Extractive visions: Sweden’s quest for China’s natural resources, 1913–1917

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article scrutinises one of the most fascinating and ambitious cases of Swedish informal empire-building in the industrial age: the skilfully orchestrated attempts by scientists, diplomats, industrial companies and financial institutions to seize control over early Republican China’s most strategic industrial sector – its iron and steel complex. Sweden’s ‘extractive vision’, as we call it, started with the recruitment of Johan Gunnar Andersson, head of the Swedish Geological Survey, as a key advisor to the Chinese government. Contrary to earlier research on Andersson’s Chinese career, which narrowly portrays Andersson as a scientist, we show that he was closely affiliated with the exploitative interests of Swedish industrial and foreign-policy actors. In the end he took the lead in seeking to secure, for Sweden, a quasi-colonial presence in Republican China, centring on large-scale extraction of Chinese iron ore, profit-maximising iron exports throughout the Pacific region and construction and operation of China’s largest steel mills and weapons factories.