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Seeing the Forest from the Trees: Scientific Forestry and the Rise of Modern Chinese Environmentalism, 1864 - 1937
- Pitts, Larissa Noelle
- Advisor(s): Yeh, Wen-hsin
Abstract
This dissertation narrates the rise of Chinese scientific forestry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing primarily on central officials in Beijing and local officials in Jilin Province, it argues that forestry served as the lens through which Chinese officials first engaged with the ecological, cultural, and economic dimensions of international environmentalism. This meant that they saw forest cover as indicative of the quality of a nation’s culture, as well as the health of its land and economy. For the first time, Chinese officials sought to manage timber as a national resource. In so doing, they revealed the importance of environmental perceptions and realities to shaping global modernity.
China gained international notoriety for its deforested landscapes around the turn of the twentieth century. The Taiping Rebellion and other wars of the nineteenth century had resulted in a dramatic loss in China’s forest cover. Nevertheless, foreign observers and Chinese literati uniformly blamed China’s deforestation on its inferior culture. Under the leadership of Yuan Shikai and the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, Republican officials sought to solve the forest problem with the help of American-trained foresters such as Ling Daoyang and Han An. This meant that central officials became newly responsible for managing the entire nation’s timber resources. Forestry’s proponents argued this would salvage China’s international reputation. Just as importantly, they argued that efficient forest management would foster the nation’s ecological health and economic self-sufficiency. In other words, they developed a style of Chinese environmental nationalism tied to forestry.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce imported the American tradition of Arbor Day in order to transmit this new ideology to the Chinese public. Henceforth, all local and provincial governments throughout the Chinese nation would conduct reforestation projects as part of the Arbor Day celebration. This was to be done regardless of the suitability of local climates, soils, and social conditions to planting trees. For some officials, reforestation necessitated a struggle to tame the land to support trees. For others, it meant guarding trees against banditry, warfare, animals, or even small children. For some, reforestation meant reinvigorating traditionally forested areas, such as sacred mountains, temples, and riverbeds. For others, it meant establishing economic tree farms and modern parks. Those who succeeded in growing and maintaining China’s forest cover displayed a commitment to creating a China that was as ecologically modern as they imagined the landscapes throughout the world to be. Forestry thus served as the lens through which Chinese officials from Beijing to rural Jilin engaged with the cultural and economic dimensions of global environmentalism.
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