Download or read book Tigers Rice Silk and Silt written by Robert Marks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-28 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging conventional Western wisdom, Marks examines the relationship between economic and environmental changes in the imperial Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (a region historically known as Lingnan, 'South of the Mountains') from 1400 to 1850.
Download or read book Tigers Rice Silk and Silt written by Robert Marks and published by . This book was released on 1998-02-28 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Groundbreaking study of the correlations between economic and environmental changes in imperial Chinese Lingnan from 1400 to 1850.
Download or read book The Unending Frontier written by John F. Richards and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-05-15 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was the age of exploration, the age of empire and conquest, and human beings were extending their reach—and their numbers—as never before. In the process, they were intervening in the world's natural environment in equally unprecedented and dramatic ways. A sweeping work of environmental history, The Unending Frontier offers a truly global perspective on the profound impact of humanity on the natural world in the early modern period. John F. Richards identifies four broadly shared historical processes that speeded environmental change from roughly 1500 to 1800 c.e.: intensified human land use along settlement frontiers; biological invasions; commercial hunting of wildlife; and problems of energy scarcity. The Unending Frontier considers each of these trends in a series of case studies, sometimes of a particular place, such as Tokugawa Japan and early modern England and China, sometimes of a particular activity, such as the fur trade in North America and Russia, cod fishing in the North Atlantic, and whaling in the Arctic. Throughout, Richards shows how humans—whether clearing forests or draining wetlands, transporting bacteria, insects, and livestock; hunting species to extinction, or reshaping landscapes—altered the material well-being of the natural world along with their own.
Download or read book Cultivating the Colonies written by Christina Folke Ax and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-16 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected in Cultivating the Colonies demonstrate how the relationship between colonial power and nature revealsthe nature of power. Each essay explores how colonial governments translated ideas about the management of exoticnature and foreign people into practice, and how they literally “got their hands dirty” in the business of empire. The eleven essays include studies of animal husbandry in the Philippines, farming in Indochina, and indigenous medicine in India. They are global in scope, ranging from the Russian North to Mozambique, examining the consequences of colonialismon nature, including its impact on animals, fisheries, farmlands, medical practices, and even the diets of indigenouspeople. Cultivating the Colonies establishes beyond all possible doubt the importance of the environment as a locus for studyingthe power of the colonial state.
Download or read book Environment Modernization and Development in East Asia written by Ts'ui-jung Liu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia critically examines modernization's long-term environmental history. It suggests new frameworks for understanding as inter-related processes environmental, social, and economic change across China and Japan.
Download or read book The Origins of the Modern World written by Robert Marks and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert B.
Download or read book Environmental History in the Pacific World written by J.R. McNeill and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a set of key articles from the last 30 years pertaining to the environmental history of the Pacific basin. It aims to treat the islands and waters of the Pacific as well as the lands around the Rim, from New Zealand to Japan, to California, to Chile, and is the first work of environmental history to take this inclusive view of the Pacific basin. The focus is mainly on recent centuries but, as environmental history requires, at times the work also takes the very long view of millennia. Several of the articles seek to bring a broad Pacific perspective to bear on their subjects, while others use Pacific-basin examples to try to establish broader theoretical points of interest to all who are drawn to the study of the interactions between nature and culture. The book includes a bibliography of Pacific-basin environmental history and an introduction that aims to sketch the contours and possible future directions of the field.
Download or read book China written by Robert B. Marks and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This deeply informed and beautifully written book provides a comprehensive and comprehensible history of China from prehistory to the present. Focusing on the interaction of humans and their environment, Robert B. Marks traces changes in the physical and cultural world that is home to a quarter of humankind. Through both word and image, this work illuminates the chaos and paradox inherent in China’s environmental narrative, demonstrating how historically sustainable practices can, in fact, be profoundly ecologically unsound. The author also reevaluates China’s traditional “heroic” storyline, highlighting the marginalization of nature that followed the spread of Chinese civilization while examining the development of a distinctly Chinese way of relating to and altering the environment. Unmatched in his ability to synthesize a complex subject clearly and cogently, Marks has written an accessible yet nuanced history for any reader interested in China, past or present. Indeed he argues successfully that all of humanity has a stake in China’s environmental future.
