Welcome to my website! My name is Victor Seow, and I am a historian of technology, science, and industry, specializing in China and Japan in their global contexts and in histories of energy and work.
I am the author of Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022), a book that uses the history of East Asia's onetime largest coal mine to explore questions about the relationship between energy and power in the industrial modern age.
At present, I am working on another book that examines how work functions as an object of scientific inquiry through the history of industrial psychology in China.
To Pick Up a Copy of Carbon Technocracy
Carbon Technocracy is available directly from the University of Chicago Press. Please enter promo code CARBONTECH at checkout for a 30% discount ($28 hardcover; $19.25 paperback).
You can also find it in many brick-and-mortar bookstores and on online book retailers.
If you pick up a copy or recommend that your library does so, thank you. I am truly grateful for your interest in my work.