Commonly referred to as the ‘father of spaceflight’ and ‘king of rocketry’, Qian Xuesen (1911–2009) is for many Chinese citizens the pre-eminent scientist of the twentieth century. Trained at the California Institute of Technology, he co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before returning to China in 1955, where he became instrumental in the space programme and the missile industry. This article investigates Qian’s ascent from aeronautical engineer known only within expert circles to China’s face of space. It charts his celebrification, particularly after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and distinguishes five facets of a rocket star in the making. Transforming Qian into China’s quintessential technocelebrity and transfiguring his persona into the cornerstone of astrocultural production helped propagate spaceflight activities, rendering outer space an imaginable arena for both the state and the public. Yet, as the analysis of a comprehensive body of visual materials, media reports, biographies and obituaries shows, ultimately Qian’s carefully crafted persona is what Ernesto Laclau has termed an ‘empty signifier’. Qian is space, and space Qian, but little else. If historians are to understand the allure and inner workings of the global Space Age, then historicizing the orchestrated rise of non-Western space personas such as Qian Xuesen proves key.

We use individual-level income data from archived taxation lists to study top-income earners in Sweden from 1909 to 1950. Using information on 21,055 individual taxpayers in two elite areas in greater Stockholm, we show that top incomes fell in real terms over this period, at a stable pace without obvious connection to the Great Depression or the world wars. The peak of inequality was related to the early stages of a globalized economy with Schumpeterian entrepreneurial profits; the decline was related to sharpened competition, driving down profits, as well as increased regulation, expansion of education, and eroded position of professionals.

This article outlines an emerging approach in the spatial history of the Romanov empire. Similar to other empires of the long nineteenth century, the Romanov empire has traditionally been understood as a spoked wheel, whose vertical axes of power and lines of communication flowed between the metropolitan “core” and the “peripheries.” We argue for the need to move beyond this well-worn image of the empire as a vertical structure of “center-periphery” relations. Instead, we consider the heuristic potential of studying horizontal “periphery-periphery” entanglements interconnecting this state, following threads which were not necessarily woven through the metropole. The argument is illustrated through a discussion of several examples from the Baltic and southwestern provinces, which highlight both the challenges and potentials of intra-imperial entangled history.