by Ling Zhang
13 Inspired by Naitō Torajirō and Miyazaki Ichisada's thesis on a multi-dimensional Tang–Song transition that facilitated China's entry into an early modern era, many scholarly works have emerged to study Song's exceptional economic development. Among English authors Mark Elvin (1973) has famously argued for the occurrence of a medieval economic revolution; Hill Gates (1996) believes the development of “petty capitalism” from the Song period. Joseph McDermott and Shiba Yoshinobu critique such optimistic views and offer a more moderate assessment of Song economy in Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 321–436). Robert Hymes critiques the use of overgeneralized notions of “early modern” and “modern” to categorize the complex history in the Song period, in Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 661–664).
14 Ch'ao-ting Chi (1936) argued for the shift of key economic centers to south China. His thesis has inspired a great number of scholarly works that focus on the rise of south China. For a comprehensive survey of the Naitō thesis and the Tang–Song transition scholarship in Chinese, Japanese, and English, see Li (2010).
15 In “a regional overview” of the Song's countryside, Golas (1980, 292) provides an impression of Hebei: “The Hebei Circuits located on the north China plain, had a high proportion of their land under cultivation (some of it in rice) and a dense population.” The present book shows such impression is not based on studies of historical nuances and is incorrect.
16 We must acknowledge that the south-China focus of the Tang–Song scholarship is due partly to the relative richness of historical sources for south China. However, the present book demonstrates that, by taking new research perspectives like an environmental perspective, we may better utilize the limited sources in regard to north China and produce new narratives and discourses about Chinese history in that period.
17 This invariably invites a reassessment of the Song's position in entire Chinese history, which has previously been overviewed by von Glahn (2003: 35–70) and Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 16–18).
18 To learn about this giant scholarship, see various chapters in Chaffee and Twitchett (2015), or a survey of the scholarship in English by North American scholars by de Weerdt (2013: 23–53).
19 McNeill (1998: 36) correctly points out: “The Chinese imperial state was a meddlesome one, carefully looking after its own interests and, in keeping with cultural traditions, actively seeking to develop resources and rearrange nature so as to maximize tangible and taxable wealth.” While exploring this point in its first four chapters, this book furthers the point to a deeper level in its remaining four chapters by questioning how the state's “carefully looking after its own interests” turned to defeating its own intentions and efforts.
20 Wittfogel (1957). The existing scholarship of Chinese history has discredited Wittfogel's postulation of “oriental despotism” for its empirical invalidity, but they have largely accepted and followed the productive logic prescribed by his “hydraulic mode of production.” My critique of such Wittfogelian thought targets on its productive logic (see Chapter 5.3).
21 We must distinguish this entrapment from Mark Elvin's (2004: 123–124 and 2006: 115) use of “technological lock-in.” Elvin uses the notion to explain the “inherently unstable” manmade systems of water control in late-imperial China from a technological perspective. This notion is useful for understanding the constant failures of state-sponsored hydraulic projects in the Northern Song time; on surface, it seems to some degree to overlap the “hydraulic mode of consumption,” because both notions signify a state of entrapment. But this book does not rely on “technological lock-in,” partly because the book does not take technological issues as its prime research agenda. The Song's environmental and especially hydraulic technology demands careful treatment. The task is beyond the scope of this book. More importantly, “technological lock-in” derives from a theoretical assumption different from that in the present book. It postulates that at a certain stage of technological development, a particular technology becomes the dominant kind; although it remains productive and continues to generate returns to scale, it squeezes out the chance for the growth of other technologies and thus prevents any technological breakthrough. By extension, the dominant mode of production, although being productive, entails increasing opportunity costs that prevent the development of “a different, and possibly ultimately more productive, fashion.” Behind this postulation is optimism in growth and belief in technology-driven production. Given this productive assumption, “technological lock-in” should be seen as a companion notion to Elvin's economic thesis, “high-level equilibrium trap.” In this book, I do not share Elvin's optimism for growth, especially technological growth. Neither do I take the actuality of production as a theoretical starting point. Rather, from a consumptive approach, I suggest that whether or not Song technological innovations had reached a high-level equilibrium is highly questionable; hence, a dominant and productive technology, a decline in the marginal return, and a consequential “lock-in” might never have happened. I shall elaborate such theoretical differences more fully in future publications.
