Theorizing on ‘Geo-modernity’

Wu packages artfully a grand theory of ‘geopolitical modernity’ in profiles of a colorful cast.

Shellen Xiao Wu artfully packages a grand theory of “geopolitical modernity” in detailed profiles of a colorful cast of characters, zooming in and out so both general readers and specialists can enjoy.

She draws her cast from geographers and agronomists employed by imperial nation-states China, Japan, Germany and the US and looks from the mid-19th century through the Cold War, as readers follow the parallel lives of agents of empire such as Horace Capron and Zuo Zongtang: experimental scientists on their landholdings in Maryland and Hunan and architects of genocidal wars on their nation’s 19th-century frontiers (against the Apache in Texas and Muslims in Xinjiang).

Coming to the 20th century, Wu reveals disturbing similarities between “inner colonization” drives of Nazi Germany and Nationalist China, with the US playing a kind of intermediary role by funding the science behind China’s attempt to modernize its empire into a nation-state. The individual tales of scientists and geographers help Wu make a larger argument about “geo-modernity,” a global project among leading states in Europe and East Asia. Wu draws our attention to the role of science in the making of modern national borders in ways that enabled an elite group of great powers to continue to enjoy imperial privileges in a world of nation-states.

Birth of the Geopolitical Age: Global Frontiers and the Making of Modern China

By Shellen Xiao Wu

Stanford University Press, 2023, 328 pages, $32 (Paperback)