Language: English
ISBN/ISSN: 9781442212756
Published on: 2011-01
Hardcover
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 “heroic” storyline, highlighting the marginalization of nature 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 reader interested in China, past or present. Indeed he argues successfully that all of humanity has a stake in China’s environmental future
Introduction: Problems and Perspectives
Plan of the Book
2 China’s Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE
Natural Environment
Landforms
China’s Geographic Regions
Forests and Ecosystems
China’s Climate
Human Settlement and Pre-History
The Origins of Agriculture in China
Rice Environments in Central and South China
Malaria
The Yangzi River Valley
The Environment for Millet in North China
Nitrogen and Fertilizer
Summary
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