Dr Marlon Zhu

Mr Marlon Zhu has received his PhD in history from Binghamton University, State University of New York. His dissertation “Typhoons, Meteorological Intelligence and the Inter-Port Mercantile Community in Nineteenth-Century China” details the way how the mercantile society in nineteenth-century treaty ports (including Hong Kong) responded to typhoons. The Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs under Sir Robert Hart served as the principal observers in meteorological networks proposed by commercial associates in Shanghai, Hong Kong and other minor ports along the China coasts. Marlon is now a postdoctoral fellow in Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, with a further research project on the “inter-port” science, technology and medicine in nineteenth-century East Asia.