The frontier crisis and the construction of modern Chinese geography in Republican China (1911–1949)

The article probes into the connection between territorial nationalism and the disciplinary formation of modern geography in early twentieth-century China. It explores how a group of Republican Chinese geographers, such as Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨 (1890–1974), Hu Huanyong 胡煥庸 (1901–1998), and Zhang Qiyun張其昀 (1900–1985), reexamined Chinese traditional dynastic geography (yange dili) and defined the nature and methodology of what they called the “new geography” under the context of foreign imperialism, Chinese nationalism, and escalating frontier crisis. It argues that Chinese intellectuals’ efforts to overcome the frontier crisis led to a significant shift of major methodology in geography from textual research to actual fieldwork or on-site investigation. The adoption of this new methodology distinguished the “new geography” from the old dynastic geography. Geographers also grappled with multiple concepts and diverse traditions in physical geography, human geography and regional geography. Environmental determinism was adopted but quickly replaced by possibilist approaches. There were also attempts at reforming the traditional Chinese gazetteers using modern geographic ideas. Geographical research was imbued with political concerns. Cooperation between geographers and the state also led to the establishment of important geographical departments and study societies, providing institutional foundation for the maturation of modern Chinese geography as a discipline independent of either history or geology.