What is geo-modernity? The rise of modern science and a series of developments in new technologies and scientific disciplines like geology and agricultural science led to a significant global shift in state power, boundary making, and territoriality by the end of the nineteenth century. Birth of the Geopolitical Age uses the methodology of global history and insights from network science to narrate how the unique dynamics during a turbulent transitional period from empire to nation-state ushered China and the world into geo-modernity.

Shellen Xiao Wu is the L.H. Gipson Chair in Transnational History at Lehigh University. Her first book, Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920 was published with Stanford University Press in 2015. She has published articles in The American Historical Review, Nature, and other leading journals in history, history of science, and Asian Studies. Her second book, Birth of the Geopolitical Age: Global Frontiers and the Making of Modern China is forthcoming in late summer 2023.

Introduction by Ke Zhang, Associate professor of History and Assistant director of the Asia Research Center at Fudan University.