In the Qing period (1644–1912), China’s population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex:...
In the Qing period (1644–1912), China’s population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources.
Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China’s southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.
Kangxi's court finally had the fiscal means and secured access to southern forests to reconstruct the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1679. (查看原文)
Timbers were always regarded as the important resources for the Middle Kingdom courts, especially the nanmu, which was viewed as the choicest wood for the most important of imperial architectures. In my past perceptions, the timbers were collected in the tr...
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张萌 作者
nikan muduri
光启书局2024版
匹克尼克来江边
柏拉图陈
光启书局2024版
3 有用 滴滴 2021-11-19 14:58:33
面面俱到，可在国内做得越来越精细的情况下就有点糙了。研究了一下龙泉码，没整明白。
7 有用 落雨回家 2021-12-25 21:35:32
书里涉及的议题大多已经有非常精深的研究了，想在这些基础上继续推进确实难度不小，从选题看是要回应环境史的问题，从论述看却又是以从生产到消费的经济运作模式为主线，真正涉及到环境、生态、技术的内容不多。
1 有用 云风万里 2022-11-15 08:39:21 天津
读的博论，出版版本改动有些多。
1 有用 斷雲微度 2022-11-10 15:35:48 江西
一般
0 有用 养鸡场客卿 2026-03-05 11:27:09 美国
政策建议而非批判性著作