China's Environmental History
A Reader
Will be published approx. on 19. January 2027
Book
Paperback/Softback
568 pages
978-0-231-21966-2 (ISBN)
Description
China has a vast written history that records the countless ways people have observed, transformed, and preserved their environments over the centuries. This sourcebook, the first ever to document China's environmental history, presents translations of hundreds of texts spanning more than three thousand years, displaying the diversity of how humans have related to the world around them.
China's Environmental History features texts translated from Chinese and eight other languages-most for the first time-in a wide variety of genres, including poetry, philosophy, official documents, religious tracts, travelogues, and oral histories. It has ninety-two short chapters, each containing primary source texts along with brief introductions and suggestions for further reading. Taken together, the chapters allow readers to study the many dimensions of environmental history in China, from the connections between resource exploitation and state power to the various forms of conservation and animal protection. Ideal for classroom use, this book shows how asking questions about the environment leads to new insights about the past and reveals the many threads of evidence waiting to be explored.
China's Environmental History features texts translated from Chinese and eight other languages-most for the first time-in a wide variety of genres, including poetry, philosophy, official documents, religious tracts, travelogues, and oral histories. It has ninety-two short chapters, each containing primary source texts along with brief introductions and suggestions for further reading. Taken together, the chapters allow readers to study the many dimensions of environmental history in China, from the connections between resource exploitation and state power to the various forms of conservation and animal protection. Ideal for classroom use, this book shows how asking questions about the environment leads to new insights about the past and reveals the many threads of evidence waiting to be explored.
Reviews / Votes
This book makes available a wide-range of important and interesting texts that give us insight into Chinese views on the environment over a period of three thousand years. The editors have brought in many of the most prominent Western scholars of Chinese environmental history and it shows in the overall quality of the translations. -- Joseph Dennis, author of <i>Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100-1700</i>More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
40 b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-231-21966-2 (9780231219662)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Brian Lander is associate professor of history and environment and society at Brown University. He is the author of The King's Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire (2021) and other works.
Peter B. Lavelle is associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Profits of Nature: Colonial Development and the Quest for Resources in Nineteenth-Century China (2020) and other works.
Peter B. Lavelle is associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Profits of Nature: Colonial Development and the Quest for Resources in Nineteenth-Century China (2020) and other works.