NOTES

1   Barrow and Macartney, Earl of Macartney, 2:356–57.

2   Abel, Narrative of a Journey, 167.

3   These frameworks are best analyzed through ecological processes rather than assuming a hierarchy of scales. See Allen and Hoekstra, Toward a Unified Ecology.

4   While I have largely avoided the associated jargon, this framework is heavily influenced by Manuel DeLanda’s “assemblage theory,” which seeks to explain how complex systems emerged from autonomous entities and processes. DeLanda, Thousand Years of Nonlinear History; DeLanda, New Philosophy of Society.

5   Scott, Seeing Like a State; Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests; McElwee, Forests Are Gold; Peluso and Vandergeest, “Genealogies of the Political Forest.”

6   Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis. For further theorization, in particular the concept of metabolic rift, see Foster, “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift”; Moore, “Transcending the Metabolic Rift.”

7   This general thesis is expressed most clearly in Scott, Seeing Like a State.

8   Radkau, Wood, 25–27, 156–58.

9   For surveys and responses to the idea of a European wood crisis, see Radkau, Wood, chaps. 2–3; Warde, “Fear of Wood Shortage.”

10   Jørgensen, “Roots of the English Royal Forest”; Rackham, History of the Countryside, 129–39, 146–51; Radkau, Wood, 57–70; Warde, Invention of Sustainability, 60–61.

11   Appuhn, Forest on the Sea.

12   Kain and Baigent, Cadastral Map, 331–34; Matteson, Forests in Revolutionary France; Oosthoek and Hölzl, Managing Northern Europe’s Forests; Radkau, Wood, chaps. 2–3; Warde, Ecology, Economy and State Formation; Warde, Invention of Sustainability, 177–82, 188–92, 198–200; Wing, Roots of Empire.

13   Grove, Green Imperialism, esp. chaps. 7–8; Lowood, “Calculating Forester”; Radkau, Wood, 172–204; Scott, Seeing Like a State, chap. 1; Warde, Invention of Sustainability, 201–27.

14   Albion, Forests and Sea Power; Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field, chaps. 2–3; Grove, Green Imperialism; Moore, “ ‘Amsterdam Is Standing on Norway,’ Part I,” and “Part II”; Wing, Roots of Empire, chap. 2.

15   See esp. Albion, Forests and Sea Power, chap. 1.

16   See esp. Grove, Green Imperialism.

17   It is actually named for both James Cunningham and Allan Cunningham, another British botanist, who never visited China. Brown, Miscellaneous Botanical Works, 1:461n1.

18   McDermott, New Rural Order, vol. 1, chap. 6.

19   Coggins, Tiger and the Pangolin; Elvin, Retreat of the Elephants, esp. chaps. 1–3; Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt.

20   Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt; Osborne, “Highlands and Lowlands.”

21   Menzies, Forest and Land Management, chap. 5. This issue is a major topic of concern in European forest history (e.g., Matteson, Forests in Revolutionary France; Radkau, Wood; Warde, Ecology, Economy and State Formation) but is inadequately addressed in Chinese history.

22   Marks, China, chap. 5.

23   Grove, Green Imperialism, 133–45, 257–58, 271–73, 282–91, 346, and chap. 8; McElwee, Forests Are Gold, chap. 1; Peluso, Rich Forests, Poor People, chaps. 2–3; Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests, esp. chap. 4; Warde, Invention of Sustainability, 212–27.

24   See esp. Grove, Green Imperialism; Warde, Invention of Sustainability.

25   Lee, “Forests and the State.”

26   Totman, Green Archipelago, chaps. 5–6; Totman, Lumber Industry in Early Modern Japan.

27   See, e.g., Richards, Unending Frontier, chap. 4; Williams, Deforesting the Earth, 216–20; Radkau, Nature and Power, 112–15 and passim.

28   Hung, “When the Green Archipelago Encountered Formosa”; and personal communication. Curiously, Japan’s modern forest administration replaced shan/san/yama with the other common character for woodland, lin (Japanese: rin or hayashi, Korean: lim or im). This means that we can trace the approximate contours of the transition from premodern, Chinese-derived to modern German-Japanese-derived forest oversight through the shift from shan/san to lin/rin/lim.

29   Elvin, Retreat of the Elephants, esp. chaps. 1–3. This builds on more than a decade of Elvin’s work, starting with the short research program in Elvin, “Environmental History of China.” Most of Elvin’s major theories of war, water control, and environmental change were first developed in Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth” and “Environmental Legacy of Imperial China.”

30   Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt. See also Averill, “Shed People”; Osborne, “Local Politics of Land Reclamation”; Vermeer, “Mountain Frontier.” In Elvin and Liu, Sediments of Time, see Kuo-tung Ch’en, “Nonreclamation Deforestation”; Ts’ui-jung Liu, “Han Migration”; Osborne, “Highlands and Lowlands”; Vermeer, “Population and Ecology.”

31   Anderson and Whitmore, “Introduction: ‘The Fiery Frontier’ ”; Churchman, “Where to Draw the Line?”; Chittick, “Dragon Boats and Serpent Prows”; Kim, “Sinicization and Barbarization”; Clark, Sinitic Encounter in Southeast China.

32   See, e.g., “Tribute of Yu” [Yu gong], Shang shu; Sima Qian, “Biographies of Wealthy Merchants” [Huozhi liezhuan], Shiji 129.

33   “Yuzhang jun” is listed in the geographic treatises of Ban Gu, Han shu 28a; Fan Ye, Hou Han shu 112; Fang Xuanling, Jin shu 15; Shen Yue, Song shu 36; Liu Xu, Jiu Tang shu 40.

34   See Lu Jia, “Natural Endowments” [Zizhi], Xinyu 7; Huan Kuan, “The Basic Argument” [Benyi], Yantie lun 1; Wang Fu, “On Excessive Luxury” [Fuyi], Qian fu lun 3.

35   Xiaoqiang Li et al., “Population and Expansion of Rice Agriculture”; Dodson et al., “Vegetation and Environment History.”

36   Scott, Art of Not Being Governed.

37   On the transformations of the meaning of “Han,” see Elliott, “Hushuo,” Giersch, “From Subjects to Han,” and other essays in Mullaney et al., Critical Han Studies; Harrell, Ways of Being Ethnic, chap. 14; Tackett, Origins of the Chinese Nation.

38   Bello, Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain, esp. chaps. 1 and 4.

39   Szonyi, Art of Being Governed.

40   Leong, Migration and Ethnicity.

41   Due to their extensive records, the scholarship on Huizhou is substantial. Key English-language works include Du, Order of Places; McDermott, New Rural Order, vol. 1; Zurndorfer, Chinese Local History.

42   Leong, Migration and Ethnicity; Ownby, Brotherhoods and Secret Societies.

43   The extent and significance of this crackdown has been debated, but it certainly damaged the commercial prosperity of Jiangnan. See von Glahn, “Towns and Temples”; von Glahn, “Ming Taizu Ex Nihilo?”; Schneewind, “Ming Taizu Ex Machina.”

44   Von Glahn, Economic History of China, chap. 7.

45   Paul Jakov Smith, “Introduction: Problematizing the Song-Yuan-Ming Transition”; von Glahn, “Imagining Pre-modern China.”

46   Ho, “Introduction of American Food Plants”; Mann, 1493, chap. 5; Mazumdar, “New World Food Crops”; Leong, Migration and Ethnicity, 119–22 and passim; Osborne, “Local Politics of Land Reclamation.”

47   Benedict, Golden-Silk Smoke, chaps. 1–2; Gardella, Harvesting Mountains; Leong, Migration and Ethnicity, chap. 1.

48   Averill, “Shed People”; Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt; Leong, Migration and Ethnicity, chaps. 3, 7, and 8; Osborne, “Local Politics of Land Reclamation”; Osborne, “Highlands and Lowlands.”

49   Erbaugh, “Secret History of the Hakkas”; Leong, Migration and Ethnicity, chaps. 3–4.

50   An excellent study of this period is provided in Meng Zhang, “Timber Trade along the Yangzi River”; the same project is the basis of Zhang’s forthcoming book, Sustaining the Market.

1   Yuan Cai, “Timely Planting of Mulberry and Timber” [Sangmu yinshi zhongzhi], Yuanshi shifan 3.

2   Yuan Cai, “Advance Planning” [Zaolü], Yuanshi shifan 2.

3   Yuan Cai, “Timely Planting of Mulberry and Timber,” Yuanshi shifan 3.

4   Yuan Cai, “Suitability of Clear Property Boundaries” [Tianchan jiezhi yi fenming], Yuanshi shifan 3.

5   Bruce D. Smith, “Ultimate Ecosystem Engineers”; Bond and Keeley, “Fire as a Global ‘Herbivore.’ ”

6   For example, the first Chinese written records—“oracle bone” inscriptions (jiagu wen) documenting divination at the Shang court (c. 1700–1027 BCE)—provide clear evidence of anthropogenic fire used for hunting and to clear land. See Fiskesjō, “Rising from Blood-Stained Fields.”

7   Changes in vegetation included the proliferation of pines and weeds that prefer cleared areas at the expense of broad-leaved species like oaks (terrestrial woodlands) and alders (in wetlands) and the sudden appearance of layers of charcoal, suggesting widespread burning. Sun and Chen, “Palynological Records,” 537, 540–41; Liu and Qiu, “Pollen Records of Vegetational Changes,” 395; Ren, “Mid- to Late Holocene Forests”; Dodson et al., “Vegetation and Environment History.” Around the same time, methane levels diverged from their downward trend, probably also due to clearance and the proliferation of rice agriculture. Xiaoqiang Li et al., “Population and Expansion of Rice Agriculture,” 42, 48.

8   Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth,” 7–10; Miller, “Forestry and the Politics of Sustainability”; Sanft, “Environment and Law”; Schafer, “Hunting Parks and Animal Enclosures.”

9   There is physical evidence of these clearances in pollen, charcoal, and sediment records. Sun and Chen, “Palynological Records,” 537, 540–41; Zhao, “Vegetation and Climate Reconstructions,” 381; Mostern, “Sediment and State in Imperial China,” 128; Wenying Jiang et al., “Natural and Anthropogenic Forest Fires.”

10   On the difference between the fear and reality of wood scarcity, see Warde, “Fear of Wood Shortage.”

11   See, e.g., Pyne, Fire.

12   Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth,” 17–19; Miller, “Forestry and the Politics of Sustainability,” 601–5.

13   Sanft, “Environment and Law.”

14   Compare to Gadgil and Guha, This Fissured Land, 20–27; Teplyakov, Russian Forestry and Its Leaders, v, 1–2.

15   Schafer, “Hunting Parks and Animal Enclosures,” 332–33; Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China, chap. 4. One source claims that Shanglin Park contained “more than three thousand kinds of famous fruits and strange trees,” but lists only ninety-eight distinct varieties in the text. Zhou Weiquan, Zhongguo gudian yuanlin shi, 50–51. On the use of Shanglin Park to dominate the regional wood market, see Miller, “Forestry and the Politics of Sustainability,” 607–9.

16   Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth,” 18–21; Marks, China, 83–86; Miller, “Forestry in Early China,” 605–9.

17   For example, Sima Qian credited Han Wendi with this act. Sima Qian, “Biographies of Important Merchants,” Shiji 129.

18   Miller, “Forestry and the Politics of Sustainability,” 606; Sanft, “Environment and Law”; Hulsewe, Remnants of Ch’in Law, 15; Lau and Staack, Legal Practice, 27–28; Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China, 132 and chap. 6 generally.

19   References to this trade appear widely in Warring States, Qin, and Han texts. See, e.g., “Tribute of Yu,” Shang shu; Sima Qian, “Biographies of Wealthy Merchants,” Shiji 129; Lu Jia, “Natural Endowments,” Xinyu 7; Huan Kuan, “The Basic Argument,” Yantie lun 1; Wang Fu, “On Excessive Luxury,” Qian fu lun 3.

20   Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth,” 25; “Miscellaneous Levies—Mountains, Marshes, Fords, and Ferries” [Za zhengxian—shanze jindu], Ma Duanlin, Wenxian tongkao 19.

21   Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, 116–29 and chap. 3; Marks, China, 138–41; Schafer, “Conservation of Nature,” 282–84; Walsh, Sacred Economies, chaps. 4–5.

22   See, e.g., “The Commandments of Lord Lao” [Taishang Lao jun jinglü], trans. Kristofer Schipper, in De Bary and Bloom, Sources of Chinese Tradition, 1:395; Girardot, Miller, and Liu, Daoism and Ecology; Clark, Sinitic Encounter in Southeast China, 33–36.

