How did Shanghai become the epicentre of China’s scientific development?

Historians of “Chinese science” until recently have spent much of their time researching issues in pre-modern natural studies and trying to explain why modern science, technology, and medicine arrived so late in China. The “Needham Question”—Why did a divided Europe, and not imperial China, develop modern science first?—until recently remained preeminent.

Increasingly, we are able to address modern science in Chinese cities from a comparative point of view and include it in the story of global science.

Join Dr Benjamin Penny, from the Australian Centre on China in the World, and Professor Benjamin Elman, from Princeton University, as they explore the driving factors of modern scientific development in Shanghai post-Taiping Rebellion (1850-1867), which led to an increase in job opportunities in public and private industries in the early twentieth century.
