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NEWLY PUBLISHED VOLUMES OF SCIENCE AND CIVILISATION IN CHINA

Donald B. Wagner provides a comprehensive historical account of the production and use of iron and steel in China in their political and economic context. An initial chapter on the traditional Chinese iron industry introduces the important technical concepts and the ways in which technology, geography, and economics interact and influence political phenomena. Recent archaeological work indicates that the earliest production of iron in China was in the Northwest, and that the technology was introduced from the West via Central Asia. It was, however, the invention in South China of large-scale technologies which put China on a very different developmental path from that of the West. Further chapters deal with developments from the Han to the Tang, the technical evolution and economic revolution of the Song period, and economic expansion under the Ming. A final chapter investigates the debt of the modern steel industry to Chinese developments.

• Offers the most comprehensive historical account of the development of ferrous metallurgy in China from the beginning, ca. 1000 BC, to modern times • Provides full analysis of the economic aspects of the topic • Includes important digressions into the history of Western technologies

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.

Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology
Part 12, Ceramic Technology.
By Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood
With additional contributions by Ts’ai Mei-fen and Zhang Fukang.
918 pages (ISBN: 0-521-83833-9)

The fifth volume of Joseph Needham’s immense undertaking covers the subjects of chemistry and chemical technology. This, the twelfth part of the volume, explores a range of questions concerning Chinese technology, including how were Chinese pots made, glazed and fired? Why did China discover porcelain more than one thousand years before the West? What are the effects of China’s influence on world ceramics? These questions (and many more) are answered in this lavishly illustrated history of Chinese ceramic technology. The scene is set through the use of historical texts, archaeological excavation, and the principles of ceramic science. Chapters follow on the formation of clays and their relation to the underlying geologies of China, on kilns and firing, on manufacturing methods and sequences, on glazes, pigments and gilding, and on the impact of Chinese ceramic technology around the world from the seventh to the twenty-first centuries.
This is a massive volume, unique in its coverage, which brings together research materials in several languages for the first time.
Price £120. Please order from Cambridge University Press.