States of Nature: Resources, Regimes, and the Environment from Medieval to Modern China

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

The ecological cost of China’s recent state-led development has sparked increasing interest in the relationship between politics and the environment. For historians, this topic raises the question of how current trends mark a convergence or divergence with patterns of the past. Our panel adopts resource-centered approaches to probe environmental governance in China’s history. From iron and fire to food and fuel, it showcases how attempts by different Chinese states to manage natural resources and relieve disasters shaped social, economic, and environmental landscapes. Focusing on iron in Hebei during the Northern Song, Zhang explores how the imperial state's monopoly of the production and consumption of iron limited this resource’s potential to recast social relations during the so-called “medieval economic revolution.” Hayes examines fire suppression administration across four provinces between 1700 and 1965, emphasizing how changing understandings of interactions among fire, forest, and agro-pastoral regimes informed prevention efforts. Continuing the focus on state responses to disaster, Edgerton-Tarpley analyzes how the geography and politics of famine intersected to make food far more accessible in some areas than others during three major famines that struck late-Qing, Nationalist, and Maoist Henan. Seow then examines how tensions between the abundance of coal deposits and the perceived underdevelopment of the domestic coal industry gave rise to particular statist visions of technocratic carbon-based development in Nationalist and Communist China. Placing these papers in conversation highlights themes such as the waxing and waning of state capacity, changing state-resource relationships, and contradictions between resource conservation and exploitation in Chinese history.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Victor Seow, Cornell University

Chair

• Lillian M. Li, Swarthmore College

Individual Presentations

• Debating the Hartwell Hypothesis: Iron Production, Iron Consumption, and the Northern Song State - Ling Zhang, Boston College

• Framing Fires: Political Regimes, Fire Fighting, and Understanding Major Fire Events in China, 1700-1965 - Jack Patrick Hayes, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

• Mapping Famine: Geography and Statecraft in Late-Qing, Nationalist, and Mao-Era Henan - Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, San Diego State University

• Accessing Energy Abundance: Coal Mining and the Transwar Chinese State - Victor Seow, Cornell University

Discussant

• Jonathan Schlesinger, Indiana University Bloomington