1. See M. Elvin, , “The environmental history of China: an agenda of ideas,” Asian Studies Review, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1990)Google Scholar, and M. Elvin, , “Three thousand years of unsustainable growth: China's environment from archaic times to the present,” East Asian History, Vol. 6 (1993)Google Scholar. There is an overview in Edmonds, R. L., Patterns of China's Lost Harmony, A Survey of the Country's Environmental Degradation and Protection (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), ch. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Long-term climatic trends are covered in Wu Chen, , Huabei pingyuan siwan nian lai ziran huanjing yanbian (Changes in the Natural Environment of the North China Plain During the Last 40,000 Years) (Beijing: Zhongguo kexue jishu chubanshe, 1992).Google Scholar Wu shows that the dominant pattern of north China's climate in the late Quaternary has been an alternation between periods that are cold + dry and those that are warm + wet. For the historical era see Zhu Kezhen, “Zhongguo jin wuqian nian lai qihou bianqian de chubu yanjiu” (“Preliminary investigations into the changes in China's climate during the last 5,000 years”), Kaogu xuebao (Journal of Archaeology), No. 1 (1972). The pattern over the last 2,000 years is summarized in a chart in Blunden, C. and Elvin, M., A Cultural Atlas of China (Oxford: Phaidon, 1983), p. 14.Google Scholar

3. On this last, see Bozhong, Li, “Changes in climate, land, and human efforts: the production of wet-field rice in Jiangnan during the Ming and Qing dynasties,”Google Scholar and Marks, R. B., “‘It never used to snow:’ climatic variability and harvest yields in late-imperial south China, 1650–1850,”Google Scholar both in Elvin, M. and Liu, T-J. (eds.), Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

4. Rosner, E., “‘Gewöhnung’ an die malaria in chinesischen Quellen des 18 Jahrhunderts” (“‘Habituation’ to malaria in Chinese sources of the eighteenth century”), Sudhoffs Archiv, Vol. 68, No. 1 (1984).Google Scholar

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6. Tortora, G. J., Funke, B. R. and Case, C. L., Microbiology. An Introduction (Redwood City, CA: Benjamin/Cummings, 1989), pp. 568–69Google Scholar.On the present-day situation, see Zhejiang Province Anti-Parasitic Diseases Committee, Jishengchongbing de fangzhi (Prevention and Cure of Parasitic Worm Diseases) (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1972), pp. 1–45.Google Scholar

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8. Li Ao, , Li Ao quanji (Complete Works of Li Ao) (Taipei: Siji chubanshe, 1980), pp. 115–128.Google Scholar

9. Gulik, R. van, Sexual Life in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 1974; first edition, 1961), pp. 333–34.Google Scholar

10. Notably S. Andreski, , “‘The syphilitic shock:’ puritanism, capitalism and the medical factor,” Encounter, Vol. 55, No. 4 (1980)Google Scholar. Also Andreski, S., “The syphilitic shock: a new explanation of the ‘Great Witch Craze’ of the 16th and 17th centuries in the light of medicine and psychiatry,” Encounter, Vol. 58, No. 5 (1982).Google Scholar

11. MacPherson, K. L., “Cholera in China, 1820–1930: an aspect of the internationalization of disease,” in Elvin, and Liu, , Sediments of Time.Google Scholar

12. Zhang, Y. and Elvin, M., “Environment and tuberculosis in modern China,” in Elvin, and Liu, , Sediments of Time.Google Scholar

13. See, in Blunden, and Elvin, , A Cultural Atlas of China, a map showing Toba Wei imperial pasture land, p. 95.Google Scholar

14. The complexities behind this summary formulation are discussed in Elvin, , “Three thousand years,” pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

15. Hideto, Kitada, “Tōdai Kōnan no shizen kankō to kaihatsu” (“Natural environment and development in Jiangnan in the Tang dynasty”), in Akira, Gotō etal. (eds.), Rekishi ni okeru shizen (Nature in History) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989), pp. 143–150.Google Scholar

