新书：The Profits of Nature

The Profits of Nature

Colonial Development and the Quest for Resources in Nineteenth-Century China

作者：Peter B. Lavelle

出版社：Columbia University Press

出版时间: January 2020

ISBN: 9780231194709

页码：272 pages

价格: $65.00£50.00

内容简介

In the nineteenth century, the Qing empire experienced a period of profound turmoil caused by an unprecedented conjunction of natural disasters, internal rebellions, and foreign incursions. The imperial government responded to these calamities by introducing an array of new policies and institutions to bolster its power across its massive territories. In the process, Qing officials launched campaigns for natural resource development, seeking to take advantage of the unexploited lands, waters, and minerals of the empire’s vast hinterlands and borderlands.
In this book, Peter B. Lavelle uses the life and career of Chinese statesman Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885) as a lens to explore the environmental history of this era. Although known for his pacification campaigns against internal rebellions, Zuo was at the forefront of the nineteenth-century quest for natural resources. Influenced by his knowledge of nature, geography, and technology, he created government bureaus and oversaw projects to improve agriculture, sericulture, and other industries in regions across the empire. His work forged new patterns of colonial development in the empire’s vast northwest, including Xinjiang, at a time when imperial rivals were scrambling for resources around the globe. Weaving a narrative across the span of Zuo’s lifetime, The Profits of Nature offers a new approach to understanding the dynamic relationship between imperial crisis, natural resources, and colonial development during a critical juncture in Chinese history, between the high tide of imperial power in the eighteenth century and the challenges of modern state-building in the twentieth century.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter B. Lavelle is assistant professor of history at Temple University.

Peter Lavelle is a historian of late imperial and modern China. His research focuses on topics such as the environment, science and technology, agriculture, and imperialism. He is currently writing a book which explores the intellectual and material dimensions of Qing state-building and colonialism in the nineteenth century. In this book, he examines the environmental significance of agricultural technology, geographical thinking, and land-use policies in the northwest of the Qing empire in the aftermath of Muslim rebellions. His other research interests include the history of Chinese agricultural and horticultural sciences and Chinese ideas about population in the late imperial period. Dr. Lavelle received his Ph.D. in Chinese history from Cornell University. Before joining the faculty at Temple in 2014, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan.

Selected Publications

“Agricultural Improvement at China’s First Agricultural Experiment Stations,” in Denise Phillips and Sharon Kingsland, eds., New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International, 2015), 323-344.
“The Aesthetics and Politics of Chinese Horticulture in Late Qing Borderlands,” in Liu Ts’ui-jung, ed., Environmental History in East Asia: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge 2014), 213-242.

Courses Taught

East Asian Environmental History (HIST 2680)

Contemporary China (HIST 3522)