The Cultivated Forest

Synthesizes multiple perspectives on Asian forests from early history to the near present

Forests have histories that need to be told. This examination of wood and woodlands in East and Southeast Asia brings together case studies from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sumatra to explore continuities in the history of forest management across these regions as well as the distinctive qualities of human-forest relations within each context. With a general introduction to forest histories in East and Southeast Asia and a multidisciplinary set of authors, The Cultivated Forest constructs alternative lineages of forest knowledge that aim to transcend the frameworks imposed by colonial or national histories. Across these regions, forests were sites of exploitation, contestation, and ritual just as they were in Europe and America. This volume puts studies of Asian forests into conversation with global forest histories.

Ian M. Miller is assistant professor of history at St. John’s University. He is author of Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China. Bradley Camp Davis is associate professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University. He is author of Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands. Brian Lander is assistant professor of history and environment and society at Brown University. He is author of The King’s Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire. John S. Lee is assistant professor of East Asian history at Durham University. Contributors: David A. Bello, John Elijah Bender, Brian Collins, Keala Hagmann, Stevan Harrell, Tom Hinckley, Larissa Pitts, Amanda Schmidt, Faizah Zakaria, and Meng Zhang

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Cultivated Forest / Ian M. Miller, Bradley Camp Davis, and John S. Lee ix

Chapter 1. Deforestation in Early China: How People Adapted to Wood Scarcity / Brian Lander

Chapter 2. Forestry by Contract: Knowledge, Ownership, and the Written Record in South China / Ian M. Miller

Chapter 3. Fighting over Nature: Resource Disputes in Central Japan during an Age of Instability, 1475–1635 / John Elijah Bender

Chapter 4. The Sylvan Local: The Pine Protection Kye in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1700–1900 / John S. Lee

Chapter 5. Frontier Timber in Southwest China: Market, Empire, and Identity / Meng Zhang

Chapter 6. Splintered Habitats: The Fragmentation of Ecotone Northern China’s Imperial Woodland Complexes / David A. Bello

Chapter 7. Camphor, Celluloid, and Colonialism: The Dutch East Indies and Colonial Taiwan in Comparative Perspective / Faizah Zakaria

Chapter 8. Modern Trees for Backward China: Arbor Day and the Struggle against Ecological "Backwardness" in Republican China, 1911–1937 / Larissa Pitts

Chapter 9. Sunny Slopes Are Good for Grain, Shady Slopes Are Good for Trees: Nuosu Yi Agroforestry in Southwestern Sichuan / Stevan Harrell, Amanda H. Schmidt, Brian D. Collins, R. Keala Hagmann, and Thomas M. Hinckley

Glossaries of Plant Names and Non-Roman

Characters

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index