16. See Elvin, M., “The Bell of Poesy: thoughts on poems as information on late-imperial Chinese environmental history,” in Carletti, S., Sacchetti, M. and Santangelo, P. (eds.), Studi in Onore di Lionello Lanciotti (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1996).Google Scholar

17. Yaoguang, Xu et al. revision of Yangxian, Wuetal. comp., Jiaxing fuzhi (Jiaxing Prefectural Gazetteer) (Chengwen reprint of 1879 original, Huazhong #53. Taipei: Chengwen, 1970), p. 783 on wild rice;Google ScholarQing's, Shan revision of Xu Shi, comp., Zhiyuan Jiahe zhi (Gazetteer for Jiahe [∼ Jiaxing] in the Zhiyuan Reign-period), reprinted in Zhonghua shuju bianjibu (ed.), Song Yuan fangzhi congkan, 8 volumes (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), Vol. 5, pp. 4422–423Google Scholar for other items in this paragraph. Some of the material on the history of Jiaxing sketched here is drawn from Elvin, M., “Blood and statistics,” in Zurndorfer, H. (ed.), Chinese Women in the Imperial Past: New Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 1998).Google Scholar

18. For a discussion of what this may actually have meant, see Tadayo, Watabe and Yumio, Sakurai (eds.), Chūgoku Kōnan no inasaku bunka (The Rice Culture of Jiangnan in China) (Tokyo: Nihon hōsō shuppan kyōkai, 1984), pp. 1–54.Google Scholar

19. See Gazetteer for Jiahe, p. 4500 on timber-cutting.

20. That is, enclosed land that at some time of the year may lie below the mean level of the water.Google Scholar

21. Gazetteer for Jiahe, pp. 4441–442.

22. Ibid. p. 4442.

23. Ibid. pp. 4444, 4450, 4452, etc.

24. Ibid. p. 4597.

25. Ibid. pp. 4451–452.

26. Ibid. pp. 4453, 4455.

27. Clearly the phenomenon, when it occurred, was multi-causal, and it was not the same everywhere. For example, it is explicitly recorded that women did not take part in the heavier tasks of farming in Zunhua, in the north-east, even at the end of late-imperial times, though they did weed, pick cotton and beans and carry food to the workers in the fields.Google ScholarSee Songtai, He et al. (eds.), Zunhua tongzhi (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Zunhua zhou) (Zunhua: 1886), juan 15, p. 3aGoogle Scholar. For an interesting overview of this subject, which for the most part takes rather different positions from those adopted here, see Bray, F., Technology and Gender. Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996).Google Scholar

28. Jiaxing Prefectural Gazetteer, p. 789.

29. Ibid. p. 789.

30. Ibid. p. 783.

31. Ibid. pp. 784–85, 788.

32. It was the women who sacrificed to the Goddess of Sericulture. See Ibid. p. 803.

33. Ibid. p. 793.

34. Ibid. p. 793.

35. Thus, for example, the small group of Yanghuang people who lived in Guiyang in Guizhou province in Qing times made farming and textile production the basis of their livelihood, but “in their leisure time grasp their weapons and basket-traps for fish and devote themselves to fishing and hunting.” Guiyang fuzhi (Guiyang Prefectural Gazetteer) (Guiyang Prefectural Office, 1850), No. 89, p. 25a.Google Scholar

36. See Elvin, M., The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

37. See Ridley, M., The Origins of Virtue (London: Penguin, 1997), ch. 11, although the argument therein is not without flaws.Google Scholar

38. See, for example, Elvin, , “Three thousand years,” pp. 16–21 on “Powerless wisdom: the ecological economy of archaic China.”Google Scholar

39. Hughes, J. D., Pan's Travail. Environmental Problems of the Ancient Greeks and Romans (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. 198–99.Google Scholar

40. See, for example, Fletcher, R., The Limits of Settlement Growth: A Theoretical Outline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

41. Fletcher, Settlement Growth. On Shang urban drainage, see Zhenhao, Song, Xia Shang shehui shenghuo shi (A History of Social Life under the Xia and Shang Dynasties) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1994), p. 26.Google Scholar

42. Song Zhenhao, Ibid. p. 107.

43. Jinxiong, Xu, Zhongguo gudai shehui (Society in Ancient China) (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1988), pp. 408–411.Google Scholar

