Xiaoxing Jin

The earliest references to Darwin in China, which came by way of the network of Protestant missionaries, emerged in the early 1870s: the principle of general transformism and ideas about human origins were transmitted to the Chinese intellectual landscape. Only with the “evolutionary sensation” aroused by Yan Fu, in the mid-1890s, did Chinese readers begin to learn of Darwinian principles like the “struggle for existence” and “natural selection.” Translation of the Origin began much later, in 1902, and the initial effort was misleading. In his translation of the first five chapters of the Origin, published before 1906, Ma Junwu used linguistic strategies to modify Darwin’s texts so as to reflect Yan’s progressive transformism. But in his 1920 translation of the book in its entirety, Ma redid his earlier work. The complete Chinese Origin did not generate a sensation in the biological community. Even so, the deliberate selection, absorption, and appropriation of Darwinian ideas by the Chinese over the next several decades assimilated the new evolution into their own cultural setting. The case of “Darwin in China” details a specific Chinese context that deepens our understanding of how audiences for new scientific theories can be actively involved in the processes of appropriation and universalizing, while also disseminating, modifying, and assimilating Darwinian ideas in local context.

Darwinian ideas were developed and radically transformed when they were transmitted to the alien intellectual background of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. The earliest references to Darwin in China appeared in the 1870s through the writings of Western missionaries who provided the Chinese with the earliest information on evolutionary doctrines. Meanwhile, Chinese ambassadors, literati and overseas students contributed to the dissemination of evolutionary ideas, with modest effect. The ‘evolutionary sensation’ in China was generated by the Chinese Spencerian Yan Fu’s paraphrased translation and reformulation of Thomas Huxley’s 1893 Romanes Lecture ‘Evolution and ethics’ and his ‘Prolegomena’. It was from this source that ‘Darwin’ became well known in China – although it was Darwin’s name, rather than his theories, that reached Chinese literati’s households. The Origin of Species itself began to receive attention only at the turn of the twentieth century. The translator, Ma Junwu (1881–1940), incorporated non-Darwinian doctrines, particularly Lamarckian and Spencerian principles, into his edition of the Chinese Origin. This partially reflected the importance of the pre-existing Chinese intellectual background as well as Yan Fu’s progressive ‘evolutionary paradigm’. In this paper, I will elucidate Ma Junwu’s culturally conditioned reinterpretation of the Origin before 1906 by investigating his transformation of Darwin’s principal concepts.