War and Technology: Ding Gongchen and His Cannon Practice Manuals

Abstract:This article examines the career trajectory of Ding Gongchen (1800–1875), a Muslim maritime merchant and amateur military technologist from Fujian, to shed light on the changing social landscape of military technological learning in China from the first decades of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Self-Strengthening Movement in the 1860s. The gradual loosening of state control on military knowledge in the early nineteenth century facilitated the rise of a transprovincial literati network centered on cannon technology during the Opium War (1839–42). An active member of this network, Ding Gongchen participated in local militia training, engaged in textual research and hands-on experimentation with cannons, and established connections with Manchu and Han officials and nonofficeholding literati and gentry. Tracing the production and circulation of Ding's cannon manuals shows how Ding leveraged his maritime experiential knowledge and native-place ties to establish his authority as a cannon expert, which led to his remarkable rise in midcentury officialdom and statecraft circles. However, Ding's involvement in the Self-Strengthening military industrialization of the 1860s was limited and short-lived. The latter stages of Ding's career illustrate how the Opium-War network of cannon technology, which drew on an earlier tradition of military statecraft traceable to the Ming, became rapidly marginalized by an industrializing scheme that privileged the direct importation of foreign machines and expertise.