23   Lewis, China between Empires, 216–20.

24   Jia Sixie, Qimin yaoshu 4.

25   Jia Sixie, “Growing Mulberry and Chinese Mulberry” [Zong sang zhe], Qimin yaoshu 5.45.

26   Jia Sixie, “Growing Elm and Poplar” [Zhong yu baiyang], Qimin yaoshu 5.46.

27   Jia Sixie, Qimin yaoshu 5.47–51.

28   Examples of estate forests are referenced in Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire, 25–26, 126; Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past, 80–82. On Buddhist temple forests, see Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, 116–29; Walsh, Sacred Economies, chaps. 4–5; Marks, China, 138–41; Menzies, Forest and Land Management, chap. 4; Schafer, “Conservation of Nature,” 282–84, 288.

29   See Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang.

30   Jia Sixie, “Cutting Timber” [Fa mu], Qimin yaoshu 5.55.

31   Tang lü shuyi, Article 405. The law is translated more literally as “Monopolizing Profit from Mountains, Wilderness Areas, Shores, and Lakes” in Johnson, T’ang Code, 2:469.

32   Tang lü shuyi, Article 291.

33   That woodcutting was a form of labor service is attested indirectly, in a contract for the substitution of a man’s corvée duties while he was away on business. Quoted in Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, 69.

34   Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, s.vv. “fructus,” “fructus separati,” “separatio fructuum.”

35   Song xingtong, Articles 291 and 405.

36   Liu Zongyuan, “Biography of Tree Planter Guo the Hunchback” [Zhongshu Guo tuotuo zhuan], Liuzhou wenchao 5.

37   Guo Tuotuo, Zhongshu shu 1–3.

38   Schafer, “Conservation of Nature,” 299–300.

39   For a review of this scholarship, see von Glahn, “Imagining Pre-modern China.”

40   Yuan Julian Chen, “Frontier, Fortification, and Forestation.”

41   Mostern, “Sediment and State in Imperial China.”

42   This somewhat controversial estimate appears in Hartwell, “Cycle of Economic Change,” 104–6. See also Hartwell, “Revolution in the Iron and Coal Industries”; Hartwell, “Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise.” Hartwell’s estimate has been critiqued, notably in Wagner, “Administration of the Iron Industry.” Wagner argues that Hartwell’s means of calculation are based in overly simple extrapolation of tax data, and he probably overestimates Song production and underestimates subsequent production. For other judgments on Hartwell’s estimation, see Golas, Mining, 169–70n495; von Glahn, Economic History of China, 245n87; Wright, “Economic Cycle in Imperial China?” All accept Hartwell’s qualitative conclusion that iron production increased substantially in the eleventh century but question his quantitative projections.

43   Yuan Julian Chen, “ ‘Frontier, Fortification, and Forestation.”

44   Von Glahn, Economic History of China, 245.

45   The locus classicus description of mineral coal in Song China is Shen Kuo, Mengxi bitan 24. Several scholars have argued for the growing use of coal in the eleventh century, especially in the Central Plains region. See Hartwell, “Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise,” 160–61; Golas, Mining, 186–96; McDermott and Yoshinobu, “Economic Change in China,” 375.

46   In the eleventh century, twenty-seven cities had commercial tax revenues of at least one-tenth those of the Song capital at Kaifeng, suggesting they were roughly an order of magnitude smaller than the capital. Von Glahn, Economic History of China, 249–50.

47   This remarkable story is told in Ling Zhang, The River, the Plain, and the State. On the role of clearance in the northwest in Yellow River flooding, see Mostern, “Sediment and State in Imperial China.”

48   Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, 48–51.

49   SHY xingfa 2.29.

50   CB 258.90.

51   SHY bing 4.9.

52   SHY xingfa 2.124.

53   “Gao Fang,” Song shi 270, quoted in Qi and Qiao, Zhongguo jing ji tong shi, 249–50. CB 44.

54   Early Song logging operations in Tibetan territory, Qinzhou, and Longzhou: CB 21.47, 21.51, 21.61, 28.11, 71.95, 73.83, 77.17, 78.55, 82.90, 82.99–100, 83.98, 83.114, 86.56. Cancellation of logging projects in the northwest: CB 88.33, 88.39, 90.57.

55   Mostern, “Sediment and State in Imperial China,” 134.

56   Paul Jakov Smith, “Irredentism as Political Capital,” 84–87; “Wang Shao,” Song shi 328.

57   CB 239.37.

58   Mostern, “Sediment and State in Imperial China,” 134; Mostern, “Dividing the Realm,” 195–202.

59   Paul Jakov Smith, “Irredentism as Political Capital,” 91–94, and Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse, 46–47.

60   CB 235.41, 250.26, 250.53.

61   On Li Xian and other eunuch military supervisors, see Paul Jakov Smith, “Irredentism as Political Capital,” 93, 119n97, 126. See also “Li Xian,” Song shi 467.

62   CB 310.57.

63   Strings of cash (guan qian) was a unit of account that did not necessarily correspond with an exact number of coins. Nominally, one string was set at one hundred copper coins. However, the court regularly ordered the substitution of “short strings” of less than one hundred coins, and later of paper money.

64   CB 311.38.

65   CB 345.115.

66   Paul Jakov Smith, “Irredentism as Political Capital,” 125–26.

67   On the Offices of Zhou as a statist text, see Puett, “Centering the Realm.” On forest offices in the Offices of Zhou, see Miller, “Forestry and the Politics of Sustainability,” 606–7. Wang Anshi knew the text well and wrote his own commentary, A New Interpretation of the Offices of Zhou [Zhouguan xinyi]; see Bol, “Wang Anshi and the Zhouli.”

68   CB 251.58.

69   CB 237.64. An order in 1076 clarified that miscellaneous trees (zamu) on individual properties were included in calculating the corvée-replacement tax on each household, but common woodlots were not. CB 277.102.

70   Levine, Divided by a Common Language, 99–103; Levine, “Che-tsung’s Reign,” 521–29.

71   On tea and salt monopolies, see Paul Jakov Smith, Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse, 195–98; Chien, Salt and State. On Cai Jing’s policies more generally, see Chaffee, “Politics of Reform”; Ebrey, Emperor Huizong, 102–3.

72   In 1071, assistant magistrates were established in counties with more than twenty thousand primary households (zhuhu) to fulfill administrative tasks. CB 221.19.

73   SHY zhiguan 48.53–54.

74   SHY zhiguan 48.54.

75   Chaffee, “Politics of Reform,” 54–55.

76   SHY xingfa 1.27–28.

77   SHY zhiguan 48.55.

78   These are from the 1201 Qingyuan tiaofa, which its modern editors note contains many regulations from the northern Song. QYTF 2.

79   This violation resulted in eighty strokes of the light cane. QYTF 911.

80   QYTF 685–86.

81   Hartman, “Cai Jing’s Biography in the Songshi.”

82   Rewards for planting trees on dikes were canceled in 1136, a decade after the Song retreated from northern China, under the logic that there was no longer a need to repair the Yellow River dikes. It is not clear if the other forestry programs were also canceled. QYTF 687. While absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I have found no specific references to county forests after the retreat to southern China in 1126–27.

83   Tang Zhenwei, Zhenglei bencao 14.81a–b.

84   Fang Shao, Qingxi kou gui.

85   Zhou Bida, Sheng zhang wengao, quoted in Jiaqing Yuhang xianzhi 38.

86   See, e.g., SHY xingfa 2.124; Shiba, Commerce and Society, 83, 121–32.

87   Timber imports from Japan: von Glahn, “Ningbo-Hakata Merchant Network,” 269–70. Timber and metal imports from Fujian and Guangdong: Shiba, “Ningbo and Its Hinterland.”

88   Su Shi, Dongpo zaji, quoted in Chen Rong, Zhongguo senlin shiliao, 34–35.

89   “Products” [Wuchan], Jiaqing Yuhang xianzhi 38, quoting Xianchun Lin’an zhi; Zhu Xi, “Ten Thousand Fir Temple” [Wanshan si], Huian xiansheng Zhu Wen gong wenji 2. The latter is attested by an inscription from the Tiansheng reign (1023–32) prohibiting their cutting.

90   Li and Ritchie, “Clonal Forestry in China,” 123.

91   Ye Mengde, Bishu lühua 2.

92   Yuan Cai, “Timely Planting of Mulberry and Timber” and “Advance Planning,” Yuanshi shifan 2–3. See Ebrey, Family and Property in Sung China, referenced 116, translated 266.

93   “Local Products—Fruit and Timber” [Wuchan—guomu], Chunxi Xin’an zhi 2, quoted in Bian, Ming Qing Huizhou shehui yanjiu, 177–78.

94   LDQY 532–47 #412–22.

95   “Planting Firs” [Cha shan], Nongsang jiyao 6, quoting an earlier manual that is no longer extant.

96   Moore, “ ‘Amsterdam Is Standing on Norway,’ Part II”; Radkau, Wood, 142–44.

97   Germany: Scott, Seeing Like a State, chap. 1; Lowood, “Calculating Forester.” Venice: Appuhn, Forest on the Sea, chaps. 4–5. France: Matteson, Forests in Revolutionary France.

1   “Registers I” [Banji lei yi], Chunxi Sanshan zhi 10.

2   “Registers I,” Chunxi Sanshan zhi 10 (my emphasis).

3   According to detailed figures from a single lineage in Huizhou, approximately two-thirds of forest acreage was planted with timber, and the remaining third was split between other commercial crops and graves. It is not clear how generalizable these figures are. Chen Keyun, “Cong ‘lishi shanlin zhichan bu,’ ” 73–75.

4   For introductions to this key source genre, see Brook, Geographical Sources of Ming-Qing History; Dennis, Local Gazetteers in Imperial China; Hargett, “Song Dynasty Local Gazetteers,” 405–12; Bol, “Rise of Local History,” 37–41.

5   On problems with Ming population, tax, and landholding figures, see Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance; Heijdra, “Socio-economic Development of Rural China,” 460–475; Ho, Studies on the Population of China.

6   Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 38–43.

7   Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang.

8   Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang, 31–40.

9   Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, 75–95 and more generally. Hansen states, with some exaggeration, that “in 600, officials did not recognize contracts and used government registers to record land ownership. By 1400, the registers had fallen into disuse and contracts had become the only proof of ownership” (1).

10   CB 237.64. An order in 1076 clarified that miscellaneous trees (zamu) on individual properties were included in calculating the corvée-replacement tax on each household, but common woodlots were not. CB 277.102. See also chapter 1.

11   Wang Deyi, “Li Chunnian.”

12   Wang Deyi, “Li Chunnian.”

13   See the cases in Minggong shupan qingming ji 5–6, some of which are translated in McKnight and Liu, Enlightened Judgments, pt. 4.

14   Wang Deyi, “Li Chunnian.” His account is based largely on “Miscellaneous Notes on Boundary [Surveys]” [Jingye zalü], SHY shihuo 70.

15   QYTF 684. These regulations are not dated. Based on their requirement that boundaries be recorded in the registers, they must date to after Li Chunnian’s initial proposal of 1141 and before the publication of the Qingyuan tiaofa shilei in 1203.

16   JYFN 185.20.

17   There is circumstantial evidence suggesting both possibilities. Ji’an was one of the prefectures noted as having county forests in 1105, suggesting that these might be remnants of those forests. But the timing of this record, a mere decade after the Li Chunnian surveys, suggests that this was newly surveyed land, perhaps land seized from landowners who refused to submit to surveys, perhaps land initially marked as state-managed commons, and then sold due to difficulties in managements and the active market for forest plots. Five percent is a rough estimate. Figures are not available for twelfth-century Ji’an. For comparison, Ji’an had just under fifty thousand qing of registered land in 1582 (Wanli Ji’an fuzhi 10). The somewhat smaller prefecture of Huizhou had just under thirty thousand qing of registered land in 1175 (Chunxi Xin’an zhi). The figure for twelfth-century Ji’an was probably somewhere between these two numbers, meaning that the twenty-eight hundred qing of state land cited in this record would have represented somewhere between 5 and 9 percent of all Ji’an landholdings.

18   “The Importance of Clear Property Boundaries” [Tianchan jiezhi yi fenming], Yuan Cai, Yuanshi shifan 2.

19   Wang Deyi, “Li Chunnian.”

20   “Xiaozong 3,” Song shi 35; “Preparing Boundary Records” [Yu jingjie shiwu], Zhu Xi, Huian xiansheng Zhu Wen gong wenji 100; “Treatise on Registers” [Banji zhi], Min shu 39.

21   Chunxi Xin’an zhi 3–4; Hongzhi Huizhou fuzhi 2. While all six counties in Huizhou reported increases in acreage, the surveys were most pronounced at incorporating new landholdings from the three most heavily forested, peripheral counties—Qimen, Yi, and Jixi. In all three counties, forests (shan) made up more than 50 percent of reported acreage in 1315. Wuyuan was also heavily forested but appears to have been under-surveyed. See also appendix A.

22   “Registers,” Chunxi Sanshan zhi 10.5b and vols. 10–14 more generally.

23   “Registers” [Banji men], Jiading Chicheng zhi 13.1a–b.

24   “Land Tax” [Tianfu zhi], Zhizheng Jinling xinzhi 7.

25   Ayurbarwada’s full title is Ayurbarwada Buyantu Khan, Emperor Renzong of Yuan. Reforms during his reign included a revival of the civil service examinations in 1313 and several large compilation projects. For a general account, see Hsiao, “Mid-Yuan Politics,” 513–20, 530–32.

26   Central secretariat manager of state affairs (zhongshu pingzhang zhengshi) was effectively the second-highest civil office in the Yuan, rank 1b. In the official histories, these fiscal reforms are named the Yanyou Reorganization (Yanyou Jingli) after Ayurbarwada’s second reign period, lasting from 1314 to 1320.

27   “Reorganization” [Jingli], Yuan shi 93.

28   See, e.g., Schurmann, Economic Structure of the Yüan Dynasty, 24–26, 31.

29   “Landholdings” [Tiantu], Zhishun Zhenjiang zhi 5.

30   Zhishun Zhenjiang zhi 5; “Landholdings” [Tiandi], Hongzhi Huizhou fuzhi 2.

31   An increase of four thousand qing. To put this in context, only about 40 percent as much acreage was added in the 165 years between 1150 and 1315 as was recorded during 1148–49 alone. There were also qualitative differences between the newly surveyed acreage in the 1140s and the “long” thirteenth century.

32   Zhenjiang: Zhishun Zhenjiang zhi 5; Ningbo: Zhizheng Siming xuzhi 6; Nanjing: Zhizheng Jinling xinzhi 7. These categories do not appear in earlier editions of these gazetteers. For Zhenjiang, compare Jiading Zhenjiang zhi (1224) 4. For Ningbo, compare Yanyou Siming zhi (1320) 12; Baoqing Siming zhi (1227) 5–6. For Nanjing, compare Jingding Jiankang zhi (1264) 40.

33   Various Ningbo counties reported rivers (he), streams (xi), canals (cao), and lakes (hupo). See Zhizheng Siming xuzhi 4. Various Nanjing counties reported floodplains (caodao), reed land (ludi), and reed pools (ludang). See Zhizheng Jinling xinzhi 7. Note that the translations for these land types are provisional. It is not entirely clear what the difference is between the three or four types of ponds/pools/lakes (tang, chi, dang, hupo). Based on the words used as modifiers, tang most likely referred to engineered ponds dug to store water or raise fish, while dang probably referred to seminatural ponds and pools. The use of chi in Ningbo and tang in Nanjing suggests that these were used as equivalents. Hupo suggests a larger natural lake, perhaps a share of fishing grounds in a lake or bay. While not appearing here, larger man-made reservoirs generally used the term bei.

34   I have only found direct evidence of this standardization in the four prefectures cited above, all in Jiangnan (and formerly the Song circuits of Jiangnan Dong or Zhejiang Xi). While officials were sent to Jiangxi and Henan, I have found no clear evidence of the results of their registration efforts aside from the short account and summary statistics in Yuan History 93. It appears that reforms did not take effect in the southern portion of Jiangzhe, which included Fujian (see discussion later in chapter).

35   Dardess, “End of Yüan Rule,” 575–84.

36   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 5–8.

37   Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 101–16.

38   Ray Huang, “Ming Fiscal Administration,” 127.

39   Ray Huang, “Ming Fiscal Administration,” 128.

40   A hastily compiled cadastre from Qimen County bears a Longfeng reign date, from the short-lived “Song restoration” of Han Lin’er. Qimen shisi du wu bao yulin ce [Fish-scale register of Qimen County sector 40 bao 5], in Huizhou qiannian qiyue wenshu—Song-Yuan-Ming bian, vol. 11. Based on evidence from contemporary deeds this register was probably the product of local baojia self-defense groups (LDQY 578–79 #449–50, 585 #455).

41   Comparing land registration figures for 1315, 1369, and 1392 in Hongzhi Huizhou fuzhi and Huizhou fu fuyi quanshu. The absence of forest registers in Qimen and Wuyuan was the result of tax breaks granted by a short-lived regional regime during the 1350s. See appendix A.

42   Zhejiang: Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 5–8. Jiangxi: Jin, Mingdai lijia zhi, 11–12.

43   Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 107–8.

44   Ray Huang, “Ming Fiscal Administration.”

45   Jin, Mingdai lijia zhi, 11–12. Note that the rapidly surveyed northeast corner of Jiangxi, including Raozhou and Guangxin Prefectures, was part of East Jiangnan in the Song and Jiangzhe in the Yuan. Their institutional history is therefore more similar to more easterly parts of Jiangnan than to central and western Jiangxi.

46   Reported acreage figures start in 1391 in almost all extant Ming gazetteers from Jiangxi, the one exception being Fuzhou 撫州. Total acreage in Fuzhou was 24 percent higher in 1391 than in the mid-thirteenth century (probably 1260–64). Population figures were compiled at least once in the Yuan, but acreage figures were not, suggesting that Fuzhou 撫州—like Fuzhou 福州 and Quanzhou—may have relied on nominal acreage figures in the Yuan.

47   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 5–8.

48   “Landholdings,” Zhengde Fuzhou fuzhi 7–10.

49   “Landholdings,” Wanli Quanzhou fuzhi 7.

50   “Landholdings,” Jiajing Guangdong tong zhi chugao 23.

51   Ray Huang, “Ming Fiscal Administration,” 128.

52   “Yellow Registers” [Huang ce], Da Ming huidian 20.

53   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 18–22; Luan, Ming dai huangce yanjiu.

54   Note that these terms were generally not used in official documents, which called all cadastres ji. But they appear frequently in government-adjacent accounts, including unofficial histories and local gazetteers. The term “fish-scale diagrams” (yulin tu) appeared as early as the Southern Song.

55   Ming shi 77.

56   Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 11–29.

57   As early as 1393, parts of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Fujian were allowed to send their summer tax in cash instead of grain or cloth. Shortly thereafter, northern Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Songjiang Prefecture were allowed to pay their fall tax in cotton instead of grain. Jin, Mingdai lijia zhi, 50, 61–62.

58   Semiofficial tax intermediaries included the heads of administrative villages (lizhang), who served on a decennial rotation and were primarily responsible for their villages’ tax payments. In particularly wealthy areas, there were also special “tax captaincies” (liangzhang). The system of tax captaincies was only formalized in the Southern Metropolitan Region, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Huguang; it was implemented to a lesser degree in Shandong, Shanxi, and Henan. Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 37; Jin, Mingdai lijia zhi, 72–73. See also Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu.

59   This estimate is based on data from Jiangxi gazetteers. See appendix A.

60   On the likely reduction of tax rates following the 1581 surveys, see appendix A.

61   “Landholdings,” Bamin tong zhi (1505) 21; “Landholdings,” Zhengde Fuzhou fuzhi (1520) 7.

62   Because this acreage uses the fiscal rather than the areal mu, we cannot be sure how much area these registered forests actually covered, but the figures do roughly demonstrate the economic importance to private forests in the region.

63   Chen Quanzhi, “Jiangxi,” Pengchuang rilü 1.

64   The importance of tung and camellia oil to the local economy is revealed by the taxes imposed on oil presses. “Excise Taxes” [Kecheng], Zhengde Yuanzhou fuzhi 2.

65   Dardess, “Ming Landscape,” 348–49.

66   The growth of commercial forestry is suggested by the different ways timber is graded in the Ganzhou tariff. One category applies to free-floated timber (qingshui liu), which is not parsed by variety and is probably from wild growth. Other categories apply specifically to fir, tung, pine, etc. See “Monopoly Administration” [Quanzheng zhi], Tianqi Ganzhou fuzhi 13.

67   “Land Taxes,” Guangdong tong zhi chugao 23. On Su Shi’s pine-planting techniques, see chapter 1. For more on tenancy contracts, see chapter 4.

68   Qu Dajun, “Fir,” Guangdong xinyu, translated in Elvin, Retreat of the Elephants, 77, with minor modifications.

69   “Fir,” Qianlong Hengyang xianzhi 3.

70   “Customs” [Fengsu], Qianlong Qiyang xianzhi 30.

71   Fang et al., Atlas of Woody Plants in China, 22, 27.

72   Lee, “Forests and the State,” 73–74.

73   Kain and Baigent, Cadastral Survey, 331–32; Warde, Invention of Sustainability, 183–92; Totman, Green Archipelago, 98. Even Venice, a prodigy in forest management, did not conduct comprehensive forest surveys until 1569. See Appuhn, Forest on the Sea, 159–63 and passim.

74   Lee, “Forests and the State,” 71–75, 88–89.

75   Totman, Green Archipelago, chap. 6.

76   Radkau, Wood, 106–8, 175–76.

1   I owe this insight to Maura Dykstra.

2   See Chien, Salt and State; Paul Jakov Smith, Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse; von Glahn, Country of Streams and Grottoes.

3   On timber rafting, see chapter 7.

4   See, e.g., Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu; Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance.

5   See Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang, esp. chap. 3.

6   Smelter households: Song shi 133.58, 138.53. Tea households: Song shi 35.8, 35.54, 36.33, 137.18–40; Paul Jakov Smith, Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse. Saltern households: Song shi 34.59–61; Chien, Salt and State, 41–45.

7   Von Glahn, Country of Streams and Grottoes, esp. chap. 3.

8   See, e.g., Baoyou chongxiu qinchuan zhi 6.12b; CB 341.36.

9   Wittfogel, “Public Office in the Liao Dynasty”; Wittfogel and Fêng, History of Chinese Society; Franke, “Chinese Law in a Multinational Society.”

10   Initially, one faction in the Mongol elite wanted to depopulate the north and turn it into pastures. In 1229 or 1230, an official named Begder put forward this proposal. Yelü Chucai, a Khitan with experience at the Jin court, had recently been appointed the top revenue official for North China. Yelü argued that more revenue could be derived through the regular tax system, and in 1230 he dispatched revenue commissioners, largely former Jin civil servants, to the ten circuits of North China. This allowed the Mongols to begin collecting household-based taxes from the sedentary former Jin subjects in addition to the head tax on steppe nomads and forest peoples in the north. Allsen, “Rise of the Mongolian Empire,” 375–78.

11   Mote, “Chinese Society under Mongol Rule,” 650–56. “Demographics” [Hukou], Zhiyuan Jiahe zhi 6; “Demographics,” Changguozhou tuzhi 3; “Demographics,” Zhishun Zhenjiang zhi 3. The first specific mention of craft households in the Yuan History is from 1252 (Yuan shi 3). Stephen G. Haw claims that many of the jiang households were brought from Central Asia. Haw, “Semu Ren in the Yuan Empire,” 2. The creation of military households is harder to pin down, but they are referenced in texts from the thirteenth century. See Hsiao, Military Establishment of the Yüan Dynasty, chap. 1. On Confucian households, see Mote, “Chinese Society under Mongol Rule,” 645–48; Hymes, “Marriage, Descent Groups, and the Localist Strategy,” 107–10.

12   Smelters: Yuan shi 5.1, 6, 8, 16–17. At least some smelter households were grouped under the master category of “artisan,” but I am not convinced that this was always the case. Salterns: Yuan shi 43.65–71; Siming zhi (1320) 12.

13   Rossabi, “Reign of Kublai Khan,” 448–49.

14   “Demographics,” Nanhai zhi 6; Changguozhou tuzhi 3.

15   Changguozhou tuzhi 3.

16   Zhizheng Jinling xinzhi 8. Mote, “Chinese Society under Mongol Rule,” 655.

17   See Bello, Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain, esp. chap. 2; Schlesinger, World Trimmed with Fur.

18   The so-called system of four classes is overwhelmingly based on an interpretation of just two sources: the essay “Clans” [Shizu], Chuogeng lu 1, and “Examinations” [Xuanju zhi], Yuan shi 81. Yet this interpretation has been widely accepted in the historiography; e.g., Rossabi, “Muslims in the Early Yüan Dynasty,” 65–88; Mote, “Chinese Society under Mongol Rule,” 627–35. For a more detailed historiography of the concept, see Funada, “Genchō chika no shikimoku.”

19   Funada, “Image of the Semu People”; Funada, “Semuren yu Yuandai zhidu, shehui,” 162–74. Aspects of Funada’s conclusions about Semu people have been critiqued by Stephen G. Haw (see Haw, “Semu Ren in the Yuan Empire”), but his general premise stands.

20   For example, in Nanjing, there were two major groupings: “northerners,” which included Mongols, “various categories,” and Hans, and “southerners,” which were parsed into “military, postman, and artisan households” (i.e., those that owed specific labor service) and “undesignated households” (i.e., those that owed generic labor service). In Zhenjiang, households were divided into “locals” (tuzhuo), “sojourners” (qiaoyu)—including Mongols, Uighurs, Jurchens, and “Han”—and “tenants” (ke). Far from a Mongol perspective, these evidence a southern bias that grouped “Han” farmers with Mongols as “northerners” or “sojourners.” Zhizheng Jinling xinzhi 8; Zhishun Zhenjiang zhi 3.

