China
An Environmental History
2nd Edition
Published on 13. February 2017
468 pages
978-1-4422-7789-2 (ISBN)
Description
This deeply informed and clearly written text provides a comprehensive and comprehensible history of China from prehistory to the present. Now updated to include recent political events and scientific research, the book focuses on the interaction of humans and their environment. Tracing changes in the physical and cultural world that is home to a fifth of humankind, Robert B. Marks illuminates the paradoxes 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 and contacts with other peoples 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 student interested in China, past or present, or indeed in the world's environmental future.
More details
Series
Edition
2nd edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Illustrations
12 b/w illustrations; 13 b/w photos; 37 maps; 2 tables
ISBN-13
978-1-4422-7789-2 (9781442277892)
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
Other editions
Person
Robert B. Marks is professor emeritus of history and environmental studies at Whittier College. His books include Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century, and Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China. He is the recipient of Whittier College's Harry W. Nerhood Teaching Excellence Award.
Content
List of Illustrations
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction: Problems and Perspectives
Chapter 2: China's Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE
Chapter 3: States, Wars, and Farms: Environmental Change in Ancient and Early Imperial China, 1000 BCE-300 CE
Chapter 4: Deforesting the North and Colonizing the South in the Middle Imperial Period, 300-1300 CE
Chapter 5: Empire and Environment: China's Borderlands, Islands, and Inner Peripheries in the Late Imperial Period, 1300-1800 CE
Chapter 6: Environmental Degradation in Modern China, 1800-1949
Chapter 7: "Controlling" Nature in the People's Republic of China, 1949-Present
Chapter 8: Conclusion: China and Its Environment in World Historical Perspective
Select Bibliography
Index
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction: Problems and Perspectives
Chapter 2: China's Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE
Chapter 3: States, Wars, and Farms: Environmental Change in Ancient and Early Imperial China, 1000 BCE-300 CE
Chapter 4: Deforesting the North and Colonizing the South in the Middle Imperial Period, 300-1300 CE
Chapter 5: Empire and Environment: China's Borderlands, Islands, and Inner Peripheries in the Late Imperial Period, 1300-1800 CE
Chapter 6: Environmental Degradation in Modern China, 1800-1949
Chapter 7: "Controlling" Nature in the People's Republic of China, 1949-Present
Chapter 8: Conclusion: China and Its Environment in World Historical Perspective
Select Bibliography
Index
