A World Trimmed with Fur
Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20026487 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jonathan Schlesinger (0000-0003-1369-8623, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Pages | 288 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-11 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | A World Trimmed with Fur (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Stanford University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.11126/stanford/9780804799966.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4255639563 |
| ISBN | 9780804799966 |
| Open Library | OL27405675M |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 18 |
Based on three years of archival research, A World Trimmed with Fur uses Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian records to rethink China’s environmental history in the years 1760-1830, when a rush for natural resources transformed both China and its borderlands. We tend to tell China’s environmental history in this period with settlers in mind: in the Qing empire’s frontiers, we are told, people like the Manchus, Mongols, and Tibetans maintained separate and untouched homelands before modern Chinese immigrants developed them. This book argues instead that the very notion of the untouched, like distinctions between Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese, was itself a product of empire and an invention of the boom years. Stunning reports poured into Beijing during these years: mussels disappeared from the wild; mushroom pickers destroyed the steppe; trappers killed the last fur-bearing animals. The empire’s response, in turn, was dramatic. In Mongolia and the northern borderlands, the court backed a so-called “purification” campaign to repatriate undocumented Chinese, investigate Mongols collaborators, and restore the land to a “pure” and pristine form. In the Northeast, the Qing state mobilized around efforts to establish controls on immigration and trade, control pearling, and allow mussel beds to revive. Results were mixed. Conservation succeeded in some regions; others were emptied of fur-bearing animals, stripped of mussels, or left bare around abandoned camps. We thus can ask: what did it mean for the land to be “pristine”
Ancient history · Archaeology · Beijing · China · Empire · Ethnology · Geography · Immigration · State (computer science) · Chinese history and philosophy · History · 1644-1912 · asia · china · Kings and rulers · Luxuries · Luxury · Natural resources · qing dynasty · Qing Dynasty (China) · Restoration ecology · Social life and customs
Buddhism and mobility. Nomadic monasteries of Mongolia, 16th-19th century
Animals as Wonders
Where Did the Animals Go?
Animals as Text
Animals in Nineteenth-Century Eschatological Discourse
Knowing Animals in China’s History
Living in decline – the dynamics of anthropogenic disturbances in the recent landcover history of Manchuria and its consequences for Northeast Asia
Animals through Chinese History
The Blue Frontier
In the Shadow of the Mongol Empire
The financialization of help
Bordering the Heterogeneity
Deer and Humans in the Early Farming Communities of the Yellow River Valley
Making history
Shark Fin City
Henceforth fishermen and hunters are to be restrained
Knowing a Sentient Mountain
A Buffer against Whom? Rethinking the Qing-Chosŏn Border Region
| Citations per year | 2.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |