Front cover image for China : its environment and history

China : its environment and history

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 "he
eBook, English, 2012
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, 2012
History
1 online resource (xxi, 438 pages) : illustrations, maps
9781442212770, 9781299402768, 9781442212763, 1442212772, 1299402763, 1442212764
855502917
Brief Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1 Introduction Problems and Perspectives; PLAN OF THE BOOK; Chapter 2 China's Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE; NATURAL ENVIRONMENT; HUMAN SETTLEMENT AND PRE-HISTORY; PREHISTORIC ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; THE FORMATION OF A CHINESE INTERACTION SPHERE, 4000-2000 BCE; BRONZE-AGE CHINA: TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE, 2000-1000 BCE; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE, 1500-1000 BCE; CONCLUSION; Chapter 3 States, Wars, and Farms Environmental Change in Ancient and Early Imperial China, 1000 BCE-300 CE. STATES, WAR, AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN ANCIENT CHINA, CA. 1000-250 BCEENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN THE EARLY EMPIRE, 221 BCE-220 CE; ANCIENT CHINESE IDEAS ABOUT NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT; THE END OF THE EARLY EMPIRE; CONCLUSION; Chapter 4 Deforesting the North and Colonizing the South in the Middle Imperial Period, 300-1300 CE; NORTH CHINA: WAR, DEPOPULATION, AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 300-600 CE; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN THE YANGZI RIVER VALLEY; NORTH AND SOUTH REUNITED IN THE MIDDLE EMPIRE: THE SUI, TANG, AND SONG DYNASTIES, 589-1279 CE; HAN COLONIZATION OF THE SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST. DISEASE REGIMES NORTH AND SOUTHNEW AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; CHINA'S MEDIEVAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 95; COLONIZING SICHUAN AND CATEGORIZING OTHERS; LANDSCAPES AND WATER CONTROL; THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: CITIES AND WASTE; CONCLUSION; Chapter 5 Empire and Environment China's Borderlands, Islands, and Inner Peripheries in the Late Imperial Period, 1300-1800 CE; A NEW HISTORICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT; FRONTIERS AND BORDERLANDS; ISLANDS AND THEIR ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS; LAND COVER, LAND USE, AND LAND OWNERSHIP; EXPLOITATION OF INNER PERIPHERIES. THE ECOLOGICAL LIMITS OF EMPIRECONCLUSION: POPULATION, MARKETS, THE STATE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT; Chapter 6 Environmental Degradation in Modern China, 1800-1949; CHINESE CONSUMPTION AND ITS ECOLOGICAL SHADOWS; ECOLOGICAL DEGRADATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS; AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY; INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY; CONCLUSION; Chapter 7 "Controlling" Nature in the People's Republic of China, 1949-Present; SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION AND SUBDUING NATURE; CHANGES TO FORESTS AND LAND USE; STATE NATURE PRESERVES AND THE PROTECTION OF BIODIVERSITY; "CONTROLLING" WATER; POLLUTING THE ATMOSPHERE
English
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