The River, the Plain, and the State
On July 19, 1048, the Yellow River breached its banks, drastically changing its course across the Hebei Plain and turning it into a delta where the river sought a path out to the ocean. This dramatic shift of forces in the natural world resulted from political deliberation and hydraulic engineering of the imperial state of the Northern Song Dynasty. It created 80 years of social suffering, economic downturn, political upheaval, and environmental changes, which reshaped medieval North China Plain and challenged the state. Ling Zhang deftly applies textual analysis, theoretical provocation, and modern scientific data in her gripping analysis of how these momentous events altered China's physical and political landscapes and how its human communities adapted and survived. In so doing, she opens up an exciting new field of research by wedding environmental, political, economic, and social history in her examination of one of North China's most significant environmental changes.
Ling Zhang is Assistant Professor of History at Boston College.
Studies in Environment and History
Editors
J. R. McNeill Georgetown University
Edmund P. Russell University of Kansas
Editors Emeritus
Alfred W. Crosby University of Texas at Austin
Donald Worster University of Kansas
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George Colpitts Pemmican Empire: Food, Trade, and the Last Bison Hunts in the North American Plains, 1780–1882
Micah Muscolino The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938–1950
John Brooke Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey
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Robert Harms Games Against Nature: An Eco-Cultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa
Arthur F. McEvoy The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850–1980
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The River, the Plain, and the State
An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048–1128
Ling Zhang
Boston College
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University's mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107155985
© Ling Zhang 2016
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2016
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc.
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library
isbn 978-1-107-15598-5 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
For my parents, Qiqi, and David
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Prologue 1048: The Opening of an Environmental Drama
Part IPre-1048: Prelude to the Environmental Drama1Before the Yellow River Met the Hebei Plain
2The State's Hebei Project
3The 1040s: On the Eve of the Flood
4Creating a Delta Landscape
Part IIPost-1048: The Unfolding of the Environmental Drama5Managing the Yellow River–Hebei Environmental Complex
6Life in the Yellow River Delta
7Agriculture: A Subsistence-Oriented Economy
8Land and Water: A Thousand Years of Environmental Trauma
Epilogue 1128: The Close of the Environmental Drama
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
1The Yellow River's Courses in Hebei:
1048–1128
2Historical Shifts of the Yellow River's Courses
3The Middle Reaches of the Yellow River
4The Yellow River's Lower Reaches before 1048
5Hebei in the Tenth Century
6Early Song's Geopolitical Situation
7Hebei's Administrative Districts in the Early Song Period
8Hebei's Frontier Ponds
9Earthquakes in the 1040s
10A Geopolitical Map of the Early Song
11Changing Courses of the Yellow River, 1048–1128
12The Struggle for the Yellow River Shore in Daming
13Hebei's Water Systems, 1048–1128
14Southern Courses of the Yellow River after 1128
Tables
1The Size of Hebei's Frontier Ponds in the 1030s
2The Yellow River's Floods before 1048
3Hebei's Registered Households
4The Unit Yield of Winter Wheat and Millet (in kg)
5Quotas of Summer–Autumn Taxes in 1077 (Various Measurements)
6Quotas of Summer–Autumn Taxes for Hebei in 1080 (Various Measurements)
Acknowledgments
In summer 2008, I finished my doctoral dissertation at Cambridge, which was an economic history of north China during the Northern Song Dynasty. A small section of the dissertation deals with the Yellow River's floods. Because of that, I was offered a fellowship at Harvard in fall 2009, which enabled me to move across continents to pursue an “environmental history” of medieval China. Yet, having read only Donald Worster's Dust Bowl and Mark Elvin's Sediments of Time and The Retreat of the Elephants, I saw “environmental history” as a rather foreign concept and debated its legitimacy as a self-defined sub-discipline of history. I viewed the title of “environmental historian” as a heavy hat people placed on my head rather than a self-identity deriving from proper scholarly training.
Confused yet intrigued by the murky path laid in front of me, I have since begun a journey of soul searching, identity building, and intellectual self-reinvention. While this journey has been full of frustration – not knowing what to do or whether I'm doing it right – and loneliness – being at the margins of many established scholarly fields – it has also liberated me from various constraints and allowed me to venture into a splendid intellectual universe. Like a hungry child, I have tried to devour whatever seemed tasty and nutritious, be it history or social science or natural science, theoretical or empirical, and about medieval China or about the modern West in the twenty-first century.
The present book is the outcome of this six-year journey. It is a modest experiment that seeks to capture how things entangle to constitute a messy, wild, blossoming world – a process similar to my formation of a new identity through wonderful encounters with different people and ideas. It is a peculiar telling of history that embodies my current philosophical positions, political pursuits, and intellectual desires. This book is not simply a study of a remote history; it is a documentation of the growth of my personhood.
This book and this wonderful journey would never have become possible without the support from many individuals and research institutes. My longtime mentor Wang Xiaofu at Peking University has never stopped inspiring me with this powerful line: “Ling, one must first have dreams.” St John's College, Asian Studies, and the Needham Research Institute at the University of Cambridge paved a solid foundation for my training in Sinology and my interests in economic history and the history of science and technology. My loving doctor-parents Joseph and Hiroko McDermott watched every moment of my growth. They patiently taught me how to think, what makes an argument, and why some ideas are more meaningful than others. Taking the role as my first teacher for academic English, Joe painstakingly corrected my grammatical errors, which were nearly in every sentence I composed. For all the headaches and grey hair he got from my writing, I offer my sincere apology and deep appreciation.
