Agenda

Yuan Julian Chen (Duke University): Militarizing Nature in Medieval Warfare: A Case Study from Medieval China. 960-1125

Abstract:

This talk will trace the history of the inception, preservation, and destruction of an extensive defensive forest that once stood between China’s Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) and the nomadic Kitan Liao empire (916-1125). From early imperial China to the modern PRC, the Chines state has a long tradition of militarizing nature – rivers, forests, islands, and so on – in warfare. The highly centralized state was (and still is) able to rapidly mobilize massive manpower and resources to modify landscapes to achieve its utilitarian goals in the short-term. Yet the social and environmental consequences in the long-term often carried much little weight in such large-scale landscape transformations. This talk provides one case study from medieval history and also offers food for thought for current affairs.  

Read about Yuan Julian CHEN here 

Ian Miller (St. John’s College): Fir and Empire: Forestry, the State and the Market in Early Modern China

Abstract:

Forestry was important to state-building efforts in the early modern world. Timber and fuel were strategic goods needed for shipbuilding, civil engineering, urban construction, iron smelting, and coin minting. Many states in both Europe and Northeast Asia developed rules and institutions to better control domestic supplies, while others without substantial domestic woodlands turned to imports. But because it had neither a large forestry bureaucracy nor chartered merchant companies, China was often assumed to lack an effective forestry system entirely. 

In fact, China long relied on a third strategy: a domestic forest market dominated by small-scale, private producers. As early as 1150, and with growing prevalence after 1500, landowners invested in planting timber. They registered their property with the government, creating a de facto private property regime. And they used private litigation–formally illegal–as they developed simple land deeds and tenancy contracts into timber securities.  This private forestry enabled a large-scale environmental transformation, as people cleared mixed forests across much of the south and replaced them with plantations of fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata), pine, bamboo, and a handful of other commercial species. In the short term, this forestry market looked arguably more modern than its contemporaries elsewhere in the world; in the long-run, it may have short-circuited the development of land oversight and environmental science.

Read about Ian MILLER here

Discussant: John Dodsworth

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Zoom link HERE

Meeting ID: 830 5104 2967
Passcode: Dw6vcv

This event is part of the Environments, Societies, and Histories in East Asia Lecture series, organised by NICHE in collaboration with Maddalena Barenghi, Marco Zappa, Daniele Brombal, Francesca Tarocco and the Department of Asian and North African Studies.