IT WAS A LONG and meandering route that led me from rural Ontario to the study of ancient Chinese history, and I could not have done it without family, friends, and governments. I had the good fortune to grow up in a wealthy and relatively socialist state where universities charged nominal tuition fees, allowing me to pursue a liberal arts education that has since become inaccessible to many. I was first introduced to environmental issues and East Asian history at Osgoode Township High School and found my calling in Lorne Hammond’s environmental history class at the University of Victoria, where I was also inspired by Greg Blue’s erudition. At Hong Kong University, Chad Hansen convinced me to study Chinese and Ci Jiwei expanded my consciousness. My research methodology owes a lot to my exposure to European scholarship during a semester at Radboud University in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where I learned a lot from Hub Zwart and Pieter Lemmens and from attending the first European Environmental History Conference. Two summers spent working as a Parks Canada interpreter at Kluane National Park gave me a wonderful crash course in natural history.
I began learning Chinese in earnest during a year at East China Normal University and then received a fantastic introduction to the study of early China under the tutelage of Griet Vankeerbergen and Robin Yates at McGill University. After that I spent a year at Lanzhou University, where I learned from Wu Jingshan 吳景山 about China’s long tradition of historical geography and came up with the project that became this book. Thanks to Liu Li 劉莉 and Sun Zhouyong 孫周勇 for helping me join the Shaanxi Bureau of Archaeology’s excavation of a Qin royal tomb and to Ding Yan 丁巖 and the work crew.
It was a privilege to do my doctorate in Columbia University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures under the supervision of Li Feng. With his deep knowledge of early China and his generosity toward his students, he was the ideal doctoral advisor and has remained a supportive mentor. It was particularly nice to learn about archaeology from him on the Guicheng archaeological survey. Robert Hymes and Madeleine Zelin taught me a lot about Chinese history and about how history should be studied. I also learned from my classmates in China studies, including Stephen Boyanton, Kevin Buckelew, Glenda Chao, Chen Kaijun, Anatoli Detwyler, Nina Duthie, Arunabh Ghosh, Weiwei Luo, Wu Minna, Greg Paterson, Ho Han-Peng, Nick Vogt, Chelsea Wang, and Sixiang Wang. I have learned a great deal about the history of Qin from the work of Maxim Korolkov. Bill McAllister and the other fellows at INCITE enriched my final year at Columbia. My dissertation committee (Robert Hymes, Li Feng, Rod Campbell, Guo Jue, and Robin Yates) gave me a lot of useful advice. I would like to particularly thank Robin Yates for his generous encouragement and mentoring over the past fifteen years.
My year at the Center for the Study of Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts at Wuhan University provided me with essential training. Thanks to Chen Wei 陳偉 and everyone else there for hosting me. I learned a lot from conversations with Cao Fangxiang 曹方向, Dou Lei 竇磊, He Youzu 何友祖, Huang Jie 黃傑, Lu Jialiang 魯家亮, Luo Xiaohua 羅小華, Zheng Wei 鄭威, and Tian Chengfang 田成方. Thanks to Edward Shaughnessy for introducing me to Wuhan University during his fantastic summer paleography workshop. I learned about ancient ecology and climate in classes with Gail Chmura, Dorothy Peteet, and Wally Broecker. Thanks also to Tom McGovern for letting me take his course at CUNY and to both him and David Pankenier for serving as field advisors. Gary Crawford kindly let me spend a month at his lab at the University of Toronto, introducing me to the theories and methods of archaeobotany.
Guo Yanli 郭妍利 helped me in many ways during my time at Shaanxi Normal University, and I am grateful to her and to various students from the history department for keeping me sane. I learned a lot from Huang Chun Chang 黃春長 and the students at his lab, including Guo Yongqiang 郭永強 and Liu Tao 劉濤. I would like to thank Zhang Li 張莉 and the Northwest Institute of Historical Environment for inviting me to present my findings. For other research help I would like to thank Liang Yun 梁雲, Wang Zhiyou 王志友, Qin Jianming 秦建明, Hu Songmei 胡松梅, and especially Jiao Nanfeng 焦南峰, who introduced me to several of the above. Thanks also to Jiao Nanfeng, Sun Zhouyong, and the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Archaeology for providing me with some of the images in this book and permission to use them. I should also add that I met with many generous and thoughtful people during the five years I lived and traveled in China, and much of my understanding of China comes from casual conversations with people all over China.
Two great years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment provided me with time and resources to expand my research and pushed me to think harder about its relevance to present issues. Thanks especially to Dan Schrag, Jim Clem, the other fellows, and my host, Rowan Flad, who introduced me to my favorite collaborator, Kate Brunson. I have also learned a lot from my forest history collaborators John Lee, Ian M. Miller, and Brad Davis. Here at Brown my colleagues in the history department and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society have made me feel at home, provided me with an ideal space for my research, and been very supportive during some difficult times. Thanks to Cynthia Brokaw, Jonathan Conant, Nancy Jacobs, Rebecca Nedostup, Emily Owens, Lukas Rieppel, Naoko Shibusawa, and Kerry Smith. I would particularly like to thank Robert Self and Timmons Roberts for their generosity and guidance. Robert Self generously organized a manuscript workshop in which he, Tamara Chin, Bathsheba Demuth, Rowan Flad, Graham Oliver, Peter Perdue, and Ling Zhang read and provided extensive comments on my manuscript. It was an extraordinary privilege, and it helped make this a much better work. My students have also pushed me to think about many of the issues addressed in this book.
Researching this book has given me new awareness of how much my education has been supported by states. The Chinese and Canadian governments supported three of my years in China: my years in Lanzhou and Wuhan were both funded by the Canada-China Scholar’s Exchange Program, and my language study in Shanghai was funded by the University of Victoria/East China Normal University Student Exchange. My semester in the Netherlands was part of the Coastal Inquiries Exchange Project funded by Canada and the European Union. And, of course, the private American universities where I have studied and worked all receive substantial government support.
People who have generously read and commented on my manuscript over the years include Graham Chamness, John Cherry, Stewart Cole, Gary Crawford, Madelaine Drohan, Benjamin Hein, Yizchak Jaffe, Sumit Guha, Michael Loewe, David Lord, Robert Marks, Ian M. Miller, Tate Paulette, Parker VanValkenburgh, Lothar von Falkenhausen, and Donald Worster. Apologies to those I’ve forgotten and for the good advice that I ignored. Thanks to two anonymous reviewers at Cambridge University Press, one anonymous reviewer from Yale University Press, and Ruth Mostern for their very helpful suggestions. At Yale University Press, editor Jean Thomson Black has guided me expertly through the publishing process, and I also thank Elizabeth Sylvia, Marilyn Martin, and Mary Pasti. Thanks to Lynn Carlson for making many of the maps.
I am grateful for the support of family, including my in-laws and my sisters. Without the patient support of my parents for my seemingly never-ending studenthood, this book would not have been written. Their love of gardening seeded my interest in agriculture, and their enthusiasm for travel led me to China. I dedicate this book to them and to my sweetheart, Elizabeth. I met her around the time I first came up with the idea for this book, and she helped me with every part of it. Elizabeth died of cancer just as I was finishing the book, and although she will sadly not see it in print, it is a testament to our fifteen years of happiness and love.