Download or read book In the Land of Tigers and Snakes written by Huaiyu Chen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals play crucial roles in Buddhist thought and practice. However, many symbolically or culturally significant animals found in India, where Buddhism originated, do not inhabit China, to which Buddhism spread in the medieval period. In order to adapt Buddhist ideas and imagery to the Chinese context, writers reinterpreted and modified the meanings different creatures possessed. Medieval sources tell stories of monks taming wild tigers, detail rituals for killing snakes, and even address the question of whether a parrot could achieve enlightenment. Huaiyu Chen examines how Buddhist ideas about animals changed and were changed by medieval Chinese culture. He explores the entangled relations among animals, religions, the state, and local communities, considering both the multivalent meanings associated with animals and the daily experience of living with the natural world. Chen illustrates how Buddhism influenced Chinese knowledge and experience of animals as well as how Chinese state ideology, Daoism, and local cultic practices reshaped Buddhism. He shows how Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism developed doctrines, rituals, discourses, and practices to manage power relations between animals and humans. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including traditional texts, stone inscriptions, manuscripts, and visual culture, this interdisciplinary book bridges history, religious studies, animal studies, and environmental studies. In examining how Buddhist depictions of the natural world and Chinese taxonomies of animals mutually enriched each other, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes offers a new perspective on how Buddhism took root in Chinese society.
Download or read book On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger written by Kenneth Swope and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-07-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Manchu Qing victory over the Chinese Ming Dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century was one of the most surprising and traumatic developments in China’s long history. In the last year of the Ming, the southwest region of China became the base of operations for the notorious leader Zhang Xianzhong (1605–47), a peasant rebel known as the Yellow Tiger. Zhang’s systematic reign of terror allegedly resulted in the deaths of at least one-sixth of the population of the entire Sichuan province in just two years. The rich surviving source record, however, indicates that much of the destruction took place well after Zhang’s death in 1647 and can be attributed to independent warlords, marauding bandits, the various Ming and Qing armies vying for control of the empire, and natural disasters. On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger is the first Western study to examine in detail the aftermath of the Qing conquest by focusing on the social and demographic effects of the Ming-Qing transition. By integrating the modern techniques of trauma and memory studies into the military and social history of the transition, Kenneth M. Swope adds a crucial piece to the broader puzzle of dynastic collapse and reconstruction. He also considers the Ming-Qing transition in light of contemporary conflicts around the globe, offering a comparative military history that engages with the universal connections between war and society.
Download or read book The Profits of Nature written by Peter B. Lavelle and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth century, the Qing empire experienced a period of profound turmoil caused by an unprecedented conjunction of natural disasters, domestic rebellions, and foreign incursions. The imperial government responded to these calamities by introducing an array of new policies and institutions to bolster its power across its massive territories. In the process, Qing officials launched campaigns for natural resource development, seeking to take advantage of the unexploited lands, waters, and minerals of the empire’s vast hinterlands and borderlands. In this book, Peter B. Lavelle uses the life and career of Chinese statesman Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885) as a lens to explore the environmental history of this era. Although known for his pacification campaigns against rebel movements, Zuo was at the forefront of the nineteenth-century quest for natural resources. Influenced by his knowledge of nature, geography, and technology, he created government bureaus and oversaw state-funded projects to improve agriculture, sericulture, and other industries in territories across the empire. His work forged new patterns of colonial development in the Qing empire’s northwest borderlands, including Xinjiang, at a time when other empires were scrambling to secure access to resources around the globe. Weaving a narrative across the span of Zuo’s lifetime, The Profits of Nature offers a unique approach to understanding the dynamic relationship among social crises, colonialism, and the natural world during a critical juncture in Chinese history, between the high tide of imperial power in the eighteenth century and the challenges of modern state-building in the twentieth century.
Download or read book By All Means Necessary written by Elizabeth Economy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past thirty years, China has transformed from an impoverished country where peasants comprised the largest portion of the populace to an economic power with an expanding middle class and more megacities than anywhere else on earth. This remarkable transformation has required, and will continue to demand, massive quantities of resources. Like every other major power in modern history, China is looking outward to find them. In By All Means Necessary, Elizabeth C. Economy and Michael Levi explore the unrivaled expansion of the Chinese economy and the global effects of its meteoric growth. China is now engaged in a far-flung quest, hunting around the world for fuel, ores, water, and land for farming, and deploying whatever it needs in the economic, political, and military spheres to secure the resources it requires. Chinese traders and investors buy commodities, with consequences for economies, people, and the environment around the world. Meanwhile the Chinese military aspires to secure sea lanes, and Chinese diplomats struggle to protect the country's interests abroad. And just as surely as China's pursuit of natural resources is changing the world--restructuring markets, pushing up commodity prices, transforming resource-rich economies through investment and trade--it is also changing China itself. As Chinese corporations increasingly venture abroad, they must navigate various political regimes, participate in international markets, and adopt foreign standards and practices, which can lead to wide-reaching social and political ramifications at home. Clear, authoritative, and provocative, By All Means Necessary is a sweeping account of where China's pursuit of raw materials may take the country in the coming years and what the consequences will be--not just for China, but for the whole world.
