Sediments of Time
Environment and Society in Chinese History

This collection of essays is the first relatively comprehensive survey of the environmental history of China.

Mark Elvin (Author), Ts'ui-jung Liu (Author)

9780521563819, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 January 1998

846 pages, 67 b/w illus. 2 colour illus. 40 maps 24 tables
23.7 x 16 x 4.3 cm, 1.3 kg

'Sediments of Time is a pioneering effort in Chinese environmental history … [it] is an important addition to the scholarship on Chinese history and will no doubt encourage more research.' JOSA

This collection of essays was 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.

Preface
Introduction Mark Elvin
The context
China's environmental history in world persepective John McNeill
Interpreting the physical environment
Man's impact on the vegetation and landscape in the Inner Himalaya and Tibet Wolfgang Holzner and Monika Kriechbaum
The villagers' view of environmental history in Yunnan province Nick Menzies
Human Seettlement
Environment versus water control Shiba Yshinobu
Han immigration and the settlement of Taiwan Liu Ts'ui-Jung
The Frontiers: Highlands and lowlands Anne Osborne
Population and ecology along the frontier in Qing China Eduard Vermeer
Water
Clear waters versus muddy waters Pierre-Ètienne Will
Action at a distance Mark Elvin and Su Ninghu
Weather and Climate
'It never used to snow' Robert Marks
Changes in climate, land, and human efforts Li Bozhong
Diseases
Cholera in China, 1820–1930 Kerrie MacPherson
Environment and tuberculosis in modern China Zhang Yixia and Mark Elvin
Representations of the environment - the offical mind
From the Yellow River to the Huai Christian Lamouroux
Official thinking on environmental issues and the state's environmental roles in eighteenth-century China Helen Dunstan
Representations of the environment - literary and popular sensibility
Ecologism versus moralism Paolo Santangelo
Water, love, and labour Antonia Finnane
The environment and early modern economic growth in Taiwan and Japan
Non-reclamation deforestation in Taiwan, circa 1600–1976 Ch'en Kuo-tung
Hydro-electricity and industrialization Tung An-ch'i
Environmental problems and perceptions in early industrial Japan Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]