21   Ming Taizu shilu 135, cited in Jin, Mingdai lijia zhi, 10. See also chapter 2.

22   Leading households were specified based on a combination of the number of working-age men (ding) and crop yield (liang). Some had fewer than ten li households, or fewer than ten tithings; others contained supernumerary ones—generally households without land. Cadastral villages were further grouped into hierarchies of wards (tu or li) and townships (du). See Brook, Chinese State in Ming Society, 19–35; Ray Huang, “Ming Fiscal Administration,” 134–36.

23   These divisions were based on earlier subcounty divisions, including the Song’s baojia system and the she organizations created in North China in the Yuan. Named cantons (xiang) were inherited directly from the Song and Yuan but fell out of official use in favor of numbered townships (du). Townships had origins in the baojia system of the 1070s but were first widely implemented in the Yuan and Ming. They were the main basis of land surveys, and extant cadastres are largely organized by du. Wards (tu) literally mean “maps” and probably originated from the divisions of aerial plot diagrams first produced during the twelfth-century boundary surveys. See Brook, Chinese State in Ming Society, 17–41.

24   Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 34–36.

25   Itō, Sō Gen gōson shakai shiron.

26   Faure, Emperor and Ancestor; Liu Zhiwei, Zai guojia yu shehui zhijian.

27   “Population” [Hukou] and “Salt and Tea Regulations” [Yanfa chafa], Ming shi 77, 80.

28   He and Faure, “Introduction: Boat-and-Shed Living,” 6.

29   Yang Peina, “Government Registration in the Fishing Industry.”

30   “Hunting and Gathering” [Bu cai], Da Ming huidian 191. A local example is found in “Land Tax” [Tianfu pian], Jiajing Chizhou fuzhi 4.

31   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 96–97; “Fuel” [Chaitan] and “Reed Taxes along the River” [Yan jiang lu ke], Da Ming huidian 205, 208.

32   These examples are drawn from the Jiangxi sheng fuyi quanshu, Yongzheng Zhejiang tongzhi, and Bamin tong zhi. Despite different names, tribute and other goods levies were effectively forms of corvée. Jin, Mingdai lijia zhi, 73, quotes the “Supplement on Matters Related to Jiangxi Corvée Levies” [Jiangxi chaiyi shiyi fu], in Zhang Huang, Tushubian 90.51, which says: “All direct tax payments and expenses aside from those paid from the land tax are listed under the administrative village groups [lijia]. This means that all the village units of a county are responsible for them.” See also Ray Huang, “Ming Fiscal Administration,” 134–35.

33   Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 47; Naquin, Peking, 109–10; Farmer, Early Ming Government, 128.

34   In 1441, 380,000 large timbers were left over from the Yongle reign (Lan, “Ming Qing shiqi de huangmu caiban,” 93; Wuyuan Jiang, “Ming Qing chaoting Sichuan caimu yanjiu,” 244; Ming Yingzong shilu 65). If we assume this represented one-third of the original total, over a million timbers would have been shipped to Beijing. A contemporary poem notes that a force of eight hundred workers logged four hundred trees (Cao and Li, Yunnan linye wenhua beike, 20–21). This suggests a workforce of around two million.

35   Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 47.

36   Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, 70–74.

37   “Direct Supply, Requisitions, and Construction” [Shanggong cai zao], Ming shi 82, translated in Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth,” 27, with minor modifications. See also “Hunting and Gathering,” Da Ming huidian 191.

38   Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth,” 27.

39   For more detail on the decline of record keeping in the fifteenth century, see Heijdra, “Socio-economic Development of Rural China,” 459–81; Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance; Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu; and the summary in von Glahn, Economic History of China, 286–89.

40   Heijdra, “Socio-economic Development of Rural China,” 232–34, gives a great summary of the Japanese scholarship on this issue.

41   Based on a survey of sixteen gazetteers from Ming dynasty Jiangxi that recorded landholding figures for the fifteenth century, only one reported new land figures for either the 1421 or the 1431 survey (Ganzhou), and none reported new figures between 1431 and 1451. Only one of ten Jiangxi gazetteers has population figures between 1421 and 1451 (Ganzhou). The earliest survey for which new figures were recorded was 1461 (Ruizhou and Ganzhou), and the first for which the majority reported figures was 1491. Until the 1580s, these figures were overwhelmingly copies of earlier numbers.

42   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 228–30. Deng Zhihua, “Ming zhongye,” 2. Deng’s article lacks page numbers, so I have numbered it sequentially from the first page of the article.

43   Deng Zhihua, “Ming zhongye,” 1.

44   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 279–80.

45   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 268–69.

46   Hai Rui, “Eight Proposals from Xingguo [County]” [Xingguo ba yi], Hai Rui ji, 1. For a similar assessment from around the same time, see Liu Guangji, “Long Memorial on Corvée Levies” [Chaiyi shu], quoted in Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhi, 296.

47   Qian Qi, “Long Memorial on Pitying and Renewing the Counties” [Xuxin xian shu], Kangxi Jiangxi tongzhi 117.

48   Guangxu Jiangxi tongzhi 83, quoted in Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 294.

49   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 274–75.

50   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 290–91.

51   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 290–96. See also Deng Zhihua, “Ming zhongye,” 4–5.

52   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 296–98.

53   Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 299–301. As Huang stresses, the surveys took until the late 1580s in some parts of the north and the results were highly uneven.

54   This striking anecdote is quoted from an unnamed source in Deng Zhihua, “Ming zhongye,” 5.

55   Jiajing Chizhou fuzhi (1546) 4.

56   Kangxi Jiangxi tongzhi (1683) 12; Jiangxi fuyi quanshu (1622) 1. Ding is the fourth of the “heavenly stems” in the sexegenary cycle, so a more intuitive translation would be the letter “D” warehouse. For more, see “Inner Court Warehouses” [Neifu ku], Da Ming huidian 30; Liu Ruoyu, “Inner Court Offices and Duties” [Neifu yamen zhezhang], Zhuozhong zhi 16.

57   Based on figures from Jiangxi sheng fuyi quanshu [Jiangxi Province complete tax records] 1.

58   “Fir” [Shan], Yongzheng Zhejiang tongzhi 106, quoting an unnamed edition Kaihua xianzhi. See also “Local Practices” [Fengsu], Qianlong Qiyang xianzhi 4.

59   “Taxes” [Fushui], Jiajing Jianping xianzhi 118.

60   Gerritsen, “Fragments of a Global Past,” 128–31; Zurndorfer, “Chinese Merchants and Commerce,” 75, 80–84.

61   The literature on Huizhou merchants—especially by scholars in China and Japan—is extremely extensive. Selections include Bian, Ming Qing Huizhou shehui yanjiu; Du, Order of Places; Fu, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, chap. 2; McDermott, New Rural Order, vol. 1; Zurndorfer, Chinese Local History.

62   On tariff regulations, see chapter 6.

63   “Fir,” Yongzheng Zhejiang tongzhi 106.

64   Medley, “Ching-Tê Chên”; Vainker, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, 176–78 and more generally.

65   Dillon, “Jingdezhen Porcelain Industry,” 278–90; Dillon, “Jingdezhen as a Ming Industrial Center”; Gerritsen, “Fragments of a Global Past”; Yuan, “Porcelain Industry at Ching-Te-Chen”; Zurndorfer, “Chinese Merchants and Commerce,” 80–84.

66   Dillon, “Jingdezhen Porcelain Industry,” 278–83; Gerritsen, “Fragments of a Global Past,” 143–47.

67   Zurndorfer, “Chinese Merchants and Commerce,” 83.

68   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:421–29; Du, Order of Places, 54–57. Anecdotes specifically concerning Huizhou timber merchants are collected in Lixing Tang, Merchants and Society in Modern China, table 2.1.

69   Leong, Migration and Ethnicity; Wing-hoi Chan, “Ethnic Labels in a Mountainous Region”; Coggins, Tiger and the Pangolin, 41–45. Leong’s and Chan’s studies largely overturn older scholarship that claimed that the Hakka came from North China, overwhelmingly based on Luo Xianglin’s 1933 Kejia yanjiu daolun [An introduction to the study of the Hakka], which itself was based on a small handful of genealogies.

70   Pan 潘, Lan 藍, and Lü 呂—as well as Lei 雷—are the surnames most closely associated with a myth claiming descent from Panhu, which is associated with the Yao and may have been borrowed as part of the formation of the Hakka/She group identity. Wing-hoi Chan, “Ethnic Labels in a Mountainous Region,” 272–74.

71   Chen Quanzhi, “Fujian,” Pengchuang rilü 1.

72   The derivation of this term is controversial, and it was far from universal until modern times. Leong, Migration and Ethnicity, 62–68; Wing-hoi Chan, “Ethnic Labels in a Mountainous Region.”

73   Leong, Migration and Ethnicity, 43–63. On their role in cultivating tobacco: Benedict, Golden-Silk Smoke, 37–45. On indigo: Wing-hoi Chan, “Ethnic Labels in a Mountainous Region,” 275; Menzies, Forest and Land Management, 97–99; O, Mindai shakai keizaishi kenkyū, 135.

74   Schlesinger, World Trimmed with Fur.

75   Grove and Esherick, “From Feudalism to Capitalism,” 409.

76   As Joseph McDermott established in a survey of the contractual evidence and the Chinese- and Japanese-language scholarship, there was far from a single type of bond servant. There were also multiple forms of tenancy, and the borders between the two were often unclear. See McDermott, “Bondservants in the T’ai-hu Basin”; Tanaka, “Popular Uprisings”; Rawski, Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy, chap. 2; Grove and Esherick, “From Feudalism to Capitalism,” 407–8.

1   The “Huizhou archive” actually consists of thousands of documents collected in several dozen different locations, principally national historical institutions in Beijing and province-level institutions in Anhui, but with notable collections in lower-level archives, in other provinces, and in the United States and Japan. As Joseph McDermott notes, these archives were the results of multiple collection and preservation efforts beginning in the 1940s, and since the 1990s many documents have been reprinted. Despite the multiple ways that documents entered the archive and the large size of the archive overall, there are notable trends that suggest preservation bias. For example, extant forest deeds come overwhelmingly from just two of Huizhou’s six counties, Xiuning and Qimen, and land registers are overwhelmingly from Xiuning and neighboring parts of other counties. See McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:16–38 and table 0.1.

2   LDQY 809 #653.

3   LDQY 809 #653.

4   LDQY 809 #653.

5   LDQY 809 #653.

6   LDQY 809 #653.

7   Several scholars note the problematic nature of applying Western legal terms and concepts to Chinese law. See, e.g., Ocko, “Missing Metaphor; Bourgon, “Uncivil Dialogue.”

8   Zelin, “Rights of Property in Prewar China”; Gardella, “Contracting Business Partnerships.”

9   Cohen, “Writs of Passage.”

10   MNQY 27 #73.

11   MNQY 28 #74–75.

12   MNQY 28–30 #76–79.

13   Mote, “Rise of the Ming Dynasty,” 42–43; “Biography of Han Lin’er” [Han Lin’er zhuan], Ming shi 122.

14   LDQY 578–79 #449–50.

15   Qimen shisi du wu bao yulin ce [Fish-scale register of Qimen County sector 40 bao 5], in Huizhou qiannian qiyue wenshu—Song-Yuan-Ming bian, vol. 11.

16   “Biography of Han Lin’er,” Ming shi 122.

17   LDQY 585 #455.

18   Luan, Ming dai huangce yanjiu.

19   LDQY 754 #599 (1426); 759 #603 (1430); 760–63 #605–6 (1436).

20   This arrangement is noted in the sale of one such property in 1485: LDQY 785 #631.

21   LDQY 759 #603 (1430); 761–62 #606 (1436); 762 #607 (1437); 766 #611 (1441).

22   E.g., LDQY 767 #612 (1446); 773–74 #619 (1459); 777 #622 (1465).

23   Brook, Chinese State in Ming Society, 28–29.

24   LDQY 770 #615 (1456); 795 #640 (1502); 833 #673 (1556).

25   LDQY 798–99 #643 (1507); 828 #669 (1557).

26   LDQY 863 #698 (1570); 865 #700 (1571); 888 #719 (1581); 912 #737 (1596); 919 #741 (1601); 926–27 #748 (1607), and several others.

27   LDQY 903 #730 (1592); 969 #783 (1628).

28   Surveying forest deeds (mai shan qi or mai shandi qi) in LDQY: 1 of 8 properties were subdivided in the thirteenth century (12.5 percent); 9 of 26 (35 percent) in the fourteenth; and 20 of 23 in the fifteenth (87 percent). The small sample size suggests caution. These figures are for a single prefecture, and from a single collection of deeds, so there may also be selection bias at play. Nonetheless, the trend is clear.

