More Than Just Poop: Guano in Late 19th and Early 20th Century China

This paper investigates how the Chinese started to know about the agricultural value of guano and search for their own potential guano islands in late 19th and early 20th Century. Since the early nineteenth century, because of its nitrate-rich quality, guano has been recognized by chemists worldwide as the finest fertilizer. It became a highly valuable resource and hot commodity desired and harvested by Western and Japanese powers. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, many Chinese intellectuals also realized the value of guano as an effective fertilizer through Western books. They started to regard it as the best fertilizer, even more valuable than human and animal manure, which had been applied to enrich the soil fertility in China for centuries. Two opposite opinions towards this previously unknown resource emerged. One acknowledged the unavailability of guano due to the lack of seabirds' islands and suggested to look for other alternative manure. Based on their understandings of chemical knowledge, many Chinese intellectuals started to argue for suitable manure that contain vital elements (such as nitrogen and phosphorus). The other opinion urged the Qing government to defend the territorial sovereignty of some islands near Kanton from the Japanese occupation and reclaim the exploitation right of guano back. As the second opinion developed, rather than its agricultural value, bird excrement mattered greatly due to its economic and geopolitical significance. By looking at the fate of guano in China, this paper aims to shed some light on the entwined relations between knowledge of animals and social, economic and political power.