44. Kuan, Yang, Zhongguo gudai ducheng zhidu shi yanjiu (Researches in the History of the Systems of the Capital Cities of Chinese Antiquity) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1993), pp. 10, 13, 16–17.Google Scholar

45. Liji (Records of Ritual Behaviour), “Li yun” (≈“The evolution of ritual behaviour”).Google Scholar

46. Kuan, Yang, Capital Cities, pp. 19, 20, 23–25, 31–39. See also Chang, K-C., Shang Civilization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 134, 158–161, 268.Google Scholar

47. Text from Karlgren, B., The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities; 1950), pp. 207–208 (Gong Liu); tr. M. Elvin.Google Scholar

48. Karlgren, , Odes, p. 190 (Mian).Google Scholar

49. Ibid. p. 190 (Mian).

50. Kuan, Yang, Capital Cities, pp. 209–211, 219, 224–26, 232.Google Scholar

51. Guojun, Xiao, Chunqiu zhi Qin Han zhi dushi fazhan (The Development of Cities from the Springs and Autumns Period to the Qin and Han) (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1984), pp. 251–54.Google Scholar

52. Cited in Kuan, Yang, Capital Cities, p. 242, n. 2.Google Scholar

53. Discussed in Elvin, “Three thousand years,” pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

54. Ibid. pp. 18–19.

55. For a famous example, see Shou, Chen (ed.), San guo zhi (Record of the Three Kingdoms) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1969)Google Scholar, “Wei shu,” juan 28, pp. 775–76. This passage is also discussed in Kichiya, Sakuma, Gi Shin Nanboku-chō suiri-shi kenkyū (A Study of the History of Water Control under the Wei, the Jin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties) (Kaimei shoin, 1980), pp. 13–14Google Scholar, and in Elvin, , “Three thousand years,” p. 24.Google Scholar

56. For an introduction to the complexities that lie behind these generalizations, see Elvin, M., “Introduction,” in Elvin, M., Nishioka, H., Tamura, K. and Kwek, J., Japanese Studies on the History of Water Control in China. A Selected Bibliography (Canberra and Tokyo: Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, and Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO, 1994).Google Scholar

57. On the Huang River, see Elvin, , “Three thousand years,”Google Scholar and on Jiangnan, see Yoshinobu, Shiba, Sōdai Kōnan keizai shi no kenkyū (Researches on the Economic History of Jiangnan) (Tokyo: Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo, 1988).Google Scholar

58. In Qinghai sheng min wei shaoshu minzu guji zhengli guihua bangongshi (ed.), Qinghai difang jiuzhi wuzhong (Five Old Local Gazetteers from Qinghai) (Xining: Qinghai renmin chubanshe, 1989), pp. 627–28.Google Scholar

59. Haematite, the principal source of iron, has “glittering mirror-like surfaces” when well-crystallized. See Hallam, A. et al. (eds.), Planet Earth (Oxford: Elsevier-Phaidon, 1977), p. 130 (and photograph).Google Scholar

60. Coke, , or “charcoal coal,” was also sometimes used for smelting iron ore in the north-west. See Five Old Local Gazetteers, p. 581.Google Scholar

61. The stele text has a gap of a character at this point.

62. See Elvin, , Pattern of the Chinese Past, pp. 312–15; Elvin, M., Another History, chs. 2 and 3 (for exceptions).Google Scholar

63. Five Old Local Gazetteers, pp. 235–37. Note the “Huang” here was not the “Yellow” River. The Chinese character is a homophone but not a homograph.Google Scholar

64. Five Old Local Gazetteers, pp. 237–240. The figures seem to be doubtful. In addition to Han-Chinese there were Tibetans and Mongols.Google Scholar

65. Chinese “feet” and “inches.” Conversion ratios varied locally, but were near enough to allow the terms to be left unadjusted here, since no guide to an exact local equivalent is available.

