Urban Water Infrastructure in Britain and China (1600–1840)
This doctoral thesis provides the first systematic history of urban water infrastructure in Britain and China between 1600 and 1840. This period is defined not by Eurocentric periodisation but by the genealogies of technical knowledge and urban governance: from the seventeenth-century emergence of specialised printed works on hydraulic technology to the First Sino-British War, which marked the first direct convergence of the two systems under colonial intervention. While this forms the core period, reference is made to events before and after this period where relevant. This research examines the architecture, apparatuses and construction techniques involved in urban water supply systems (water-lifting machines, aqueducts, conduits, pipes, and fountains), wastewater (urban drainage and domestic sewerage), and hygienic infrastructure (bathhouses and latrines). Drawing on science and technology studies, history of art, architecture, and global history, it analyses urban water infrastructure not merely as technical constructs but as socio-political signifier of urban governance and environmental justice. While existing scholarship has addressed fragments of urban water systems (more so on Britain than China), the originality of this thesis lies in how it brings these sources together to focus on urban water supply and sanitation and provide a comparison between their operations in the two places in this period. Through its comparative lens and newly identified evidence of premodern infrastructure and transregional exchange, this seeks to extend its analysis beyond established temporal and spatial boundaries. The thesis is based on extensive primary sources from Britain, China, Japan, continental Europe, and the United States, including printed books, local gazetteers, technical drawings, cartographic evidence, patents, financial records, and legal documents. This evidence reveals the surprising extent of Sino-British interaction, marked by both technological divergence and counterintuitive continuities in technical and architectural prototypes. It thus challenges narratives of isolated development and questions assumptions about technological stagnation in China within the ‘Great Divergence’ debate. In doing so, it provides examples that counter simplistic binary framings of fail-or-success to industrialisation and contributes to a more nuanced comparative account in global history of the intertwined yet asymmetrical trajectories of Britain and China.
Architectural history, British architecture, Chinese architecture, Construction history, Infrastructure
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations