When a historian is involved in writing a world history of technology, he or she has to harmonize narratives of China and of the West, or to embed the Chinese historical achievements into the framework of world history of technology, because of the tension between narratives of China-centrism and of Western centrism.
In History of Techniques written by Bertrand Gille, French historian of technology and winner of the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 1970, on the one hand, there was a parallel development of technology in ancient China and in the West, and on the other hand, China was identified as the Other, or had an image which was different from the West. Ancient China is indeed embedded into the course of global technological development in an appropriate way. The very fact is that the tension between historical narratives of the West and of China is released. How does he perform the task?
Gille tried to construct a framework of world history based on his approach of technical system. In a sense, his framework of global technological evolution is a typical example of Western-centered history. The hard core of conventional historical narrative of Chinese technology is based on conventional historical viewpoints and Chinese centrism. There is a tension between his framework of world history and the narrative of China-centered history.
For the sake of the perfection of framework of world history, Gille argued against conventional notions of history of technology in China, reshaped historical facts, and introduced alternative notions in order to avoid conflicting with the framework of world technical evolution. First of all, he doubted and reshaped historical facts. From a perspective of technical system, he suspected the truth that some great technologies originated in China, such as typography, gunpowder and the compass. Secondly, Gille substituted technological concomitant evolution and technological interchange for technology transferring. Thirdly, Gille directly argued against the advancement of ancient China over the West, and suggested that China and the West had been at exactly the same stage from the paleolith period to the Renaissance.
During his transformation of conventional China-centered narrative, Gille tried to make Chinese civilization “the Other”. In the reference frame of global technical evolution, or by comparison, the Western civilization has shown its superiority in many fields from the 15th century onwards, and the technological development of non-Western civilizations should be regarded as an experience of failure. Gille asked why ancient Chinese technical development had been blocked in the 15th and 16th centuries. He introduced the notion of “blocked system” to describe such a phenomenon and gave some specific reasons to explain this historical phenomenon.
Despite Gille made his conclusions concerning the blockage without sufficient evidence, his question is still valid to some extent. The technical evolution and the blockage of technical system are two sides of a coin. One of Gille’s aims in History of Techniques is to establish a framework of global technical evolution that is characterized by the Western-centrism. In this framework, a Non-Western civilization, as “the Other”, inevitably became a blocked system sometime at the dawn of the modern age.
In order to embed the technological development of ancient China into the picture of global technical evolution, Gille reevaluated the overall level of ancient Chinese technological development, suspected Chinese great inventions, and opposed the historical trend of unidirectional technological transference. After the out-dated notions were abandoned and those important historical facts were reshaped, the conventional historical narrative of Chinese technology was erased in Gille’s text to some extent. The technological advancement of ancient China was regarded as an illusion. From the Christian era to the 15th century, Chinese technology was not more advanced than that of the West. The stagnation of Chinese technological development stood out at a certain time. In this way, China was successfully embedded into the framework of global technological development.