China's Environmental History

Catalog description

As one of the world’s great civilizations, China has among the most thoroughly transformed environments on earth, and an abundant corpus of writing that shows how that transformation happened. This course will explore China's environmental history from the first farmers to the industrial present, examining how wildlife was eliminated by the spread of agriculture, how states colonized territory, how water systems were built and rebuilt, and how modern communism and capitalism have accelerated environmental change. We will approach China’s environmental history through a wide variety of translated sources from China, including philosophical texts, landscape poetry, medical manuals, travel narratives, legal statutes, Buddhist texts, recipe books, and science fiction. No prior background in Asian or environmental history is required.