The River, the Plain, and the State

An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128

AvLing Zhang

Inbunden, Engelska, 2016

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Beskrivning

On July 19, 1048, the Yellow River breached its banks, drastically changing its course across the Hebei Plain and turning it into a delta where the river sought a path out to the ocean. This dramatic shift of forces in the natural world resulted from political deliberation and hydraulic engineering of the imperial state of the Northern Song Dynasty. It created eighty years of social suffering, economic downturn, political upheaval, and environmental changes, which reshaped the medieval North China Plain and challenged the state. Ling Zhang deftly applies textual analysis, theoretical provocation, and modern scientific data in her gripping analysis of how these momentous events altered China's physical and political landscapes and how its human communities adapted and survived. In so doing, she opens up an exciting new field of research by wedding environmental, political, economic, and social history in her examination of one of North China's most significant environmental changes.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2016-09-09
Mått:160 x 235 x 24 mm
Vikt:600 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Studies in Environment and History
Antal sidor:340
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781107155985

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Mer om författaren

Ling Zhang is an Assistant Professor of History at Boston College, Massachusetts. She was a Ziff Environmental Fellow at the Center for the Environment at Harvard University, Massachusetts and a postdoctoral fellow in the Program of Agrarian Studies at Yale University, Connecticut. She is currently working on a book project entitled China's Sorrow or the Yellow River's Sorrow: Environmental Biographies of a River Community.

Recensioner i media

'If you want a striking, documented, and even lyrical account of why the Yellow River is called 'China's Sorrow,' this is the book for you. Full of hydrological wisdom, fateful decisions of Northern Song imperial officials, a river with 'agency' of its own to spare, human tragedy, deep environmental history, and vivid voices from a millennium ago, it is bound to have cross-disciplinary reach. Let's call it a landmark study of a river.' James C. Scott, Yale University, Connecticut

Innehållsförteckning

Prologue. 1048: the opening of an environmental drama; Part I. Pre-1048: Prelude to the Environmental Drama: 1. Before the Yellow River met the Hebei Plain; 2. The state's Hebei project; 3. The 1040s: on the eve of the flood; 4. Creating a delta landscape; Part II. Post-1048: The Unfolding of the Environmental Drama: 5. Managing the Yellow River-Hebei environmental complex; 6. Life in the Yellow River Delta; 7. Agriculture: a subsistence-oriented economy; 8. Land and water: a thousand years of environmental trauma; Epilogue. 1128: the close of the environmental drama; Index.