29   It is not possible to determine what percentage of land was corporate owned in the Ming. Several works rely largely on the well-organized records of lineage trusts, which therefore have an outside influence on the scholarship. Yet the endowment of corporations to lineage temples was a relatively new innovation in the mid-Ming. It was only in the late Ming and the Qing that it became widespread. McDermott, New Rural Order, vol. 1, chap. 5; Miller, “Roots and Branches,” chaps. 3–4.

30   From land reform documents of the 1950s, Chen Keyun estimates that more than 60 percent of forest acreage throughout Huizhou was lineage-owned, corporate land. In some local contexts, this figure was as high as 85–90 percent. Yet she notes that this was not yet the case in the Ming. Chen Keyun, “Cong ‘lishi shanlin zhichan bu,’ ” 78–80. This pattern was not restricted to Huizhou. During the 1930s Nationalist land reform in Nanchang, Jiangxi, the overwhelming majority of forest was lineage owned. This was also the case in Jinhua, Zhejiang, in the 1950s. Nanchang Shi linye zhi, 177; Zhong Chong, “Sekkō Shō Tōyō Ken Hokkō Bonchi ni okeru sō zoku no chiri,” 361.

31   Yuan Cai, “Timely Planting of Mulberry and Timber,” Yuanshi shifan 3; and see chapter 1.

32   A handful of deeds did specify physical partitions (e.g., LDQY 887 #718), but they were the exception rather than the rule.

33   The practice of measuring and enumerating trees was important to forestry as it developed in Europe after the sixteenth century. See Scott, Seeing Like a State, chap. 1; Lowood, “Calculating Forester”; Appuhn, Forest on the Sea, chaps. 4–5.

34   Gongsi biyong [Essentials for public and private use], LDQY 591 #460; Chen Xuru, Chidu shuangyu, LDQY 1006 #812.

35   Enumerated fruit and oilseed trees: LDQY 865 #700, 1036 #842. I have seen only two deeds enumerating timber trees: LDQY 969 #783 (1629); 994 #803 (1639). McDermott thinks the omission of tree counts may have been because it was difficult to predict how many seedlings would fail. In Japan, seedling success rates on similar plantations were between 0 and 73 percent with the norm below 50 percent. See McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:385, 388–89. Figures for Japan from Totman, Green Archipelago, 139–40.

36   Several deeds explicitly mentioned that shares had been divided between brothers. LDQY 532 #412, 558–59 #432, 574 #444. See also LDQY 555–56 #429, 574–75 #444–45.

37   E.g., LDQY 903 #730 (chestnuts); 908 #734 (chestnuts and bond servant houses).

38   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:377–78, 380–81, 396–99, and passim.

39   E.g., LDQY 809 #653, 877–78 #710.

40   This landlord-planter division is attested indirectly in the late 1360s and the 1370s in deeds selling forest “bones,” with “forest rental contracts” (zushan qi) becoming common by the mid-1400s. Chen Keyun, “Cong ‘lishi shanlin zhichan bu,’ ” 80–81; McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:402–3; Yang Guozhen, Ming Qing tudi qiyue wenshu yanjiu, 148. There might be additional levies on tenants in the form of rice, chicken, silver, liquor, cash, or firewood. Chen Keyun argues that fixed rent rates rose or fell according to the amount of time, work, and additional rent a tenant might have to pay for supplementary crops of grain, etc. According to Yang Guozhen, the most common tenant/owner split was 50–50, but varied between 25 and 75 percent, which is also true in the contracts I have surveyed. According to McDermott’s own work, the landlord rarely took less than 50 percent, and more commonly 70 percent—the same share of the rice crop generally taken by landlords.

41   LDQY 791 #636.

42   Chen Keyun, “Cong ‘lishi shanlin zhichan bu,’ ” 82–83.

43   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:373.

44   LDQY 1040–49 #846–55.

45   Chen Keyun, “Ming Qing Huizhou shanlin jingying zhong de ‘lifen’ wenti.” See also, e.g., LDQY 1046–49 #853, 855.

46   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:405–6.

47   LDQY 757–58 #601.

48   LDQY 775–76 #621.

49   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:398.

50   E.g., LDQY 766 #611, 767 #612.

51   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:389. McDermott calls these “total lists.”

52   The use of decimal shares to ease tax accounting is implicit in the timing of these changes and is made explicit in several later deeds. LDQY 1210–11 #984 (1728); 1219 #992 (1733); 1513 #1238 (1786). On the single whip reforms, see chapter 3.

53   LDQY 881–82 #713. While calculated as acreage equivalents, given the small proportions involved it is inconceivable that these plots were actually divided.

54   The decimal shares in these segments may have originally been derived from fractional shares. The proportions are 0.083 (one-twelfth, rounded to three decimal places); 0.109 (an error for one-ninth?); 0.125 (one-eighth); and 0.042 (one-twenty-fourth, rounded to three places). This seller owned one-eighteenth share of these four plots, so the deed then calculated the decimal proportion as totaling 0.01995. He further owned a one-eighteenth share of a 0.29 share plot. LDQY 894–95 #724.These figures are given as acreage equivalents, but the initial figures appear to be proportions of one. It is unclear from context whether this meant that they reflected actual acreages or simply proportions of equal-size or equal-yield plots.

55   Needham and Wang, Mathematics and the Sciences, 108–10.

56   LDQY 1074–90 #880–89; earliest example is 1437. McDermott calls these “pacts.”

57   LDQY 1045–47 #852–54 (1507); McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:393n79.

58   Bian, Ming Qing Huizhou shehui yanjiu, 178–81, 378–79, 389–90; McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:392–93.

59   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:393.

60   McDermott has observed a single planter working as many as eleven plots, just enough to work each plot for three years (or two plots per year for six years) before returning to the first after thirty-some years for the timber harvest. McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:410–11.

61   E.g., LDQY 1043 #849 (1470).

62   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:401.

63   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:427–28.

64   LDQY 1047–48 #854.

65   To some degree, this was a product of design. Zhu Yuanzhang sought to make the Great Ming Code an unchanging legal document. But despite his wishes, new precedents began to pile up in the late fifteenth century and were compiled in increasingly formal legal guides in the sixteenth century. See Langlois, “Code and ad hoc Legislation.” Nonetheless, I have found essentially no new precedent on these articles and their subsections on forests and timber in any of the major Ming legal compilations, including the Huang Ming tiaofa shilei zuan [Categorized regulations of the August Ming], the Jiajing xinli [New precedents of the Jiajing reign], the Jia Long xinli [New precedents of the Jiajing and Longqing reigns], and the Wanli edition Da Ming huidian [Collected statutes of the Great Ming] included in the Siku quanshu.

66   Yonglin, Great Ming Code, xl–lv.

67   “Fraudulently Selling Fields and Houses” [Daomai tianzhai], Da Ming lü, Article 99. Compare to Tang Code, Article 405; Song xingtong, Article 405. Here and throughout, the Great Ming Code translation is modified from Yonglin, Great Ming Code (emphasis is mine).

68   “Stealing Wheat and Rice from Fields” [Dao tianye gumai], Da Ming lü, Article 294. Compare to Tang Code, Article 291; Song xingtong, Article 291.

69   “Discarding or Destroying Things Such as Utensils and Crops” [Qihui qiwu jiahao deng], Great Ming Code, Article 104. Compare to Tang Code, Article 442; Song xingtong, Article 442.

70   Lee, “Forests and the State,” 75 and nn. 82–83.

71   Aoki, “Kenshō no chiiki-teki imēji.” See also Miller, “Roots and Branches,” chap. 2. The classic English-language study of pettifoggers is Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture, but Macauley focuses on the Qing, when Fujian had largely superseded Jiangxi as the most notorious site of litigation.

72   Yang Yifan et al., editors’ preface to Lidai zhenxi sifa wenxian [Rare legal documents from successive dynasties], 1–3. See also Will et al., Official Handbooks and Anthologies, sec. 4.3, “Magistrates Handbooks: Handbooks for Pettifoggers.”

73   Nakajima, Mindai goson no funso to chitsujo. See also Dykstra, “Complicated Matters,” esp. chaps. 3, 6, and 7. Note that xishi is generally translated as “petty matters.” Dykstra translates it somewhat against the grain as “complicated matters.” While the former is a more direct translation, the latter does provide some of the connotations of how it is sometimes employed.

74   While the suits in Critical Points were modified to remove identifying information, they are specific enough to suggest that they were adapted from real cases. In fact, several cases are similar enough to specific suits from late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Huizhou to suggest that Critical Points accurately reflected the legal environment of mid-Ming Huizhou. For example, several cases in EBKQ 9–13 are quite similar to specific cases summarized in Nakajima, Mindai goson no funso to chitsujo, 78–79.

75   “In the Matter of Forcibly Seizing a Hereditary Property” [Qiangduo shiye shi], EBKQ 9–10.

76   “In the Matter of Tyrannically Seizing a Hereditary Property” [Baduo shiye shi], EBKQ 10.

77   “In the Matter of Plotting to Steal a Property with Clear Ownership” [Mou duo mingye shi], EBKQ 10–11.

78   “In the Matter of Destroying Shares and Occupying the Whole” [Mie fen tun zhan shi], EBKQ 11.

79   “In the Matter of Encouraging a Crowd to Seize a Property” [Gu zhong duo ye shi], EBKQ 11–12.

80   “In the Matter of Fabricating Shares with the Intent to Defraud” [Nie fen qi pian shi], EBKQ 13.

81   “In the Matter of Timber Theft and Assault” [Daomu shangren shi], EBKQ 52.

82   “In the Matter of Forest Wardens Stealing from Their Own Property” [Linshou zidao shi], EBKQ 52–53.

83   LDQY 1040 #846 gives a distance of three chi; 1048–49 #855 gives a distance of five chi. The upper end of the range appears to be more common. Xu Guangqi, Nongzheng quanshu, 38.7a, gives four to five chi. McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:389, gives the smaller estimate of two hundred to three hundred trees per mu. Even the larger spacing is quite close compared to modern plantations, where pines are typically two meters or more apart (fewer than two thousand poles per hectare), but it allows for substantial reduction of the crop by intentional thinning or due to die-offs.

84   LDQY 1043 #847, 1041 #849, 1046–47 #853. McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:396, 404, 416.

85   McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:395–96. LDQY 1044–45 #850–51.

86   On silvicultural practices in the ninth century, see chapter 1.

87   Nongzheng quanshu 38.7a. Translated in McDermott, New Rural Order, 1:384.

88   Richardson, Forestry in Communist China, 88. Richardson explicitly mentions the planting of Cunninghamia cuttings amid mature trees (termed “coppice with standards”). Li and Ritchie, “Clonal Forestry in China.”

89   Chen Keyun, “Cong ‘lishi shanlin zhichan bu,’ ” 73–75.

90   For a more comprehensive picture of forest transformation based on tax data, see chapter 2 and appendix A.

91   Ye et al., “Factor Contribution to Fire Occurrence.” This is one of the few studies on vegetation’s contribution to forest fire risk. It focuses on a single county in southern Zhejiang with vegetation, climate, and settlement patterns roughly comparable to those of most of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jiangxi. In this study, vegetation was only the third most important risk factor, behind human activity and topography, but still accounted for nearly 15 percent of variation. Another recent study of Fujian considered vegetation but found it comparatively less important than factors like topography and settlement density. Guo et al., “Wildfire Ignition.”

92   Barros and Pereira, “Wildfire Selectivity.”

93   The need to protect young trees from livestock is repeatedly mentioned in references on planting and forest lawsuits. See, e.g., Su Shi as referenced in chapter 1. According to Chris Coggins, ungulates do not typically graze on fir seedlings, so the primary threat would have been trampling. Coggins, Tiger and the Pangolin, 166–67.

94   Zhong and Hsiung, “Tree Nutritional Status”; Jian Zhang et al., “Soil Organic Carbon Changes”; Wang, Wang, and Huang, “Comparisons of Litterfall.”

95   Menzies, Forest and Land Management, chaps. 4–5.

96   Fengshui is a system of thought that incorporates aspects of climate and terrain and more metaphysical notions of positive and negative influences. Historically, it was used principally for determining appropriate sites for houses and graves and their positioning in the landscape. Fengshui forests are a specific intervention to protect the microclimates around sensitive sites by planting or maintaining mature trees. See Coggins, Tiger and the Pangolin, chap. 8; Coggins, “When the Land Is Excellent”; Menzies, Forest and Land Management, chap. 5; Miller, “Roots and Branches,” chap. 6.