66. Discussed, for example, by Richardson, S. D., Forests and Forestry in China. Changing Patterns of Resource Development (Washington, DC, and Covelo, CA: Island Press, 1990).Google Scholar

67. The Dan'ger mercantile economy was thought of as fairly conservative in the late 19th century, but putting money with merchants on deposit at interest was a standard practice. See, for example, Five Old Local Gazetteers, p. 351, and for background pp. 287–88.Google Scholar

68. The basic elements of this idea may be summed up in simplified form as follows. In an economy with markets and with banks that take deposits at interest, a resource R turned into cash of $x and deposited for n years at r% annual compound interest will yield a total of $x (1 + r/100)ⁿ at the end of this period. Thus $100 deposited for 10 years at 10% yields about $259. This mechanism allows a comparison of values across time. It is also obvious that, in the example given, leaving R unconverted to cash on deposit creates a loss of $159 in income foregone. If, however, r = 0, and if R is not subject to decay or increase, and the (real) exchange value of R in the market remains constant across time at the initial $x, then there is no necessary loss over time. What enables the bank to pay interest at r > 0 is that it can lend the $x deposited with it to a business at a rate of r + r′ (r′ positive), and that this business can (in general) utilize the $x to create a profit p > r + r′. In other words, the economy has to be growing. This is why growth in and of itself can create a pressure to “cash in” resources, such as slow-maturing trees.+0+is+that+it+can+lend+the+$x+deposited+with+it+to+a+business+at+a+rate+of+r+++r′+(r′+positive),+and+that+this+business+can+(in+general)+utilize+the+$x+to+create+a+profit+p+>+r+++r′.+In+other+words,+the+economy+has+to+be+growing.+This+is+why+growth+in+and+of+itself+can+create+a+pressure+to+“cash+in”+resources,+such+as+slow-maturing+trees.>Google Scholar

69. One of the “riches” of the Tang capital Chang' an was said (in the tenth century) to be “illnesses.” See Hideto, Kitada, “Natural environment and development in Jiangnan in the Tang dynasty,” p. 141. Shuji, Cao, “Dili huanjing yu Song Yuan shidai de chuanranbing” (“Geographical environment and infectious diseases in the Song Yuan period”), Lishi dili (Historical Geography), Vol. 12, p. 184, cites the Songshi (History of the Song) biography of Su Shi, juan 338: “Hangzhou, being the meeting-place of land and water [routes] constantly has more people dying of epidemics than other places.”Google Scholar

70. Wu Youxing. See Dunstan, “The late Ming epidemics.”

71. See Gustafsson, B., “Nature and economy,” in Teich, M., Porter, R. and Gustafsson, B. (eds.), Nature and Society in Historical Context(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 358,Google Scholar and, for more detailed examination of the issue, Perrings, C., Mäler, K-G, Folke, C., Holling, C. S. and Jansson, B-O. (eds.), Biodiversity Loss: Economic and Ecological Issues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72. See Kellert, S. R. and Wilson, E. O. (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993).Google Scholar

73. See Elvin, M. and Ninghu, Su, “Engineering the sea: hydraulic systems and pre-modern technological lock-in in the Hangzhen Bay area, circa 1000–1800,” in Itō Suntarō and Yoshinori, Yasuda (eds.), Nature and Humankind in the Age of Environmental Crisis (Kyoto: International Research Centre for Japanese Studies, 1995), p. 86.Google Scholar

74. See the discussion in Elvin, “Three thousand years,” p. 45.

75. For an example, see Menzies, N., “Forestry”, section 42b, in Needham, J., Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. VI, No. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 661.Google Scholar

76. Examples are given in Elvin, “Three thousand years,” pp. 25–29.Google Scholar

77. See Ibid. on the traveller Xu Xiake; on Xu see also Strassberg, R. E., Inscribed Landscapes. Travel Writing from Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 317–19.Google Scholar

78. Hughes, , Pan's Travail, p. 33. Ancient Egypt was less confrontational.Google Scholar

79. Ibid. p. 168.

80. Akira, Morita, “Water control in Zhehdong during the later Ming,” East Asian History, Vol. 2 (Dec. 1991), tr. Elvin, M. and Keiko, Tamura.Google Scholar

