King's Harvest

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A01=Brian Lander
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
agricultural history
agricultural systems
agroecosystems
Author_Brian Lander
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJF
Category=HBLA
Category=JPA
Category=NHC
Category=NHF
classical period
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
domestication
environmental history
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exploitation of resources
Guanzhong basin
imperial china
Language_English
lowland envrionments
natural resources
PA=Available
political structure
premodern state
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
state control
zhou

Product details

  • ISBN 9780300255089
  • Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
  • Publication Date: 25 Jan 2022
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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A multidisciplinary environmental history of early China’s political systems, featuring newly available Chinese archaeological data
 
“Over four thousand years of unsustainable growth, Chinese states replaced a diverse ecosystem with a monocropping grain state. All states destroy environments, but only the state can save us. So ancient China's spectres still haunt our modern crisis. A brilliant and disturbing analysis!”—Peter C. Perdue, author of Environmental History in China and the West: Its Origins and Prospects
 
This book is a multidisciplinary study of the ecology of China’s early political systems up to the fall of the first empire in 207 BCE. Brian Lander traces the formation of lowland North China’s agricultural systems and the transformation of its plains from diverse forestland and steppes to farmland. He argues that the growth of states in ancient China, and elsewhere, was based on their ability to exploit the labor and resources of those who harnessed photosynthetic energy from domesticated plants and animals. Focusing on the state of Qin, Lander amalgamates abundant new scientific, archaeological, and excavated documentary sources to argue that the human domination of the central Yellow River region, and the rest of the planet, was made possible by the development of complex political structures that managed and expanded agroecosystems.
Brian Lander is assistant professor of history at Brown University and a fellow of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.