Capital, empire, letter: Romanization in late Qing China

This article explores the history of the Roman alphabet in the late Qing empire (1637–1912). Following the opening of treaty ports to Western capital in the mid-nineteenth century, missionaries and diplomats who entered the Qing territories began to romanize various local languages. By the end of the nineteenth century, more than 20 languages had been romanized, which had an indelible impact on the politics of language and writing in China in the following decades. This article examines the origins of romanization in nineteenth-century China by situating it within a larger history of capitalism, imperialism, and the industrial printing press. Exploring the ideological and material dimensions of alphabetization, it contends that the Roman alphabet imposed a new epistemology of writing on China, which generated novel contradictions regarding language politics––contradictions that are still extant today.