1   Albion, Forests and Sea Power, chap. 6 and passim; Moore, “ ‘Amsterdam Is Standing on Norway,’ Part I” and “Part II”; Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field, chaps. 2–3; Wing, Roots of Empire, chap. 2; Grove, Green Imperialism.

2   Albion, Forests and Sea Power; Matteson, Forests in Revolutionary France; Wing, Roots of Empire.

3   Appuhn, Forest on the Sea; Radkau, Wood, chaps. 2–3; Warde, Ecology, Economy, and State Formation.

4   Albion, Forests and Sea Power, 141–42; Fritzbøger, Windfall for the Magnates; Falkowski, “Fear and Abundance”; Teplyakov, Russian Forestry and Its Leaders, 3–5.

5   Imber, Ottoman Empire, 294–95; Lee, “Forests and the State”; Mikhail, Nature and Empire, chap. 3; Mikhail, Under Osman’s Tree, chap. 8; Totman, Green Archipelago; Totman, Lumber Industry.

6   Moore, “Amsterdam Is Standing on Norway,’ Part II”; Radkau, Wood, 112–18.

7   The Yangzi River basin, at 1.8 million square kilometers, is bigger than the entire Baltic Sea catchment of about 1.6 million square kilometers. The Rhine basin covers approximately 185,000 square kilometers, compared to over 750,000 for the Yellow River. No Chinese state ever controlled the entire catchments of both the Yellow and the Yangzi Rivers, but the Yuan, Ming, and Qing came close. By contrast, Holland never came anywhere near controlling the entirety of Rhine or Baltic timber markets, let alone the entire territory of their watersheds. Add in the greater productivity of forests in South China compared to northern Europe, and large Chinese empires like the Yuan and Ming probably controlled at least ten times the timber trade of Holland at its peak, although there are no comprehensive statistics to assess this claim.

8   See Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang, chap. 3.

9   “Miscellaneous Taxes” [Zashui], Tang huiyao 84. See also Xin Tang shu 52.

10   There was a proportional in-kind tax collected on at least some mines, but mine products were more often taxed by production quotas or government purchase. SHY shihuo 34.20b, and 33–34 generally; CB 375.63, 389.64. On the Guangzhou tariff, see CB 275.11, 331.102, 334.56, 341.27, 483.13.

11   Bamboo and timber depots were initially established in both Jingdong and Jingxi Circuits (the circuits to the east and west of the capital), although after 1011 the eastern one was eliminated and the bamboo and timber tariff was concentrated at the Jingxi depot. SHY shihuo 55.120. Coal: SHY shihuo 54.11a. Bamboo slats: SHY shihuo 54.98.

12   SHY shihuo 55.3a.

13   SHY shihuo 54.15a–b.

14   Officials posted to the Jingxi timber depot: CB 258.65, 282.3. An official was posted to Jingdong in 1098, suggesting that the eastern depot was reopened at some point. CB 501.61. The collection of tariffs is indirectly attested in many other locations in the anecdotes cited herein.

15   Sansi literally means “three bureaus.” It emerged after the An Lushan Rebellion when officials were appointed to serve concurrently in the General Accounts Bureau (Duzhi), the Board of Revenue (Hubu), and the Salt and Iron Commission (Yantie)—three offices that each controlled a large portion of official revenue. In the Song, they were merged into a single office that retained the old name.

16   CB 42.48, 97.113.

17   CB 97.113.

18   SHY shihuo 55.3a. Other similar orders were issued occasionally throughout the dynasty. See also CB 422.36.

19   CB 78.66.

20   CB 100.29.

21   SHY shihuo 17.10b, 14a–b, 17b, 24b, 25b, 30a–b; CB 62.145, 173.83, 252.6, 291.62.

22   Corruption in 980: CB 21.47, 51, 61. In 1017: SHY shihuo 17.17a; CB 71.166. In 1080: CB 304.47.

23   Shiba, “Business Nucleus,” 110–16.

24   Shiba, Commerce and Society, 6–14, 93.

25   Mihelich, “Polders and the Politics of Land Reclamation” (figure is at 193); Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control.”

26   Von Glahn, “Ningbo-Hakata Merchant Network,” 251–62, 269–70. See also von Glahn, Economic History of China, 262–65, 270–73.

27   The few instances of official woodcutting that I have found served immediate strategic ends; they were not intended as sources of ordinary building timber.

28   SHY shihuo 17.33b, 17.34b.

29   SHY shihuo 17.35b, 18.1b, 30a; JYFN 199.9.

30   SHY shihuo 17.34b.

31   Zhao Yushi, Bin tui lu 9, cites two accounts of these events, one from Hong Mai, Yijian wu zhi [Record of the listener E], and another from Fu xiu yuemu ji.

32   SHY shihuo 17.35a; SHY shihuo 18.2b, 18.3b, 24a–b; JYFN 181.49; Chen Rong, Zhongguo senlin shiliao, 34.

33   SHY shihuo 50.10a–12b; JYFN 101.15.

34   JYFN 164.59, 199.9; SHY bing 6.18a–b.

35   SHY shihuo 17.34b.

36   JYFN 174.40.

37   SHY shihuo 18.9a.

38   SHY shihuo 18.9a.

39   SHY bing 6.19a, shihuo 18.4a.

40   SHY bing 6.20a.

41   SHY shihuo 17.41a–b.

42   Fan Chengda, Canluan lu, entry for 1173 (guisi [year in the hexadecimal cycle]) 1.3.

43   SHY shihuo 18.23b.

44   SHY shihuo 18.29b–30a.

45   Chen Rong, Zhongguo senlin shiliao, 34.

46   SHY shihuo 17.44b.

47   SHY xingfa 2.127.

48   SHY shihuo 18.27b–28a.

49   Schurmann, Economic Structure of the Yüan Dynasty, 160–62.

50   Hongzhi Huizhou fuzhi 3.318; Hongzhi Huizhou fuzhi 7.616.

51   Total receipts from the tax station were around thirty thousand strings of cash in the late eleventh century and about twenty-seven thousand strings in the early thirteenth century, most of which were from commercial taxes rather than the bulk goods tariff. In 1320, the tax office yielded around sixty-five thousand strings of cash, of which just fewer than three thousand were from the tariff. Based on the 1320 figures, about 5 percent of these total revenues came from the tariff on timber and bamboo. Zhishun Zhenjiang zhi 6.390.

52   Hongwu Suzhou fuzhi 8.365; Hongzhi Taicang zhouzhi 100; Jiajing Taicang zhouzhi 9.667; Gu Su zhi 15.996.

53   While details are not forthcoming, I suspect that this integration was a product of the Yanyou Reorganization (1314–20). See Hsiao, “Mid-Yuan Politics”; Schurmann, Economic Structure of the Yüan Dynasty, 24–26, 31; “Reorganization” [Jingli], Yuan shi 93. See also discussion on the reorganization in chapter 2.

54   Schurmann, Economic Structure of the Yüan Dynasty, 160–62.

55   Hongwu Suzhou fuzhi 8.365, 8.368, 9.381, 9.428; Hongzhi Taicang zhouzhi 100; Jiajing Taicang zhouzhi 9.667; “Tariffs” [Choufen] Gu Su zhi 15.

56   Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai fuyi zhidu, 96–97; “Fuel” [Chaitan], Da Ming huidian 205.

57   Xi Shu, preface to Caochuan zhi 1.

58   “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204; “Food and Commodities 5” [Shihuo wu], Ming shi 81.

59   Sarah Schneewind has called into question the extent of Hongwu’s ability to enforce his edicts in the countryside. On the other hand, Richard von Glahn argues that Hongwu’s edicts were highly destructive to the trade in the lower Yangzi region. For their extended debate on the issue of the extent of the Hongwu emperor’s power, see Schneewind, “Ming Taizu Ex Machina,” and von Glahn, “Ming Taizu Ex Nihalo?”

60   “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204; Ming shi 81.

61   Caochuan zhi 1.

62   “Ships” [Chuanshou], Da Ming huidian 200.

63   Li Min, “Record of the Board of Works Branch Office Name Inscription” [Gongbu fensi timing ji], Jiajing Renhe xianzhi 14.

64   “Military Farms Bureau” [Tuntian qingli si], Da Ming huidian 208.

65   “Reed Taxes along the River” [Fan yan jiang luke], Da Ming huidian 208.

66   “Fuel Disbursement Quotas” [Ji gai zhi chaitan], Da Ming huidian 208.

67   “Military Farms Bureau,” Da Ming huidian 208; Ming Taizu shilu 207.5866.

68   “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204; “Ships,” Da Ming huidian 200.

69   “Military Farms Bureau,” Da Ming huidian 208.

70   “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204; “Ships,” Da Ming huidian 200.

71   Fir was the only timber taxed at the lowest rate of one-thirtieth. Other timber varieties taxed at 20 percent included pine, blue sandalwood (tanmu), boxwood (huangyang), pearwood (limu), and the catchall “miscellaneous timber” (zamu). Pine and fir were the only two types of cut lumber listed in the tax schedule. Fuels included reed fuel (luchai), charcoal (mutan), mineral coal (meitan), and firewood (muchai). “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204. Note that these tax rates are not definitively associated with a date, although they follow the record of the establishment of the Nanjing tariffs in 1393. The source—the Da Ming huidian—was first compiled in the late fifteenth century and completed in 1507; I rely on the more widely available second edition completed in 1587. Therefore, while these rates probably reflect the tariff collected in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century (as is certainly the case for the rates referenced for Beijing), they may instead reflect regulations of the late fifteenth or the sixteenth century. The general rate on commercial goods is given as one-thirtieth in the monograph “Food and Commodities 5,” Ming shi 81.

72   It is also possible, and indeed likely, that the Ming benefited from greater construction efficiencies and self-imposed thrift that required fewer materials. Nonetheless, the contrast is great enough that the late fourteenth-century Nanjing timber market must have been substantially larger than the late twelfth-century Hangzhou market.

73   Ming shi 81; “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204.

74   “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204. The low rates on straw at Beijing, compared to very high rates at Nanjing, probably reflected the high costs of overland transport.

75   “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204.

76   “Customs Stations” [Guan], Wanli Shaoxing fuzhi 109.

77   “Material Quotas” [Liao e], Caochuan zhi 4.

78   “Tariffs,” Da Ming huidian 204.

79   On administrative retrenchment in the mid-1400s, see chapters 2 and 3.

80   Jiajing Zhejiang tongzhi 13.

81   “Jiujiang Customs Station” [Jiujiang guan], Guangxu Jiangxi tongzhi 87.

82   “Jiujiang Customs Station,” Guangxu Jiangxi tongzhi 87.

83   Jiajing Nangong xianzhi 107.

84   Jiajing Zhejiang tongzhi 13.

85   “Jiujiang Customs Station,” Jiajing Zhejiang tongzhi 13.

86   “Construction and Development” [Jianzhi yange], Jiajing Huguang tujing zhishu 2021.

87   “Material Quotas,” Caochuan zhi 4. The date of this last request is not provided in the source, but is most likely shortly prior to 1501, the date of the first edition of the text. For more on shipbuilding quotas, see chapter 6.

88   Li Min, “Record of the Board of Works Branch Office Name Inscription,” Jiajing Renhe xianzhi 14.

89   In the late 1400s, Hangzhou collected four thousand taels’ worth of timber and bamboo per annum. Revenue grew to fourteen thousand taels by the mid-1500s. Jiajing Zhejiang tongzhi 13.

90   For details on timber price inflation at the shipyards, see chapter 6.

91   Allowing for 70 percent inflation in timber prices, the 3.5-fold increase in total revenue would indicate that the volume of timber increased by just under 106 percent. These figures must be used with caution. The inflation figures are based on estimates from two different institutions, both based near Nanjing. These are almost certainly inexact. The tariff revenue figures are more reliable, but are from Hangzhou, which tapped a distinct timber market.

92   Linear size appears primitive, but this measure is still used to calculate shipping rates for packages and luggage size for airlines.

93   The text also specifies a rate of 17.55 taels for 3.6 linear zhang, which should be 17.503 based on the arithmetic. The very minor difference suggests an error in calculation rather than a different rate for larger rafts.

94   “Jiujiang Customs Station,” Guangxu Jiangxi tongzhi 87.

95   “Ganzhou Customs Station” [Gan guan], Guangxu Jiangxi tongzhi 87.

96   Tianqi Ganzhou fuzhi 13.

97   See Meng Zhang, “Timber Trade along the Yangzi River,” chap. 1. Zhang’s forthcoming monograph is based on this research.

1   Glete, Warfare at Sea.

2   Albion, Forests and Sea Power; Appuhn, Forest on the Sea; Bamford, Forests and French Sea Power; Grove, Green Imperialism; Moore, “ ‘Amsterdam Is Standing on Norway,’ Part I” and “Part II”; Wing, Roots of Empire.

