Historical narratives of human societies as found in history
textbooks have long been structured as imagined genealogies of
particular groups. Such narratives contribute to the construction and
legitimisation of these groups. Thus “national histories” were an
essential feature of the construction of nations in the 19th and 20th
centuries. Over the past decades, the construction of the European
Union has given rise to much historical activity aiming at
integrating these national narratives into a broader, “continental” one.

The fact that the sciences have been by and large absent from the
traditional teaching of history paradoxically gives historians of
science greater freedom in the conception of a textbook of history of
science. We are in a position to ask what narrative we intend to
construct, and whether it is desirable, or unavoidable, that this
narrative should function as the genealogy of a particular group. And
which group would that be?

This paper will investigate some alternative possibilities opened by
taking into account other representations of the history of science,
taking as an example the one developed in China in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, following the introduction of some elements
of scientific and technical knowledge from Europe.Seasonal Footwear