Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the ‘mysterious’ lake of Lop Nor in Central Asia became a key site for imperial scientific debates around climatic stability, desiccation, and changing habitability around 1900. In turn, it considers the role of geographical ‘problems’ in the history of climate sciences.

Paper long abstract:

Around the turn of the twentieth century, rumours of large lake in Central Asia provided the material for a vexing geographical problem. That Lop Nor existed – or at least once had – was suggested by information in Chinese maps and the accounts of Ptolemy. However, the lake itself proved elusive – and astoundingly – it did not always appear to have been found in the same place. Attracting romanticised imperial imaginaries like ‘mysterious’ and ‘wandering,’ Lop Nor became a key site for speculations about climatic stability and change. This paper considers investigations by Russian, British and Swedish explorers, as well as the key roles of Central Asian brokers (such as Ördek, who located Loulan, the ancient Silk Road city that had graced the shores of the lake and been abandoned in the face of changing habitability). In turn, I examine how geographers like Peter Kropotkin and Ellsworth Huntington incorporated the lake into wider (and sometimes bombastic) theories of desiccation, climate change and migration. As an evocative ‘mystery’ at a time when imperial imaginaries of the Silk Roads were in the making, Lop Nor also allows for an examination of the role of geographical ‘problems’ in the history of climate sciences and the development of climatography as a discipline. More widely, I argue that historicising environmentally determinist imperial categories – and understanding their legacies – is essential to countering a recurrence of racist and neo-determinist thinking in the face of the current climate crisis (especially in language around climate-induced migration).