The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China

by Mark Elvin

Overview

This landmark account of China’s environmental history, written by an internationally pre-eminent China specialist, "should stand for decades to come as a unique statement on motives, processes, perceptions and consequences of environmental change in China.” (Jennifer L. Mnookin, American Scientist)

This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, which allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of the Chinese people toward their environment and their landscape.

Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated the habitat of the elephants that populated the country alongside much of its original wildlife; the destruction of most of the forests; the impact of war on the environmental transformation of the landscape; and the re-engineering of the countryside through water-control systems, some of gigantic size. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the modern era, was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time.

Indispensable for its new perspective on long-term Chinese history and its explanation of the roots of China’s present-day environmental crisis, this book opens a door into the Chinese past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300119930
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	09/21/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	592
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mark Elvin is professor of Chinese history at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. Author of The Pattern of the Chinese Past and other works, he has taught at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and Heidelberg, and been a visiting research fellow at Harvard.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	viii
	Acknowledgments	ix
	Permissions	xiii
	Conventions	xv
	Introductory Remarks	xvii
	Patterns	1
1	Landmarks and Time-marks	3
2	Humans v. Elephants: The Three Thousand Years War	9
3	The Great Deforestation: An Overview	19
4	The Great Deforestation: Regions and Species	40
5	War and the Logic of Short-term Advantage	86
6	Water and the Costs of System Sustainability	115
	Particularities	165
7	Richness to Riches: The Story of Jiaxing	167
8	Chinese Colonialism: Guizhou and the Miao	216
9	The Riddle of Longevity: Why Zunhua?	273
	Perceptions	319
10	Nature as Revelation	321
11	Science and Superfauna	369
12	Imperial Dogma and Personal Perspectives	413
	Concluding Remarks	454
	Notes	472
	Bibliography	530
	Index	548