Dr. Yuan Yi (Columbia University)

Yuan Yi’s talk examines the mechanization of cotton spinning in turn-of-the-twentieth-century China with emphasis on the Sino-American exchange of spinning technologies, cotton varieties, and technical experts. It discusses how the Chinese strove to solve technological problems through continued modification and maintenance of foreign machines that failed to process short-staple Chinese cotton. Yuan Yi argues that what enabled mechanization was their multiple layers of knowledge, rather than the machines per se, obtained through hands-on experience of machines as well as formal engineering education. New sets of knowledge were generated in this process, and some of them traveled back to the headquarters of machine builders. In an era of imperialism, she contends, the Chinese workers were not passive recipients of Western machinery and knowledge but active participants in global technology transfer.