Honorable Mention for the 2022 ISCLH First Biennial Book Prize, sponsored by the International Society for Chinese Law and History

Traces the sourcing of logs that fueled early modern urbanization

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.

Traces the sourcing of logs that fueled early modern urbanization

About the Author

Meng Zhang is assistant professor of history at Vanderbilt University.

Reviews

"[O]ne of the most interesting books for understanding the Chinese system of timber trade during the Qing era. Zhang's book can be useful to us today because we are living in a time of deforestation of the Amazon, climate change, and problems with the actual economic system. The explanation provided by Zhang might be part of the solution for shaping humanity's common future."

* H-Net *

"Zhang's work is superlative... [T]his remarkable book belongs on the shelves and syllabi of any scholar interested in the economical and environmental history of early modern China."

* Journal of Asian Studies *

"For the reader unfamiliar with the details of imperial Chinese political economy, this is a work that is attentive to what you need to know. For the specialist it is skilled in logical weaving together of the impact of a complex set of institutions and practices. This should encourage wide readerhip among comparative historians as well as China scholars."

* Journal of Chinese History *

"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."

* New Books Network *

"At a time when the market has been seen as a main culprit for resource degeneration, Zhang's study offers an important opportunity for us to reconsider the market-resource relationship. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Chinese history, economic and environmental history, Chinese geography, resource management, sustainable forestry, market-environment relationships, and related topics."

* China Review International *

"Advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars of early capitalism, regional political economy, historical resource economics, and the convergence of ecology and economics (a new Oikonomics?) will gain much from a careful, critical, and comparative reading of this remarkable and challenging book."

* Environmental History *

"Offering vivid insights into labourers, who played a crucial role in different stages of timber production, such as cutting, processing, and transportation, Zhang's book fills a gap in current knowledge about the history of forest labourers."

* International Review of Social History *

"[An] original and fascinating new perspective on forest history in China...Scholars and students of global and East Asian environmental, forest, and economic history will find [this] new and insightful analysis very useful."

* Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *

"An impressive and careful study of a subject unexplored in English. [Meng Zhang's] insights into the role of market forces in environmental management make a vital contribution to the field of environmental history."

* American Historical Review *

"[An] engaging and empirically rich study. . . deftly interweaving economic and environmental histories."

* Technology and Culture *


Awards
Winner of Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award 2022 (United States). Commended for ISCLH Book Prize 2022 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9780295748870
Author Meng Zhang
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press
Weight(grams) 408g