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"Modern understandings of forest ecology first emerged in the nineteenth century from forestry schools in Europe and North America. Until recently, Asia was sidelined in histories of wood and woodland. To bring Asia's own cultivation of forests into focus, this volume presents scholarship that considers the different roles that wood and woodlands have played in the histories of East and Southeast Asian regions, promising to transform how we understand the broader histories of Asia and the environment. Considering the types of woodlands found in Asia, from the tropical forests of Sumatra to the boreal forests of Manchuria, contributors explore the range of uses for these sites, the dynamics of wood dispute resolution, and the distinctive institutions that emerged from them. Chapter topics include perspectives on human woodland use and modification based on recent archaeological work; changes in the resolution of water and wood resource claims; and how ethnic minorities have claimed their identity as forest people as a way of protecting their lumber market position. By demonstration that across East and Southeast Asia forests were sites of exploitation, contestation, and ritual in Asia just as they were in Europe and America, this volume places them in conversation with world forest history"--
List of contents
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 Chos¿n 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
About the author
Edited by Ian M. Miller. Edited by Bradley Camp Davis. Edited by Brian Lander. Edited by John S. Lee