81. Guangfu, Liu, Jingye guilüe quanshu (Complete Documents Relating to the “Summary of Regulations for Managing the Countryside”) (1603. Reprinted Zhuji: County Magistrate Hua Xuelie, 1865), xu, p. 13ab.Google Scholar

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83. On the spatial expansion see the maps in Blunden and Elvin, Cultural Atlas, especially pp. 30–31, 34–35, 54, 62, 71, 92, 94. Also Wiens, H., China's March Towards the Tropics … (Hamden, CT: Shoe String Press, 1954). The term “expansion” necessarily includes an unclear but significant amount of absorption.Google Scholar

84. The contrast indicated here is principally with early modern Western Europe where, grosso modo, it seems that with the crystallization of the nation-state the mutual reinforcement of political and cultural discontinuities greatly limited the possibilities of substantial internal movements of population. The large-scale movement of Russians into Siberia and Western Europeans into the New World and elsewhere overseas lies outside this formulation and does not have a Chinese parallel in terms of scale – except perhaps the expanded Han migration into Manchuria in the early decades of the present century.Google Scholar

85. See Yoshinobu, Shiba, Commerce and Society in Sung China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1970), pp. 181–89.Google Scholar

86. Yūji, Muramatsu, Chūgoku keizai shakai taisei (The Social Structure of the Chinese Economy) (Tokyo: Tōyō keizai shinpōsha, 1949), p. 33. For a specific illustration, see Gamble, S., North China Villages: Social, Political and Economic Activities Before 1933(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), Table 26, p. 331. In the village covered by this table, out of 276 families, 50% came to the village between 1483 and 1722, 44% between 1723 and 1902, and 6% between 1903 and 1933. In approximate terms, about half the population here thus lived in families settled for eight generations or more.Google Scholar

87. Lee, J., “Food supply and population growth in south-west China, 1250–1850,” Journal of Asian Sudies, Vol. 41, No. 4 (1982), and Lee, J., “The legacy of immigration in south-west China, 1250–1850,” Annales de Démographie Historique (1982).Google Scholar

88. Elvin, M., Pattern of the Chinese Past, especially part 3; and Elvin, M., “Skills and resources in late traditional China,” in Perkins, D. (ed.), China's Modern Economy in Historical Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), revised version in Elvin, M., Another History: Essays on China from a European Perspective(Sydney/Honolulu: Wild Peony/University of Hawai'i Press, 1996). The introduction of New World crops such as maize, sweet potatoes, peanuts and tobacco is of course a well-known example of non-inventive but economically crucial diffusion in the late-imperial period.Google Scholar

89. Zhongqing, Li and Songyi, Guo (eds.), Qingdai huangzu renkou xingwei he shehui huanjing (The Demographic Activities of the Qing Imperial House and their Social Environment) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1994)Google Scholar; Lee, J. and Campbell, C., Fate and Fortune in Rural China. Social Organization and Population Behaviour in Liaoning, 1774–1873 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lee, J. Z. and Feng, Wang, Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Reality: The Population History of One Quarter of Humanity (forthcoming).Google Scholar

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91. See Bray, Technology and Gender.Google Scholar

92. See Adshead, S. A. M., “An energy crisis in early modern China,” Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i (now retitled Late Imperial China), Vol. 3, No. 2 (1974), pp. 20–28.Google Scholar

93. Described with numerous quotations by Kōichi, Obi, Chūgoku bungaku ni aratawareta shizen to shizenkan (Nature and the Concept of Nature in Chinese Literature) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963).Google Scholar

94. Examples are given in Elvin, “Bell of Poesy.”Google Scholar

95. See the analyses of the vulnerable mid-gorge rock-formations in Chengkun, Lin, Changjiang Sanxia yu Gezhouba de nisha ji huanjing (Sediments and Environment of the Three Gorges of the Yangzi and of Gezhou Dam) (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 1989).Google Scholar

96. See Elvin, M., review of Callicott, J. B. and Ames, R. T. (eds.), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989), Asian Studies Review, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1991). I draw attention here to the often neglected elements of environmental insight in the Western tradition, including the Old Testament (Psalms, Job), the classical world (Lucretius, for example), and early modern philosophy (especially Spinoza's Ethica).Google Scholar