1st Edition
Perspectives on Environmental History in East Asia Changes in the Land, Water and Air
This edited volume engages with some of the most dynamic themes in current research on East Asian environmental history, including agricultural science, war and the environment, imperial forestry, oceanic history, and the history of energy.
Chapters in this book supply an overview of environmental history as a rapidly expanding field, continuing to generate valuable insights into the mutually constitutive relationship between human societies and the biophysical environment. The book is divided into three parts: Part I consists of three chapters related to land use, while Part II includes five chapters that focus on water, a topic of perennial concern among environmental historians of East Asia, especially as it relates to irrigation, food production, and marine fisheries. Part III consists of two chapters, discussing the impact of new technologies on air quality, in addition to the history of energy in East Asia, which has emerged as an important area of inquiry at the intersection between both environmental history and the history of science and technology.
Perspectives on Environmental History in East Asia: Changes in the Land, Water, and Air will appeal to students and scholars of East Asian studies, environmental history, and environmental sciences.
Part I: Land Use
1. The Tale of Treasure Grass: Sweet Clover’s Introduction and Extension in China, 1942–1961
Guannan Gao and Micah Muscolino
2. Un-Occupied Spaces: Demilitarization and Land Use in the Kanto Plain
Adam Tompkins
3. Development and Indigenous Peoples in Colonial Forestry: Representation of Taiwanese and Korean Vegetation Change in the Japanese Empire
Taisaku Komei
Part II: Cropping and Fishing
4. Irrigation and Sequence in Agricultural Time in Shanxi since the Ming Dynasty
Chi-Ying Chang
5. The Importance of Local Customs to Fisheries in Early Modern Japanese Fishing Villages
Shingo Nakamura
6. Rationalizing the Ocean: Low-Level Radiation and Salmon Farming in the North Pacific
Kayo Nishi
7. Vibrant Matter(s), Fish and Fishing Histories in North Korea
Robert Winstanley-Chesters
8. The EU Food Reference Laboratory and Its Lessons for Taiwan and China
Der-Chin Horng
Part III: Air Quality and Environmental Risk
9. Lessons from the Sixth Naphtha Cracker Complex of Mai-Liao, Taiwan: Environmental Disputes and Health Risks
Hurng-jyuhn Wang
10. Energy-Saving Practices and Emission Reduction in Coastal Southeast China and Taiwan
Ts’ui-jung Liu
Biography
Ts’ui-jung Liu is Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica. She gained her B.A. and M.A. from National Taiwan University and PhD from Harvard University. She was elected Academician of Academia Sinica in 1996. She served as Vice President of Academia Sinica between 2003 and 2009.
Micah Muscolino is Professor and Paul G. Pickowicz Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late Imperial and Modern China and The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938–1950. In addition to these books, he has published articles on China’s place in global environmental history, maritime connections between Mainland China and Taiwan, energy history, and the history of territorial disputes in the South China Sea. His current research focuses on the history of soil and water conservation in Northwest China’s Loess Plateau region from the 1940s to the 1970s.
