1911?), at the end of his official career, was the Director of the first central Statistical Bureau from its foundation in 1907 until shortly before the fall of the Qing empire. Rather than opposing these two figures as representatives of the new reform-minded generation on one hand and of the traditional scholar officials on the other, Bréard follows their geographic and social traces in an intertwined fashion, showing how their intellectual contributions were determined geographically, and that their respective itineraries led to complementary visions of statistics, both of which were instrumental in institutionalizing a new field of social science.
APA:
Bréard, A. (2017). Meng Sen and Shen Linyi: two actors, two careers in the history of modern statistics in China. In Catherine Jami (Eds.), Human Mobility and the Circulation of Scientific and Technical Knowledge in Late Imperial China. (pp. 267 - 293). Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises.
MLA:
Bréard, Andrea. "Meng Sen and Shen Linyi: two actors, two careers in the history of modern statistics in China." Human Mobility and the Circulation of Scientific and Technical Knowledge in Late Imperial China. Ed. Catherine Jami, Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2017. 267 - 293.
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