1. Introduction; 2. Introductory orientations: the traditional Chinese iron industry in recent centuries; 3. The earliest use of iron in China; 4. The flourishing iron industry of the -3rd and -2nd centuries; 5. The Han state monopoly of the iron industry; 6. The arts of the smith from Late Han through Tang; 7. Technical evolution and economic revolution in the Song period; 8. Economic expansion in the Ming period; 9. Some Chinese contributions to modern siderurgical technology; 10. Epilogue.
Traces the production and use of iron and steel in China from ca. 1000 BC.
Donald B. Wagner is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen.
'… an exemplary collaboration, building our knowledge and testing
received wisdom in a continuously creative way.' The Spokesman 102:
Slump and War
'This is an unusually substantial work, decades in the making and
written in a style that is accessible to the interested general
reader as well as graduate students and academics.' SciTech Book
News
'In summary, this volume is an outstanding contribution to
historical metallurgy as well as to the history of Chinese science
and technology, representing a quarter of a century's worth of
scholarly research on a vast and vastly interesting, topic by a
scholar who competently covers both the linguistic-historical and
the technical aspects of the subject.' Journal of Archaeological
Science
'In summary, what Wagner has achieved in this book is most
impressive. It far surpasses Needham's monograph of 1958 in at
least three aspects: first, in contrast to Needham's heavy
dependence on ancient textual evidence, Wagner has benefited
greatly from the substantial progress in archaeological and
archaeo-metallurgical studies over the past forty years; second,
instead of presenting a history totally devoted to technological
developments, Wagner offers us a much more balanced and coherent
narrative of Chinese ferrous metallurgy in its social and economic
contexts; third, when dealing with ancient texts, Wagner takes a
stronger critical stand, and his desire is more to seek out, rather
than glorify, the facts. This book is most certainly a worthy
addition to the Science and Civilisation in China series.' Jianjun
Mei, Revue de Synthese
'[Wagner's] thoughtful presentation and reflections on how his own
research developed throughout [the] decades in the wake of newly
emerging evidence and the changing intellectual discourse, makes
this volume of the Needham series an exceptional guidebook for
research methods in the field of the history of technology in
general and ferrous metallurgy in particular … The research in this
book reflects the author's intimate knowledge of the technology and
history of metallurgy.' Dagmar Schäfer, Max Planck Institute for
the History of Science
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