22 For hydraulic science and technology during the Song period, see Needham et al. (1971) and Flessel (1974).
23 Scott (1998).
24 This book does not utilize as conceptual frameworks some important notions in environmental studies like “nature,” “anthropogenic,” and “ecology,” due to their peculiar theoretical associations and implications. “Nature” is bound with its contrasting notion, “culture.” This book chooses not to cling to the nature-culture binarism, because none of the entangled interactions among environmental entities the book explores can be clearly differentiated as between something natural versus something cultural. The natural and the cultural have simultaneously existed and intricately intermingled in the formation and evolution of various environmental entities as well as of their entanglements. These entities and their entanglements manifest as being geological, physical, chemical, social, political, cultural, or all at once. The particular entanglement of environmental entities that this book explores – the formation and evolution of the Yellow River–Hebei environmental complex – is both natural and cultural, both physical and social, both real and imagined, and both material and discursive at the same time. Being natural or cultural is a matter of degree in terms of phenomenon, not of kind. For the same reason, the book does not stress the notion “anthropogenic,” as our question is not to distinguish between something anthropogenic and something naturally produced – that both have to interact and cooperate to make an entanglement happen is the theoretical premise of this book. Accepting McNeill's (1998: 38) assessment about China's “hyperanthropogenic landscape,” I consider that asking about anthropogeniety is no longer interesting as a question or argument; the notion “anthropogenic” has lost its critical edge and is insufficient for addressing the kind of environmental entanglement at question in this book. The book equally downplays the notion “ecology,” for ecological thinking keeps at its ontological core the flow and transformation of some essential matter, such as energy. It acknowledges matter's immanent connectedness and its directional enchainment through various transformations. This book does not take matter as its conceptual basis; it does not stress the flow and innate connectedness of matter in its various forms. The book makes this choice due partly to the limitation of the historical sources from middle-period China, which prohibits the construction of a satisfactory ecological discourse. Instead, the book conceptualizes various environmental entities that manifest as a river, a tree, a political institution, an individual or collective human bodies, and etc. It emphasizes the process that these entities enter an initial encounter and develop a deep evolvement – a process of the complex, contingent materialization of an entanglement. Such encounter and evolvement is participatory, relational, multi-directional, and thus chaotic. The emergence of an entanglement is not prescribed or guaranteed by any essential matter or its innate connectedness; likewise, the flux of entities does not follow ecological
trajectories. Given these theoretical concerns, the book favors the notions “environment” and “environmental,” as they better capture both the inclusiveness of an entanglement and preserve the contingent, relational disorderliness within that entanglement. Readers should note that “nature,” “culture,” and “ecology” are still used sporadically in the book for their literal meanings wherever they are at issue, although they do not supply the book's theoretical frameworks.
25 Hymes and Schirokauer (1993).
26 “An environmental world” is not a descriptive expression for the natural or physical surrounding outside and around a certain human community or institution. I coin this notion to address a particular situation, which encompasses certain environmental entities that matter to each other, interact with each other, and form specific environmental relationships and processes. To identify an environmental world is to determine what is at issue in its environmental relationships. In this book, what is at issue is the formation and evolution of the Yellow River–Hebei environmental complex – the making of a river delta in a particular swath of land. Those who organized, participated in, and were implicated by such formation and evolution constituted the particular environmental world. Hence, an environmental world does not encompass every environmental event and process occurring globally at the same time. A “world” is not a geographical or spatial entirety, but a phenomenon of certain entangled relationships. My conception of “world” is congruent with Immanuel Wallerstein's interpretation of “world” in the concept of world systems. Wallerstein (2004: 17) maintains: “[W]e are talking not about systems, economies, empires of the (whole) world, but about systems, economies, empires that are a world (but quite possibly, and indeed usually, not encompassing the entire globe).” As Wallerstein insists upon multiple world systems, each of which constitutes a singular world of a different nature, I recognize the coexistence and occasional overlap of multiple environmental worlds, which are distinguished from each other based on a given issue at hand. In this sense, the all-encompassing approach that I advocate (in the ensuing pages) does not suggest a thorough geographical or spatial inclusiveness as Andre Gunder Frank advocated. Frank disagreed with Wallerstein by calling for breaking down areal boundaries across the globe and insisting on the existence of one single world system.
27 Skinner (1964–1965, 1977). To Skinner, river courses and their valleys that function as organizational entities to construct and sustain his stable macro-regions structure are abstract, conceptual waterbodies, which hold little material substance and show few changes to their geophysical and hydrological characteristics. Such anthropocentric assumption that static, lifeless, immaterial objects lay a foundation for vibrant, lively human activities is what environmental histories, including the present book, seek to challenge. My critique of Skinner resonates with and gives an environmental push to the critique by Richard von Glahn (1987, xx–xxi): “Although Skinner stresses the necessity of studying each region in terms of its own separate history, he and other who have borrowed his models have simply elaborated synchronic profiles of regional systems rather than attempting to study the history of regions. In part this omission results from the theory itself, since the central place concept is much more useful for describing a region at a given point in time than for explaining in history.”
28 Chinese historical geographers have studied these events from the perspective of historical geography, but they have not integrated their studies with the complexity of human political, economic, and social history. Unfortunately, these Chinese studies have been largely ignored by the scholarship in English. Despite advocating spatial and ecological awareness in studying Chinese history, scholars of previous generations like Skinner and Hartwell were not aware of the shifts of the Yellow River's course in 1048 and 1128. A most recent monograph on the Yellow River by David A. Pietz (2015) does not include these environmental events. Christian Lamouroux (1998: 545–584) provides the first study in English about the river's course shift in 1128; yet, his article focuses on the political debate on hydraulic management rather than on how these environmental events were and how environmental forces operated.
