The Retreat of the Elephants by Mark Elvin
This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, that allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of the Chinese people towards their environment and their landscape. Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated the habitat of the elephants that populated the country alongside much of its original wildlife; the destruction of most of the forests; the impact of war on the environmental transformation of the landscape; and the reengineering of the countryside through water-control systems, some of gigantic size. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the modern era, was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time.
Mark Elvin is professor of Chinese history at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. Author of The Pattern of the Chinese Past and other works, he has taught at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and Heidelberg, and been a visiting research fellow at Harvard.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780300101119 |
| ISBN 10 | 0300101112 |
| Title | The Retreat of the Elephants |
| Author | Mark Elvin |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
| Year published | 2004-03-11 |
| Number of pages | 564 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |