Knowing Individuals: Fingerprinting, Policing, and the Limits of Professionalization in 1920s Beijing

Abstract

This article examines the adoption of modern fingerprinting in early twentieth-century China through a case study of the Fingerprint Society, an association affiliated with the Ministry of Interior’s police academy that was active in 1920s Beijing. The members of this association viewed fingerprinting as both a technique that could be used to demonstrate China’s adoption of globally accepted standards of policing and justice and a body of academic knowledge that could form the basis for a would-be profession of fingerprinting experts. While the Fingerprint Society ultimately failed to accomplish its profession-building goals, its activities nonetheless shed light on an early moment in the history of new identification practices in China as well as on dynamics that have shaped the global history of fingerprinting as an area of modern expert knowledge located ambiguously between policing and science.