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  • Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China

    Fir and Empire by Miller, Ian M.;

    The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China

    Series: Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books;

      • GET 10% OFF

      • The discount is only available for 'Alert of Favourite Topics' newsletter recipients.
      • Publisher's listprice GBP 34.00
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        16 243 Ft (15 470 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 1 624 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 14 619 Ft (13 923 Ft + 5% VAT)

    16 243 Ft

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    Availability

    Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
    Not in stock at Prospero.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher University of Washington Press
    • Date of Publication 30 June 2020

    • ISBN 9780295747330
    • Binding Hardback
    • See also 9780295752877
    • No. of pages291 pages
    • Size 229x152x22 mm
    • Weight 522 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 9 b&w illus., 4 maps, 5 tables Illustrations, black & white
    • 66

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    Long description:

    A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE

    Restores China's place in forest history

    The disappearance of China's naturally occurring forests is one of the most significant environmental shifts in the country's history, one often blamed on imperial demand for lumber. China's early modern forest history is typically viewed as a centuries-long process of environmental decline, culminating in a nineteenth-century social and ecological crisis. Pushing back against this narrative of deforestation, Ian Miller charts the rise of timber plantations between about 1000 and 1700, when natural forests were replaced with anthropogenic ones. Miller demonstrates that this form of forest management generally rested on private ownership under relatively distant state oversight and taxation. He further draws on in-depth case studies of shipbuilding and imperial logging to argue that this novel landscape was not created through simple extractive pressures, but by attempts to incorporate institutional and ecological complexity into a unified imperial state.

    Miller uses the emergence of anthropogenic forests in south China to rethink both temporal and spatial frameworks for Chinese history and the nature of Chinese empire. Because dominant European forestry models do not neatly overlap with the non-Western world, China's history is often left out of global conversations about them; Miller's work rectifies this omission and suggests that in some ways, China's forest system may have worked better than the more familiar European institutions.

    The open access publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.

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