Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History

by Mark Elvin , Ts'ui-jung Liu

• ISBN13: 9780521563819
• ISBN10: 052156381X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This collection of essays is the first relatively comprehensive survey of the environmental history of China. Written by some of the world's leading Western and Chinese experts, Sediments of Time crystallises a new and distinct field of scholarship that studies what happens when human social systems interact with the rest of the natural world. This book shows how deforestation, land-reclamation, settlement, and water-control, when mixed with an ever-changing climate, shape a distinct and often precarious environment. Pioneering essays explore new methodologies of historical environmental research, comparative perspectives setting China in the context of the West and Japan, and the impact of the early modern ecological transformation on the spread of diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis. This is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to understand either the foundations of modern China, or the deeper origins of many of China's most daunting contemporary challenges.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	x	(5)
Preface	xv	(2)
Notes on Chinese Characters, Their Roman Transcription, and Terminology	xvii
1 Introduction	1	(30)
Mark Elvin
THE CONTEXT	31	(22)
2 China's Environmental History in World Perspective	31	(22)
J. R. McNeill
INTERPRETING THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT	53	(82)
3 Man's Impact on the Vegetation and Landscape in the Inner Himalaya and Tibet	53	(54)
Wolfgang Holzner
Monika Kriechbaum
4 The Villagers' View of Environmental History in Yunnan Province	107	(28)
Nicholas K. Menzies
HUMAN SETTLEMENT	135	(68)
5 Environment versus Water Control: The Case of the Southern Hangzhou Bay Area from the Mid-Tang Through the Qing	135	(30)
Shiba Yoshinobu
6 Han Migration and the Settlement of Taiwan: The Onset of Environmental Change	165	(38)
Liu Ts'ui-jung
THE FRONTIERS	203	(80)
7 Highlands and Lowlands: Economic and Ecological Interactions in the Lower Yangzi Region under the Qing	203	(32)
Anne Osborne
8 Population and Ecology along the Frontier in Qing China	235	(48)
Eduard B. Vermeer
WATER	283	(128)
9 Clear Waters versus Muddy Waters: The Zheng-Bai Irrigation System of Shaanxi Province in the Late-Imperial Period	283	(61)
Pierre-Etienne Will
10 Action at a Distance: The Influence of the Yellow River on Hangzhou Bay since A.D. 1000	344	(67)
Mark Elvin
Su Ninghu
WEATHER AND CLIMATE	411	(76)
11 "It Never Used to Snow": Climatic Variability and Harvest Yields in Late-Imperial South China, 1650-1850	411	(36)
Robert B. Marks
12 Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts: The Production of Wet-Field Rice in Jiangnan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties	447	(40)
Li Bozhong
DISEASES	487	(58)
13 Cholera in China, 1820-1930: An Aspect of the Internationalization of Infectious Disease	487	(33)
Kerrie L. MacPherson
14 Environment and Tuberculosis in Modern China	520	(25)
Zhang Yixia
Mark Elvin
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT -- THE OFFICIAL MIND	545	(72)
15 From the Yellow River to the Huai: New Representations of a River Network and the Hydraulic Crisis of 1128	545	(40)
Christian Lamouroux
16 Official Thinking on Environmental Issues and the State's Environmental Roles in Eighteenth-Century China	585	(32)
Helen Dunstan
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT -- LITERARY AND POPULAR SENSIBILITY	617	(76)
17 Ecologism versus Moralism: Conceptions of Nature in Some Literary Texts of Ming-Qing Times	617	(40)
Paolo Santangelo
18 Water, Love, and Labor: Aspects of a Gendered Environment	657	(36)
Antonia Finnane
THE ENVIRONMENT AND EARLY MODERN ECONOMIC GROWTH IN TAIWAN AND JAPAN	693	(88)
19 Nonreclamation Deforestation in Taiwan, c. 1600-1976	693	(35)
Kuo-tung Ch'en
20 Hydroelectricity and Industrialization: The Economic, Social, and Environmental Impacts of the Sun Moon Lake Power Plants	728	(28)
An-Chi Tung
21 Environmental Problems and Perceptions in Early Industrial Japan	756	(25)
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
List of Contributors	781	(4)
Index	785