29 Frank (1998: 358).
30 Readers should be aware that due to the scarcity of historical sources for middle-period China, in particular for north China, the range of questions and issues that the present book may raise and address is limited and its analysis on certain issues is not systematic or in great depth. There are many interesting and significant issues the book cannot pursue due to such material constraints.
31 To paraphrase the titles of two influential books: Evans et al., Bringing the State Back In (1985) and Weber's Bringing Society Back In (2003).
Part I
Pre-1048
Prelude to the Environmental DramaIn the following four chapters, we shall approach these questions:
How had the river, the plain, and the state each evolved over a long time to encounter each other? How had their interactions gradually increased over several centuries to eventually produce the environmental drama?
1
Before the Yellow River Met the Hebei Plain
1.1 Loess, Silt, Floods, and a Thousand Years of Tranquility
This book is about the making of a Yellow River delta in the flat, low land of Hebei. The emergence of a delta landscape was an instantaneous result of the dramatic environmental change in summer 1048. But, for this event to happen and for the river to build up enough momentum to push its 700-kilometer-long flow into a different direction and to carve open the earth for a new river course, various environmental entities had to work in concert: not just the river itself, but also the land of Hebei that received the intrusion of the river's course, the imperial state that intervened in the river's movement, and many other factors. It took an extended period prior to 1048 for each of these entities to experience some environmental, geological, and political transformations and to encounter and entwine with each other. The following four chapters will examine the complex history behind the occurrence of the 1048 event. Through the interplays among the longue durée of environmental transformations, the middle term of political and social changes, and instantaneous events, the river, the plain, and the state crossed different temporalities and geographic zones to connect to each other. They together interacted to change the face of the physical landscape and the history of north China.
Our opening chapter begins with a panoramic view of the Yellow River's changing situation during the two thousand years prior to the 1048 environmental drama. This broad-brush depiction of the river's history offers two vital observations. First, the Yellow River's turning turbulent toward the eleventh century and its eventual crushing of Hebei to produce a new river delta had begun long before 1048. The long-term environmental changes in north China and the river's hydrological characteristics – the worsening soil erosion and consequential increase in the river's silt load – had destabilized the river's situation toward the end of the first millennium. Together, they had produced a river that was more and more prone to flooding. By the time the Northern Song Dynasty stepped onto the historical stage in 960, the environmental history of the Yellow River had sown and nourished the seeds for a catastrophic event like the one that occurred in 1048. Meanwhile, the longue durée of such environmental transformations saw a spatial disjunction. The seeds that eventually sprouted into disastrous fruits in downstream areas like the Hebei Plain were planted by the joint forces of nature and human activities more than a thousand kilometers upstream in northwestern China. This extraordinary distance proved to be deceptive, as it concealed the causal relationship between environmental transformations going on in different geographic units from the spatial conception of the Chinese in medieval times and from our modern conception as well.
The second observation is not about the river's flooding issues per se but about the river's relationship with the Hebei Plain. For nearly one thousand years prior to 1048, the river served as the plain's southern border
and did not impinge upon the plain in any remarkable way. The river and the plain had remained two marginally intersected, largely independent environmental entities. After 1128, the river shifted toward south China, and up to today it has never entered the center of the Hebei Plain again. This means, after 1128, the river and the plain restored their long-term relationship as two marginally related entities. Clearly, the environmental drama played out by the river and the plain during 1048–1128 was a rare, extraordinary episode in the entire environmental history of north China. Positioning the eighty years within the context of two millennia leads us to wonder how the change in the river–plain relationship actually took place.
This second observation demands an understanding of the long-term history of the Hebei Plain. The second half of this chapter will present Hebei as a geographically and environmentally well-defined plain. Partly thanks to the geographical division set by the Yellow River, Hebei had developed a martial tradition and a high level of political autonomy in its human society. This historical survey of Hebei will prepare us to understand the interventions of the Northern Song state from the late tenth century in Chapters 2–4. From political, socio-economic, and environmental perspectives, the state interventions peripheralized Hebei, broke down its marginal relationship between the river, and brought the two into an intricately knitted entanglement.
Loess, Silt, and Floods
The Yellow River, the sixth longest river in the modern world, originates in the Tibetan Plateau and reaches the coast in northeastern China after coursing through 5,464 kilometers. Along its route, the river has developed a drainage area of 752,000 square kilometers that covers most of the North China Plain, an area nearly the size of modern-day Turkey. A hundred thousand years ago, the river evolved from several small local streams into a full-length course similar to what we see today. Since then, its currents have continuously eroded the earth and picked up soil and rocks on its way. The water flow grinds these materials into fine silt, carries it long distances, and deposits it along its course. The silt builds up the flat ground in north China. As the river continues to run eastward toward the ocean, this land-building process spreads eastward as well, pushing the coastal line further into the ocean.