3   On Ottoman sea power, see Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy; Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration. On timber for shipbuilding, see Imber, Ottoman Empire, 294–95; Mikhail, Under Osman’s Tree, 153–55, 270–71nn4–5, 272n9. On Korean sea power, see Lee, “Forests and the State”; Lee, “Postwar Pines.”

4   Andrade, Gunpowder Age; Needham, Wang, and Robinson, Physics, 279–88; Needham et al., Military Technology.

5   In Chinese history, conquest almost always came from the north; the two major exceptions were the Ming in the late 1360s and the Nationalists in the late 1920s. The importance of the Yangzi River frontier for southern defense (and northern advance) was reflected as late as 1949, when the Nationalists chose to use their fleet to retreat to Taiwan rather than defending the river against the Communists. With almost no navy of their own, the Communists were able to piece together one from Nationalist defectors, cross the Yangzi, and complete their reunification of mainland China, much like the Mongols had done nearly seven hundred years earlier.

6   Chittick, “Dragon Boats and Serpent Prows”; Chittick, “Song Navy.”

7   Sasaki, Lost Fleet, 42–46 and passim.

8   Chaffee, Muslim Merchants of Premodern China; Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade; Billy K. L. So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions.

9   Billy K. L. So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, 335–36n199; Shiba, Commerce and Society, 9–14; Shiba “Ningbo and Its Hinterland,” 129–35; Sasaki, Lost Fleet, 46–49.

10   Sasaki, Lost Fleet, 37–41; Lee, “Forests and the State,” 68–77 and passim.

11   Min and Southern Tang were particular naval powers during the period of division. The first detailed description of warships dates to 759. Needham, Wang, and Lu, Civil Engineering and Nautics, 439–77; Schottenhammer, “China’s Emergence as a Maritime Power,” 455–56 and 455n62.

12   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 131–32.

13   Chittick, “Song Navy,” 12–17.

14   “Armament Regulations” [Qijia zhi zhi], Song shi 197; Lo, China as a Sea Power, 129–30.

15   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 130–32; “Provincial Armies” [Xiangbing], Song shi 190.

16   “Provincial Armies,” Song shi 190.

17   Due to their centrality to Song finances, transport bureau (zhuanyun si) and transport commissioner (zhuanyun shi) are sometimes translated as “finance bureau” and “fiscal commissioner.”

18   Shiba, Commerce and Society, 6–14; SHY shihuo 50.2b, 50.3b–4b.

19   For example, in 1082, Li Xian, the eunuch official charged with overseeing the Xihe Logging Bureau, was also in charge of building warships to supply the Xihe garrisons. SHY shihuo 50.4b.

20   SHY shihuo 50.5b–6a. The superior jurisdictions of Hangzhou and Pingjiang were also ordered to stop issuing permission to cut timber unless approved by imperial writ.

21   SHY shihuo 50.6a–b.

22   SHY shihuo 50.6b. As originally ordered, 100 passenger ships at 100-timber size and 1,200 ships at 300-timber size would have used 370,000 timbers. With the reduction of the larger ships to 250 timbers, this would have saved 60,000 timbers.

23   For more on the Song retreat, see Tao, “Move to the South,” 644–53.

24   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 133, 137–38; “Imperial Guard Part 1” [Jinjun shang], Song shi 187.

25   “Imperial Guard Part 1,” Song shi 187. Names are modified from the translation in Lo, China as a Sea Power, 133.

26   At an estimated cost of 240,000 strings of cash. SHY shihuo 50.8a–9a; Lo, China as a Sea Power, 133–34.

27   SHY shihuo 50.11a.

28   Schottenhammer, “China’s Emergence as a Maritime Power,” 467.

29   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 138–43; Tao, “Move to the South,” 653–55; Franke, “Chin Dynasty,” 230–31.

30   SHY shihuo 50.12a.

31   SHY shihuo 50.14a–15a.

32   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 143–45.

33   On the peace of Shaoxing, see Franke, “Chin Dynasty,” 233–35; Tao, “Move to the South,” 677–84.

34   Tao, “Move to the South,” 662–66.

35   Tao, “Move to the South,” 665.

36   SHY shihuo 50.14a–15a. The name “sampan” comes from sanban, or “three boards,” referring to small boats used primarily for fishing.

37   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 147–48; SHY shihuo 50.16a–17b.

38   SHY shihuo 50.17a–b. The figures differ slightly from those cited in Lo, China as a Sea Power, 148.

39   SHY shihuo 50.15a.

40   Franke, “Chin Dynasty,” 539–40.

41   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 154–55; Franke, “Chin Dynasty,” 241.

42   JYFN 96; Hok-Lam Chan, “Organization and Utilization of Labor Service,” 657–58.

43   SHY shihuo 50.18a–b; Lo, China as a Sea Power, 157.

44   SHY shihuo 50.18b–20a.

45   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 159–63.

46   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 163–68; Franke, “Chin Dynasty,” 242–43.

47   Franke, “Chin Dynasty,” 243.

48   SHY shihuo 50.20a–b.

49   According to Ju-pang Lo’s reconstruction, the total naval strength increased to over 30,000 men by 1190. While the figures for the 1130s are not complete, there were probably no more than 5,000 regular sailors and marines. Between the 1130s and the 1170s, individual garrisons at Fuzhou and Chizhou increased from 150 to 5,000 and 1,000, respectively. Conservatively, these figures suggest that the troop strength of the Song navy increased at least five times over this interval, principally in the 1160s and 1170s. Lo, China as a Sea Power, 173–74.

50   My estimates, based on manpower figures from Lo, China as a Sea Power, 173–74.

51   SHY shihuo 50.31b, 33b–34b.

52   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 138.

53   SHY shihuo 50.9b–10b.

54   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 158.

55   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 179–80.

56   Shiba, Commerce and Society, 6–14, 93.

57   Billy K. L. So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, 84–85.

58   Shiba, “Ningbo and Its Hinterland,” 129–35.

59   SHY shihuo 50.10a–b.

60   SHY shihuo 22a–23b.

61   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 213–17; Rossabi, “Reign of Khubilai Khan,” 431–33; Davis, “Reign of Tu-tsung,” 920–23. The exact size of the Yuan navy is not clear, but in late 1272 it was reorganized into four commands, each likely the size of Zhang Xi’s original directorate of the navy (shuijun zongguan), which had four wings of about five hundred ships each. This suggests that the navy may have approached four thousand ships, the bulk of which were small rivercraft.

62   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 218.

63   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 218–20; “Biography of Bo Yan” [Bo Yan (zhuan)], Yuan shi 127.

64   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 221–22; “Biography of Bo Yan,” Yuan shi 127.

65   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 223–25. For a more complete narrative of these events from the perspective of the Song court, see Davis, “Reign of Tu-tsung,” 932–45.

66   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 225–26.

67   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 236–45; Rossabi, “Reign of Khubilai Khan,” 434–35; Davis, “Reign of Tu-tsung,” 946–61.

68   Henthorn, Korea, 154–60, 208.

69   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 248–52.

70   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 253–54; Henthorn, Korea, 208–9.

71   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 253–54; Henthorn, Korea, 208–9; Sasaki, Lost Fleet, 25–26, citing Rossabi, Khubilai Khan; Ōta, Mōko shūrai. Estimates of the number of ships range from 700 (Rossabi) to 900 (Ōta, Lo). Numbers of soldiers range from 23,000 total (Rossabi) to 30,000 total (Lo). Sources are in rough agreement on the number of sailors as 6,700–7,000.

72   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 255–58; Sasaki, Lost Fleet, 26–28; Rossabi, “Reign of Khubilai Khan,” 437–42.

73   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 260–63.

74   Robinson, Empire’s Twilight, 58.

75   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 264. After the 1270s, Koryŏ kings married extensively into the Mongol imperial house and positioned themselves as the khans’ leading vassals. Sixiang Wang, personal communication.

76   Sasaki, Lost Fleet, 32; Lo, China as a Sea Power, 266–67.

77   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 268–73; Sasaki, Lost Fleet, 27–30.

78   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 277–79.

79   “Biography of Liu Xuan” [Liu Xuan (zhuan)], Yuan shi 168, modified from translation in Lo, China as a Sea Power, 281–82.

80   Lo, China as a Sea Power, 279–82.

81   Dreyer, “Military Origins of Ming China,” 59–60, 64; Mote, “Rise of the Ming Dynasty,” 36.

82   Dreyer, “Military Origins of Ming China,” 60–63.

83   Mote, “Rise of the Ming Dynasty.”

84   There are few direct accounts of this buildup, although Edward Dreyer notes that both Zhu and Chen derived much of their initial fleets from the fisherfolk of Lake Chao. Dreyer, “Military Origins of Ming China,” 65–66, 69–70; Dreyer, “Poyang Campaign,” 204–5.

85   Dreyer, “Poyang Campaign,” 217.

86   Dreyer, “Poyang Campaign.”

87   Hok-lam Chan, “Rise of Ming T’ai-tsu,” 701–5.

88   Andrade, Gunpowder Age, 58–64.

89   Mote, “Rise of the Ming Dynasty,” 37.

90   Ouyang Qu, preface to Longjiang chuanchang zhi [Treatise on the Longjiang shipyards].

91   Qie Bao, preface to Chuanzheng xin shu [New treatise on shipyard administration] 2–3; “Ships” [Chuanzhi], Da Ming huidian 200.

92   Ming Taizu shilu 207.5b. Chen Rong, Zhongguo senlin shiliao, 41. Jacques Gernet mistakenly reads this figure as 50 million trees (rather than 500,000), probably based on an error in a different edition of the source text. This larger figure leads Gernet to incorrectly interpret this plantation as anticipating the Zheng He fleets. See Gernet, History of Chinese Civilization, 399.

93   “Ships,” Da Ming huidian 200.

94   Caochuan zhi 1.

95   “Tariff Administration” [Choufen zhi shui ban], Caochuan zhi 4.

96   “Material Quotas” [Liao e], Caochuan zhi 4.

97   Dreyer, Zheng He, 117–18; Ming Taizong shilu 20A.2b, 22.4a–b, 23.6b, 24.6b.

98   Ming Taizong shilu 27.4b–5a.

99   Ming Taizong shilu 43.3b.

100   Dreyer, Zheng He, 117–18.

101   Wilson, “Maritime Transformations of Ming China,” 249–50. This figure may be an exaggeration. Ju-pang Lo points out that many coastal garrisons were not fully staffed. See Lo, China as a Sea Power, 331.

102   Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, 75.

103   “Biography of Zheng He” [Zheng He (zhuan)], Ming shi 304.

104   Dreyer, Zheng He, 102.

105   Delgado, Khubilai Khan’s Lost Fleet, 24–25.

106   Dreyer, Zheng He, 99.

107   Dreyer, Zheng He, 121.

108   First published in Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, 21.

109   Goldstone, “Rise of the West—or Not?,” 177.

110   Church, “Zheng He,” 3–9; Dreyer, Zheng He, 104, 217–22.

111   The Liujiagang and Changle inscriptions of 1431 only mention “over a hundred ships.” These are translated in Dreyer, Zheng He, 191–99, based on earlier translations by J. J. L. Duyvendak; figures are at 192 and 195. See also Church, “Zheng He,” 10–11.

112   The rough consensus seems to be that 440-foot ships were possible but that the treasure ships may not have actually reached this size, topping out at perhaps half the recorded dimensions. See Dreyer, Zheng He, 102–16; Church, “Zheng He”; Church, Gebhardt, and Little, “Naval Architectural Analysis”; Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, 80–82.

113   Dreyer, Zheng He, 121–22.

114   Dreyer, Zheng He, 50; Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, 76.

115   See also Church, “Zheng He,” 32–34.

116   In the late 1420s and early 1430s, the Yangzi River patrol fleet more than doubled in size, and the Longjiang shipyards continued to build large numbers of seagoing grain ships well into the 1450s. Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1, quoting Da Ming huidian and a 1428 edict (Xuande san nian chi).

117   Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1, quoting the [Nanjing Gongbu] zhizhang tiaoli [Regulations of official duties for the Nanjing Board of Works].

118   “Land Taxes” [Di ke], Longjiang chuanchang zhi 5.

119   “Material Quotas,” Caochuan zhi 4.

120   Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1, quoting Da Ming huidian.

121   On the drawdown in fleet size, see Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, 174–75.

122   Kwan-wai So, Japanese Piracy in Ming China, 52, 55, 61.

123   “Jiujiang Customs Station” [Jiujiang guan], Guangxu Jiangxi tongzhi 87.

124   “Material Quotas,” Caochuan zhi 4.

125   “Material Quotas,” Caochuan zhi 4. The date of this last request is not provided in the source, but is most likely shortly prior to 1501, the date of the first edition of the text.

126   Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1, quoting Da Ming huidian.

