Knowing Manchuria

"Rogaski examines how scientific knowledge and those who produce it may be related to a geographical region, in this case Manchuria, at the intersection of China, Russia, Korea, and Mongolia . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *
“This remarkable book is in fact eight mini books, each self-contained, but looping back to find familiar places and common themes. As the title suggests, this is a book about knowing, specifically how to know a place . . . . Knowing Manchuria is deeply grounded, thoughtfully argued, and engagingly written. It is also enduringly relevant, an example of historically specific research that presents immediate parallels to the ways that knowledge and authority are wielded in both personal reflection and public discourse.” * Pacific Affairs *
“A beautifully rendered volume, [Knowing Manchuria] takes the reader on an epic journey over three centuries from the 1600s and across a vast landscape whose ecosystem is as diverse as its human inhabitants. . . . A crucial contribution to the understandings of East Asia, of imperialism and indigeneity, and of science and the modern state.” * Los Angeles Review of Books *
“Rogaski’s extraordinary new book, Knowing Manchuria, shows how these acts of knowing have brought multiple Manchurias into existence as people, culture, nature and ecology have been entangled in diverse ways at different points in time. Today, perhaps befitting its status as a contested and layered borderland space, ‘Manchuria’ itself is a contested term, but this only makes Rogaski’s beautifully written multi-perspectival and multilingually-sourced history of this fascinating region all the more valuable.” * New Books Network *
"This remarkable book is in fact eight mini books, each self-contained, but looping back to find familiar places and common themes. As the title suggests, this is a book about knowing, specifically how to know a place. . . Ruth Rogaski has done something quite different, taking the reader on eight individual voyages of discovery, each representing a different way that knowledge is fitted into a framework of referents and values." * Pacific Affairs *
“Knowing Manchuria is a journey into a mysterious frontier—lands bounded by mighty rivers, vanishing mountains, and delicate flowers, and traversed by death, disease, and desolation. By inviting the reader to join exiles, chroniclers, naturalists, surveyors, medics, and the author herself, the book opens the door to the landscape of knowing.”  * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *
"Knowing Manchuria is a beautifully written book that makes an important argument about ways of knowing and the human relationship to the environment. More importantly, it is a brilliant history of the people and places lost in the accumulation of knowledge." * H-Environment *
"Rogaski has an enviable ability to present sophisticated analysis in engaging and readable prose. She moves across intellectual landscapes as diverse as the physical landscape of Manchuria itself, skillfully fusing the methodologies of environmental history and history of science to map the ‘nature of Manchuria’ from the viewpoints of an array of social actors across time. The book is beautifully written, compellingly integrates environmental and social history, and brings to life the complex historical narratives and voices of Manchu, Chinese, Japanese, and European people." -- Sigrid Schmalzer, University of Massachusetts Amherst
"Knowing Manchuria represents interdisciplinary historical scholarship of the highest order. Writing with flair and felicity, Rogaski takes us on a breathtaking journey through the vast expanse of Manchuria, from the snow-dusted top of Golmin šanggiyan alin to the 'barren' land that became a bountiful 'granary.' She shows us how a motley cast of characters from Manchu emperors and Chinese exiles to Russian botanists and Japanese bacteriologists endeavored to know the nature of Manchuria and, in so doing, tame it to serve their variegated ends. Her observations are sharp and refreshing, and readers will be rewarded with a fresh look at the history of this important region and the broader question of how we are changed through our encounters with and attempts to make sense of the 'natural' world." -- Victor Seow, author of Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia
"Manchuria comes alive in this insightful, elegant text. Rogaski shows us how people, plagues, plants, and animals—living, fossilized, and mythologized—shaped the meanings of a place caught between nation-states and empires and at the center of some of the most important shifts in East Asian geopolitics. The particular genius of Knowing Manchuria resides in Rogaski's stubborn, brilliant refusal to simplify this vast, diverse, vibrant place, even as she tells clear stories realized through close readings of diverse sources. The result is a book that helps us to better understand how spaces become places and how efforts to know a place can be both brutally destructive and pregnant with wondrous possibility." -- Ian Jared Miller, Harvard University