The River, the Plain, and the State
An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048–1128

This book explores the human-engineered flooding of China's Yellow River, and how it affected the state, environment, and inhabitants of the region.

Ling Zhang (Author)

9781316609699, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 March 2019

338 pages, 14 maps 6 tables
28 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'Given the salience of large dam projects and river engineering across Asia today, stretching from the Yangtze and Mekong to South Asia and beyond, this is a timely and deeply insightful work … This is a rare work where the epic scale is enriched throughout by attention to lost and forgotten voices. Hebei Province, where waters broke loose and played havoc, is central to the work, but it is looked at in a way that 'the stories of those who lost in the game of history were the hidden companion of growth'.' Mahesh Rangarajan, H-Asia

On July 19, 1048, the Yellow River breached its banks, drastically changing its course across the Hebei Plain and turning it into a delta where the river sought a path out to the ocean. This dramatic shift of forces in the natural world resulted from political deliberation and hydraulic engineering of the imperial state of the Northern Song Dynasty. It created eighty years of social suffering, economic downturn, political upheaval, and environmental changes, which reshaped the medieval North China Plain and challenged the state. Ling Zhang deftly applies textual analysis, theoretical provocation, and modern scientific data in her gripping analysis of how these momentous events altered China's physical and political landscapes and how its human communities adapted and survived. In so doing, she opens up an exciting new field of research by wedding environmental, political, economic, and social history in her examination of one of North China's most significant environmental changes.

Prologue. 1048: the opening of an environmental drama
Part I. Pre-1048: Prelude to the Environmental Drama: 1. Before the Yellow River met the Hebei Plain
2. The state's Hebei project
3. The 1040s: on the eve of the flood
4. Creating a delta landscape
Part II. Post-1048: The Unfolding of the Environmental Drama: 5. Managing the Yellow River-Hebei environmental complex
6. Life in the Yellow River Delta
7. Agriculture: a subsistence-oriented economy
8. Land and water: a thousand years of environmental trauma
Epilogue. 1128: the close of the environmental drama
Index.

Subject Areas: History of engineering & technology [TBX], Asian history [HBJF], General & world history [HBG]