Download or read book The Origins of the Modern World written by Robert B. Marks and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-07-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present. Unlike most studies, which assume that the “rise of the West” is the story of the coming of the modern world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New World and upon the maturing field of environmental history, constructs a story in which those parts of the world play major roles, including their impacts on the environment. Robert B. Marks defines the modern world as one marked by industry, the nation state, interstate warfare, a large and growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world, increasing inequality within the wealthiest industrialized countries, and an escape from the environmental constraints of the “biological old regime.” He explains its origins by emphasizing contingencies (such as the conquest of the New World); the broad comparability of the most advanced regions in China, India, and Europe; the reasons why England was able to escape from common ecological constraints facing all of those regions by the end of the eighteenth century; a conjuncture of human and natural forces that solidified a gap between the industrialized and non-industrialized parts of the world; the mounting environmental crisis that defines the modern world; and the ways in which the forces of globalization stress the economic and political underpinnings of the modern world. Now in a new edition that brings the saga of the modern world to the present in an environmental context, the book considers how and why the United States emerged as a world power in the twentieth century and became the sole superpower by the twenty-first century, and why the changed relationship of humans to the environmental likely will be the hallmark of the modern era—the Anthropocene. Once again arguing that the US rise to global hegemon was contingent, not inevitable, Marks also points to the resurgence of Asia and the vastly changed relationship of humans to the environment that may in the long run overshadow any political and economic milestones of the past hundred years. A Companion Website at https://textbooks.rowman.com/marks4e offers a student study guide that provides a concise summary, main points, key terms, discussion questions, map exercises, and recommended websites. It also offers a range of teaching materials, including a test bank and a list of suggested primary and secondary readings.
Download or read book White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates written by Wensheng Wang and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reign of Emperor Jiaqing (1796–1820 CE) has long occupied an awkward position in studies of China’s last dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911 CE). Conveniently marking a watershed between the prosperous eighteenth century and the tragic post–Opium War era, this quarter century has nevertheless been glossed over as an unremarkable interlude separating two well-studied epochs of great transformation. White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates presents a major reassessment of this misunderstood period by examining how the emperors, bureaucrats, and foreigners responded to the two crises that shaped the transition from the Qianlong to the Jiaqing reign. Wensheng Wang argues that the dramatic combination of internal uprising and transnational piracy, rather than being a hallmark of inexorable dynastic decline, propelled the Manchu court to reorganize itself through a series of modifications in policymaking and bureaucratic structure. The resulting Jiaqing reforms initiated a process of state retreat that pulled the Qing Empire out of a cycle of aggressive overextension and resistance, and back onto a more sustainable track of development. Although this pragmatic striving for political sustainability was unable to save the dynasty from ultimate collapse, it represented a durable and constructive approach to the compounding problems facing the late Qing regime and helped sustain it for another century. As one of the most comprehensive accounts of the Jiaqing reign, White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates provides a fresh understanding of this significant turning point in China’s long imperial history.
Download or read book Zinc for Coin and Brass written by Hailian Chen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailian Chen’s pioneering study presents the first comprehensive history of Chinese zinc—an essential base metal used to produce brass and coin and a global commodity—over the long eighteenth century. Zinc, she argues, played a far greater role in the Qing economy and in integrating China into an emerging global economy, than has previously been recognized. Using commodity chain analysis and exploring over 5,800 items of archival documents, Chen demonstrates how this metal was produced, transported, traded, and consumed by human agents. Situating the zinc story within the human-environment framework, this book covers a broad and interdisciplinary range of political economy, material culture, environment, technology, and society, which casts new light on our understanding of early modern China.
Download or read book Strange Parallels Volume 1 Integration on the Mainland written by Victor Lieberman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-26 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious work has two novel goals: to overcome the extreme fragmentation of early Southeast Asian historiography, and to connect Southeast Asian to world history. Combining careful local research with wide-ranging theory Lieberman argues that over a thousand years, each of mainland Southeast Asia's great lowland corridors experienced a pattern of accelerating integration punctuated by recurrent collapse. These trajectories were synchronized not only between corridors, but most curiously, between the mainland as a whole, much of Europe, and other sectors of Eurasia. He describes in detail the nature of mainland consolidation - which was simultaneously territorial, religious, ethnic, and commercial - and dissects the mix of endogenous and external factors responsible. Here, then, is a fundamentally original analysis not only of Southeast Asia, but of the pre-modern world.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History written by Jeannie Whayne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-08 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural history has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, in part because the agricultural enterprise promotes economic and cultural connections in an era that has become ever more globally focused, but also because of agriculture's potential to lead to conflicts over precious resources. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History reflects this rebirth and examines the wide-reaching implications of agricultural issues, featuring essays that touch on the green revolution, the development of the Atlantic slave plantation, the agricultural impact of the American Civil War, the rise of scientific and corporate agriculture, and modern exploitation of agricultural labor.
