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.
About the Author: 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.