A fellowship at the Harvard University Center for the Environment opened this medieval historian of China to the worlds of environmental science, marine biology, earth science, and zoology, all of which were completely alien to me. I thank my mentors Peter Bol and Daniel Schrag and my colleagues James Clem and many others for two eye-opening years. The post-doctoral fellowship in the Program of Agrarian Studies at Yale University drew me toward the world of social science, where I was intensely exposed to anthropology, political science, and various stripes of social theory. I thank my mentors James Scott, Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, and Peter Perdue and my fellow scholars in the program for a life-changing year. I have become quite a different person in terms of what I care about and how I think. During the past few years, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University has not only provided me much needed office space but also sponsored me to organize several seminars and conferences. These events drew together scholars from various fields, offering me rare opportunities to learn from different kinds of scholarship. For their administrative and intellectual support, I thank the Center's directors William Kirby, Mark Elliott, and Michael Szonyi, as well as Lydia Chen, Jennifer Rudolph, and many other colleagues. I am grateful to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which generously funded a year of teaching leave, allowing me to focus on the writing of the book. My home institution, Boston College, has provided a friendly work environment and supported many of my research activities. My warmest thanks to my caring colleagues both in the History Department and in other departments.
During the past six years, countless colleagues and friends read parts of this book or heard me talk about some part of it. They invited me to their conferences or participated in activities I organized. They shared with me lengthy conversations or exchanged brief but insightful opinions. As I went through difficulties and doubts, many lent comfort and encouragement. For their advice, assistance, support, and friendship, my gratitude goes to Alan Mikhail, Arupjyoti Saikia, Bin Wong, Caroline Baltzer, Chris Neilsen, Dana Sajdi, Dario Gaggio, Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Deng Xiaonan, Devin Pendas, Donald Worster, Emily Yeh, Eugene Wang, Felix Wemheuer, Franziska Seraphim, Gunnel Cederlöf, Han Maoli, Han Zhaoqing, He Xiaoqing, Heping Liu, Hilde de Weerdt, Ian Miller, Ian J. Miller, Iftekhar Iqbal, Jinping Wang, John Lee, Judith Shapiro, Julian Bourg, Kenneth Pomeranz, Kevin Kenny, Kevin O'Neill, Lincoln Tsui, Ma Junya, Marilynn Johnson, Micah Muscolino, Michael Puett, Mike McGovern, Nancy Langston, Noah Snyder, Paul Sabin, Paul Smith, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Qian Ying, Ralph Litzinger, Rebecca Nedostup, Robert Hymes, Robert Marks, Robin Fleming, Roseann Cohen, Ruth Mostern, Sakura Christmas, Sabine Dabringhaus, Sarah Ross, Scott Moore, Shi Lihong, Shirley Ye, Stephen Ford, Tim Wright, Tineke D'Haeseleer, T. R. Kidder, Victor Seow, Virginia Reinburg, Wang Ao, Wang Jiange, Wen Xin, Xia Mingfang, Yajun Mo, Yang Rui, Ying Jia Tan, Zhang Ping, and Zuo Ya. Some of these people (and many others who are not mentioned here) may have forgotten their brief encounters with me, but I cherish their profound influences.
I thank Edmund Russell and John McNeill for taking a real interest in my work and waiting patiently for me to complete the manuscript. I am grateful to two anonymous readers who treated my manuscript with care and support and peppered it with thoughtful critiques. I thank my wonderful editors Deborah Gershenowitz, Amanda George, Arindam Bose, and Cynthia Col who deserve every credit for making this book beautiful. Any error that remains belongs to me.
My wonderful friends and colleagues Corey Byrnes, Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, David Bello, Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, James Scott, Peter Perdue, Priya Lal, Robert Marks, and Ruth Mostern read parts or the whole of the final manuscript. I am deeply indebted to them. My dearest Eleanor Goodman – my favorite poet in the world – polished every single sentence and corrected every mistaken punctuation mark in the book.
My love goes to my trusting parents and supporting sister. Sometimes even I wonder how they can so wholeheartedly believe in me and trust what I do. Nothing I do compares to what they have given me. My thanks to Chuck and Kitty for putting up with me when
I spent most of the Christmas holidays writing. And David. Oh, David. This book is made of the strawberry smoothies you prepared every morning, of the literature and poems you whispered at nighttime, and of the moments when we debated uses of a word or implications of a concept. With all the joy, excitement, challenges, and adventures that we have shared, for all my silliness, stubbornness, and even tears that you have endured, I read this book as my not-terribly-romantic love letter to you.
Abbreviations
GSJ
Gongshi ji
MXBT
Mengxi bitan
OYXQJ
Ouyang Xiu quanji
QSW
Quan Songwen
SHY
Song huiyao jigao
SHYBB
Song huiyao jigao bubian
SMCZY
Song mingchen zouyi
SS
Song shi
SSWJ
Songshan wenji
XCB
Xu Zizhitongjian changbian
XCBSB
Xu Zizhitongjian changbian shibu
XSBGZY
Xiaosu Baogong zouyi
Prologue
1048: The Opening of an Environmental Drama
The Sixth Day of the Sixth Month, “People Were Flushed Away Like Fish and Turtles”