The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China

by Mark Elvin (Author)

11 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0300119930

ISBN-10: 0300119933

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This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, which allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of the Chinese people toward their environment and their landscape.
Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated the habitat of the elephants that populated the country alongside much of its original wildlife; the destruction of most of the forests; the impact of war on the environmental transformation of the landscape; and the re-engineering of the countryside through water-control systems, some of gigantic size. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the modern era, was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time.
Indispensable for its new perspective on long-term Chinese history and its explanation of the roots of China’s present-day environmental crisis, this book opens a door into the Chinese past.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A classic. . . a work of quite staggering scholarship of a kind that very few historians have achieved in the post-second world war period."

About the Author

Mark Elvin is professor of Chinese history at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. Author of The Pattern of the Chinese Past and other works, he has taught at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and Heidelberg, and been a visiting research fellow at Harvard.

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (September 21, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0300119933
ISBN-13: 978-0300119930
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.5 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 11 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,079,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #609 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Geography
- #1605 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > History > Asia
- #2174 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Human Geography

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P. Weiser

Praise from an Anti-Ecologist

April 27, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated this book! Though I'm politically conservative and very resistant to eco-talk, I found its measured, evidence-based discussion of what the pre-1911 Chinese did to and with their environment and what they thought about it extremely interesting and convincing. And this is not from _schadenfreud_ about non-American troubles: I'm well aware of western US dams silting up, the long-term unsustainability of Los Angeles as to water resources, etc..

The author almost entirely avoids comparison with present-day concerns and other places (except with industrializing Europe at the very end, and Three Gorges comes up once or twice). This was helpful in concentrating the mind on the subject at hand.

Only suggestion for content improvement is a few more illustrations - an old woodcut of peasants transplanting rice, maintaining levees or clearing trees, for example. One BIG recommendation, though, is indexing the notes in the digital version: I often found myself wanting to check a source or comment and it's just about impossible given that notes are numbered serially by chapter but chapter breaks are practically invisible in the end notes.

Highly recommended.

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Not really about elephants, but fascinating just the same

February 6, 2010

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Mark Elvin's book is not really about elephants. The elephants are a symbol for the retreat of nature from China. What the book makes clear is that China's environmental disaster is not a product of the 20th century, but dates back thousands of years when the early dynasties stamped out a culture of hunter-gathering in favor of agriculture and engaged in a deliberate destruction of flora and fauna for economic and political gain. Early Chinese dynasties were damming rivers and carving away mountains long before Mao tse-tung expounded his theories man conquering nature, the Chinese were damming rivers and carving away rivers. The book is not complimentary of Han Chinese culture's attitudes towards the environment. Elvin makes clear that other ethnic groups had more interest in maintaining harmony between man and nature. The research that went into this book is impressive. Elvin quotes extensively from literary sources and even oracle bones to explore Chinese attitudes towards nature. The book doesn't dwell much on what happened after China's economic boom in the late 20th century, but nonetheless goes a long way towards explaining why the Chinese landscape looks the way it does today.

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L. Chang

new angle to understand China

January 17, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a landmark book on environmental history that is well-received by many academics (also check out other reviews on the web). For me personally, this books helps me understand today's China's problems better than many other books I've read.

It maybe a stretch for people that to understand today's China, you need to go back to its 3000 years of environmental history. However, this book offers many potential answers to many questions that are still relevant today - e.g. Is China's growth sustainable? Why Chinese people have such relationships with their government? Where does her seemingly in-exhaustible labor pool come from?

The book illuminates the constant struggles between the Chinese population and her environments throughout her 3000 years of written history, with the Chinese state often being the driving force and the subsequent victim when nature eventually fought back. Many such struggles are still being repeated today - for example, the recent push of China to develop its north-west region resembled the same push Chin/Han dynasties started from 300 BC, which resulted in permanent soil erosions that gave yellow river its name and caused numerous disasters downstreams since. The Three Gorges Dam is an extension to the long running tradition of massive state-sponsored hydro-projects trying to control the river in the name for "growth". The list goes on and on...

History is bound to repeat herself if we ignore her. Hopefully this books will not be ignored.

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Amazon Customer

Very erudite book that incorporates many disciplines, linguistics anthropology environmental history

December 2, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

One of the most provocative and influential books I have read. Dr. Elvin translates "Oracle bones" The Chinese long view of history

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March 5, 2015

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A good book on Chinese environment

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December 28, 2014

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It is very good.

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March 5, 2006

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I found the book fairly hard-going as the writer is a master of many fields and switches from discipline to discipline quite regularly. It is, however, certainly thought-provoking in relation to many issues about humans and the environment, and the current economic boom in China, taking place in a country that has already over-exploited its resources in an effort to feed its huge population.

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