“Western Learning” as Environmental History
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Abstract：
The presentation first briefly surveys development of western concepts of environmental history, from a deterministic practice before the 1960s to one now emphasizing contingency and inter-dependence between social (human) and ecological (natural) systems. The presentation then summarizes some of my latest work on the environmental statecraft-governance of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), exemplifying more recent trends. Chinese empire is reconsidered not as ethnic administration or elite politics or economic exchange or cultural pursuits. Instead, the empire becomes an environmental integration of Qing diversity’s human social and ecological elements—one way “to reconcile old empire-centered and nation-centered narratives with indigenous and nonstate space and territoriality . . . and embrace more nuanced definitions of power” (Hämäläinen and Truett, “On Borderlands”). Integration was effected through a legacy network of environmental infrastructures operating regionally in agricultural (China proper), agro-pastoral (Xinjiang) and pastoral modes (Qinghai-Tibet) that concentrated and buffered vital resources—including crops, livestock, water and grass—against environmental disruption. These infrastructures simultaneously mediated interactions between various peoples and ecologies (including climate, disease and even distance) to leverage the immense diversity of human and natural resources, realized through Qing unification of Inner Asia and China proper. The diversity orchestrated by such infrastructures was the foundation of Qing resilience.
The presentation first briefly surveys development of western concepts of environmental history, from a deterministic practice before the 1960s to one now emphasizing contingency and inter-dependence between social (human) and ecological (natural) systems. The presentation then summarizes some of my latest work on the environmental statecraft-governance of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), exemplifying more recent trends. Chinese empire is reconsidered not as ethnic administration or elite politics or economic exchange or cultural pursuits. Instead, the empire becomes an environmental integration of Qing diversity’s human social and ecological elements—one way “to reconcile old empire-centered and nation-centered narratives with indigenous and nonstate space and territoriality . . . and embrace more nuanced definitions of power” (Hämäläinen and Truett, “On Borderlands”). Integration was effected through a legacy network of environmental infrastructures operating regionally in agricultural (China proper), agro-pastoral (Xinjiang) and pastoral modes (Qinghai-Tibet) that concentrated and buffered vital resources—including crops, livestock, water and grass—against environmental disruption. These infrastructures simultaneously mediated interactions between various peoples and ecologies (including climate, disease and even distance) to leverage the immense diversity of human and natural resources, realized through Qing unification of Inner Asia and China proper. The diversity orchestrated by such infrastructures was the foundation of Qing resilience.