127   Chuanzheng 67.

128   Chuanzheng 11–15.

129   Calculated from the figures given in Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1 and Chuanzheng 67.

130   “Material Quotas,” Caochuan zhi 4. The earliest preface to the text is dated 1501.

131   Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1, quoting Da Ming huidian.

132   Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1, quoting Da Ming huidian.

133   Caochuan zhi 1.

134   “Tariffs for Personnel Transports” [Choufen zuochuan], Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1.

135   “Established Regulations” [Cheng gui], Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1.

136   “Established Regulations,” Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1.

137   Chuanzheng 66.

138   “Established Regulations,” Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1; “Planks” [Danban], Longjiang chuanchang zhi 5.

139   Chuanzheng 67. The word for monopolize (longduan) literally means to “block a section” and probably derives from the practice of blocking a road or water route to control the price of a good.

140   “Established Regulations,” Longjiang chuanchang zhi 1; Chuanzheng 68.

141   Chuanzheng 68–69.

142   “Timber Prices” [Mu jia], Longjiang chuanchang zhi 5.

143   Chuanzheng 70–73.

144   Chuanzheng xin shu 168–71.

1   Chinese buildings are made up of a series of bays (jian), each consisting of four vertical pillars (zhu) and four beams connecting them (liangfang; technically the front and back beams are called fang and the side beams are called liang). The size of the bays, in turn, determines the overall dimensions of the building. Liang Sicheng, Zhongguo jianzhu shi, 12–14.

2   Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 47.

3   There are no precise counts of how many timbers were cut during the Yongle logging between 1406 and 1420. We do know that a reported 380,000 timbers cut in the Yongle era remained unused in 1441 (Ming Yingzong shilu 65). If we assume this represented one-third of the original total, over a million timbers would have been shipped to Beijing. A contemporary poem notes that a force of eight hundred workers logged four hundred trees (Cao and Li, Yunnan linye wenhua beike, 20–21). If this logger-to-log ratio persisted, the labor force supplying Beijing construction would have numbered in the millions.

4   Jiajing Jianping xianzhi 2.118; Jiajing Ningbo fuzhi 18.1830.

5   Anderson and Whitmore, “Introduction: ‘The Fiery Frontier,’ ” 22–30; Herman, “Cant of Conquest.”

6   Lan, “Ming Qing shiqi de huangmu caiban,” 93.

7   Campbell, What the Emperor Built; Aurelia Campbell, personal communication.

8   “Shu Commandery” [Shu jun], Han shu bu zhu 28a.

9   “Chengdu Prefecture, Shu Commandery” [Chengdu fu Shu jun], Xin Tang shu 42.

10   SHY xingfa 2.124, 2.149.

11   Exchanges of timber for gifts to Dong tribes in Shaozhou in 1085 and in Chengzhou in 1086: CB 356.33, 377.50.

12   Gu Yewang, “Geographic Treatise” [Yudi zhi], quoted in Taiping yulan, dibu 13. See also Deng Deming, “Timber Visitors” [Muke], Nankang ji, quoted in Taiping yulan, shengui bu 4.

13   SHY xingfa 2.127.

14   “Timber Administration” [Muzheng zhi], Jiaqing Zhili Xuyong tingzhi 29.

15   Cao and Li, Yunnan linye wenhua beike, 18. Thanks to Aurelia Campbell for sharing this source with me.

16   “Construction 1” [Yingzao yi], Da Ming huidian 181.

17   Cao and Li, Yunnan linye wenhua beike, 18–19; Deng Pei, “Lun Ming-Qing shiqi zai Jinshajiang xiayou diqu jinxing de ‘muzheng’ huodong,” 89. See also Campbell, What the Emperor Built.

18   Ming Taizu shilu 127.1b.

19   “Biography of [Zhu] Chun, Prince Xian of Shu” [Shu Xian wang Chun], Ming shi 117.

20   “Construction 1,” Da Ming huidian 181.

21   “Sichuan Native Offices 1” [Sichuan tusi yi], Ming shi 311.

22   “Timber Administration,” Jiaqing Zhili Xuyong tingzhi 29.

23   For general histories of these events, see Farmer, Early Ming Government; Dreyer, Early Ming China.

24   Farmer, Early Ming Government, 128; Dreyer, Early Ming China, 186; Naquin, Peking, 109–10.

25   “Food and Commodities 6” [Shihuo zhi liu], Ming shi 82.

26   “Timber Administration,” Wanli Sichuan zongzhi 20; “Timber Administration,” Daoguang Zunyi fuzhi 18; Ming shi 82; Ming Taizong shilu 65.1b.

27   “Timber Administration,” Yongzheng Sichuan tongzhi 16.

28   Cao and Li, Yunnan linye wenhua beike, 20.

29   Cao and Li, Yunnan linye wenhua beike, 21.

30   Lan, “Ming Qing shiqi de huangmu caiban,” 87.

31   Jiajing Jianping xianzhi 2.118; Jiajing Ningbo fuzhi 18.1830. Note that all of these references are retrospectives from the 1560s or later, by which time the corvée had been commuted to a silver payment.

32   Ming shi 81; “Tariffs” [Choufen], Da Ming huidian 207; “Materials” [Wuliao], Da Ming huidian 190.

33   Ming Taizong shilu 139.1b.

34   Ming Taizong shilu 146.2a.

35   Ming Taizong shilu 152.3a–b.

36   Ming Taizong shilu 172.2a.

37   Ming Renzong shilu 9a. It is unclear if this halted lumbering in the mountains as well, but the coincidence of this order with the end of Xie An’s tenure in Sichuan suggests that it was in fact the end of these projects.

38   In 1425, the Hongxi emperor issued the edict that “wherever the government had placed restrictions [jin] on mountain workshops, gardens, forests, lakes, wetlands, kilns and foundries, fruit trees and beehives, all [was] to be returned to the common people.” This was followed by further similar edicts under the Xuande emperor. Elvin, “Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth,” 27. See also Da Ming huidian 191; and chapter 3.

39   “Food and Commodities 6,” Ming shi 82; Ming Xuanzong shilu 79. Until 1441, the court moved back and forth between Beijing and Nanjing. See Farmer, Early Ming Government, chap. 5.

40   “Construction 1,” Da Ming huidian 181.

41   Lan, “Ming Qing shiqi de huangmu caiban,” 93; Ming Yingzong shilu 65.

42   “Food and Commodities 6,” Ming shi 82.

43   “Construction 1,” Da Ming huidian 190.

44   “Sichuan Native Offices 2” [Sichuan tusi er], Ming shi 312.

45   “Sichuan Native Offices 2,” Ming shi 312.

46   “Native Offices” [Tusi], Ming shi 310.

47   “Food and Commodities 6,” Ming shi 82; Campbell, What the Emperor Built.

48   “Construction 1,” Da Ming huidian 181; Campbell, What the Emperor Built.

49   Campbell, What the Emperor Built.

50   “Food and Commodities 6,” Ming shi 82.

51   “Timber Administration,” Yongzheng Sichuan tongzhi 16; Daoguang Zunyi fuzhi 18. The ad hoc nature of the timber supervisors was a function of both the irregular nature of requisitions and the general lack of mid-level regional administrators in the Ming hierarchy. See Hucker, Censorial System of Ming China.

52   Gui Youguang, “Obituary of Grand Master for Transmitting Proposals, Censorate Vice Censor-in-Chief of the Left Li [Xianqing]” [Tongyi dafu duchayuan zuo fu duyushi Li gong xingzhuang], Zhenchuan xiansheng ji 25. Thanks to Aurelia Campbell for sharing this source with me.

53   “Construction 1,” Da Ming huidian 190.

54   “Construction 1,” Da Ming huidian 190.

55   “Long Memorial on Large Timber” [Damu shu], Wanli Guizhou tongzhi 19.

56   “Food and Commodities 6,” Ming shi 82.

57   “Food and Commodities 6,” Ming shi 82.

58   “Long Memorial on Large Timber,” Wanli Guizhou tongzhi 19.

59   “Food and Commodities 6,” Ming shi 82.

60   Gui Youguang, “Obituary of Li Xianqing,” Zhenchuan xiansheng ji 25.

61   “Timber Administration,” Yongzheng Sichuan tongzhi 16; “Timber Administration,” Kangxi Junlian xianzhi 3; “Timber Administration,” Kangxi Xuzhou fu Qingfu xian zhi 2.

62   Gong Hui, Xi cha huicao [Essays on timber rafting in the western regions] 1.2a–3b. Thanks to Devin Fitzgerald for informing me about this source. See also “Timber Administration,” Yongzheng Sichuan tongzhi 16.

63   Xi cha huicao 1.2a–3b.

64   Xi cha huicao 1.2a.

65   “Logging Administration,” Daoguang Zunyi fuzhi 18.

66   Gui Youguang, “Obituary of Li Xianqing,” Zhenchuan xiansheng ji 25.

67   “Native Offices,” Ming shi 310.

68   “Sichuan Native Offices 2,” Ming shi 312. Ming shi 316 gives the earlier date and Ming shi 312 the later.

69   “Guizhou Native Offices” [Guizhou tusi], Ming shi 316.

70   “Sichuan Native Offices 2,” Ming shi 312.

71   “Sichuan Native Offices 2,” Ming shi 312. The same record also appears as the “Biographies of the Bozhou Yang House” [Bozhou Yang shi], Zuiwei lu 34.33a.

72   Swope, “To Catch a Tiger.”

73   “Obituary of Li Xianqing.” It is not clear from this text whether Guizhou timber was purchased from merchants or cut by state labor teams, although the long memorial cited below suggests that in the 1540s it was still the latter.

74   On standards for timber sizing and pricing in the shipyards, see chapter 6.

75   “Long Memorial on Large Timber,” Wanli Guizhou tongzhi 19.

76   Meng Zhang, Sustaining the Market, chap. 1.

77   “Timber Administration,” Yongzheng Sichuan tongzhi 16; “Timber Administration,” Daoguang Zunyi fuzhi 18.

78   Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any extant examples of these logging registers. Presumably, they shared features with both the cadastres detailed in chapter 2 and the lumber purchase forms discussed in chapter 6.

79   Menzies, Forestry and Land Management, chap. 8.

80   These figures are somewhat difficult to compare. The 1441 figures are for logs left over in storage, which may have come from any region and do not give an exact figure for total yields. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reports give figures for logs cut in the Sichuan-Guizhou region, with only the figure for 1685 reporting the number reaching the capital. The eighteenth-century figures give only the number reaching the capital, without reporting the number cut.

81   Meng Zhang, Sustaining the Market, chaps. 1 and 3. See also Zhang Yingqiang, Mucai zhi liudong.

1   Woodside, Lost Modernities.

2   The seminal work on this transition in early northeastern America is Cronon, Changes in the Land. There is a particularly extensive literature on wood rights in modern South and Southeast Asia. See, e.g., McElwee, Forests Are Gold; Peluso, Rich Forests, Poor People; Guha, Unquiet Woods.

3   Radkau, Nature and Power, 212–21.

4   See, e.g., Grove, Green Imperialism; Lowood, “Calculating Forester”; Warde, Invention of Sustainability.

5   For example, the distinction between white fir (baishan) and red fir (chishan) appears to map onto modern taxonomies separating Cunninghamia and Cryptomeria. See, e.g., “Products” [Wuchan], Qianlong Ruijin xianzhi 2. For officials promoting “best practices,” see, e.g., “Encouraging the People to Plant Miscellaneous Grains on Empty Mountain Land in This County” [Xian you yushantu quan min zaizong zaliang], Hunan shengli cheng’an 7.5a–21b. On the recognition of erosion, see Osborne, “Local Politics of Land Reclamation.”

6   Historians of China have begun to question this narrative of decline. See, e.g., Wensheng Wang, White Lotus Rebels. Nonetheless, there was a clear change in the tenor of statecraft in the nineteenth century, even before the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion.

7   E.g., Chao, Man and Land in Chinese History; Philip C. C. Huang, Peasant Family and Rural Development.

8   Key works include Perdue, Exhausting the Earth; Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt; Vermeer, “Mountain Frontier” and “Population and Ecology”; Kuo-tung Ch’en, “Nonreclamation Deforestation.” A useful summary of this scholarship is provided in Marks, China, chap. 5.

9   Averill, “Shed People”; Osborne, “Local Politics of Land Reclamation;” Osborne, “Highlands and Lowlands”; Benedict, Golden-Silk Smoke; Gardella, Harvesting Mountains; Leong, Migration and Ethnicity.

10   Ownby, Brotherhoods and Secret Societies.

11   Averill, Revolution in the Highlands.

12   Erbaugh, “Secret History of the Hakkas”; Leong, Migration and Ethnicity.

13   Averill, Revolution in the Highlands.

14   Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, chap. 12; Lee, “Forests and the State”; Matteson, Forests in Revolutionary France; Sahlins, Forest Rites.

15   See Miller, “Roots and Branches,” chap. 6.