This collection of essays is the first relatively comprehensive survey of the environmental history of China.

Preface; Introduction Mark Elvin; The context; China's environmental history in world persepective John McNeill; Interpreting the physical environment; Man's impact on the vegetation and landscape in the Inner Himalaya and Tibet Wolfgang Holzner and Monika Kriechbaum; The villagers' view of environmental history in Yunnan province Nick Menzies; Human Seettlement; Environment versus water control Shiba Yshinobu; Han immigration and the settlement of Taiwan Liu Ts'ui-Jung; The Frontiers: Highlands and lowlands Anne Osborne; Population and ecology along the frontier in Qing China Eduard Vermeer; Water; Clear waters versus muddy waters Pierre-Ètienne Will; Action at a distance Mark Elvin and Su Ninghu; Weather and Climate; 'It never used to snow' Robert Marks; Changes in climate, land, and human efforts Li Bozhong; Diseases; Cholera in China, 1820-1930 Kerrie MacPherson; Environment and tuberculosis in modern China Zhang Yixia and Mark Elvin; Representations of the environment - the offical mind; From the Yellow River to the Huai Christian Lamouroux; Official thinking on environmental issues and the state's environmental roles in eighteenth-century China Helen Dunstan; Representations of the environment - literary and popular sensibility; Ecologism versus moralism Paolo Santangelo; Water, love, and labour Antonia Finnane; The environment and early modern economic growth in Taiwan and Japan; Non-reclamation deforestation in Taiwan, circa 1600-1976 Ch'en Kuo-tung; Hydro-electricity and industrialization Tung An-ch'i; Environmental problems and perceptions in early industrial Japan Tessa Morris-Suzuki; Index.