In a transformative age that scholars regard as the dawn of modern China, Kaifeng, capital of the Song dynasty (960-1127), witnessed significant growth in population, consumption, and technological breakthroughs. Relying on China’s expansive transportation network, this million-population metropolis massively sourced foodstuffs, lumber, coal, and many other natural resources from distant hinterlands in China and beyond. Kaifeng’s tremendous material demands profoundly deepened its ecological connections with its many supplying hinterlands –– paddy fields in Jiangnan, rivers, lakes, and seas in South China that yielded aquatic species for food, mountain forests in South and Northwest China that provided construction timber, and oases and grasslands in Inner Asia where sheep, goats, and cattle grazed. Mapping the expansive geography with which Kaifeng developed deep ecological teleconnections, this project demonstrates that the Song period marked China’s aggressive ecological expansion into the world and the onset of China’s environmental modernity. As they traveled across the empire, Song-dynasty scholars noticed changes of landscapes in the empire’s hinterlands and made connections between these changes and the insatiable consumption of natural resources by humans living far away in Kaifeng. Witnessing the dwindling of some of the most heavily exploited natural resources, these scholars saw the unsustainable future behind the empire’s rising economy and industry. They, therefore, actively looked for solutions, such as reducing consumption and using alternative energy, that could continue fueling the empire’s growth while mitigating the human impact on the natural world. Writing the rise and fall of Kaifeng from the perspectives of non-human agents, this project sheds light on the crucial roles of environment and human-nature interaction in narrating and shaping the history of medieval China.
Speaker: Dr. Yuan Chen, Postdoctoral Associate, Franklin Humanities Institute & Global Asia Initiative
Yuan Julian Chen received her PhD from the Department of History at Yale University. Before joining Duke, she was a Visiting Professor at Boston College teaching classes on early China and food history. Her current research focuses on the history of environment in premodern and early modern East Asia. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled "Kaifeng: What it Took to Feed, Furnish, and Fortify the World's Largest City, 900-1200." It explores the environmental changes of Middle Period of China from the view of Kaifeng, China's imperial capital, and its ecological and economical connections with its diverse supplying regions in China and beyond. Her work has been published in the Journal of Early Modern History, the Journal of Chinese History,the Journal of Song-YuanStudies, and Chinese Culture. Her research has been supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. She speaks Chinese and Japanese and reads Classical Chinese and Tangut. Her teaching interests include Chinese history, Tokugawa Japan, early modern global history, environmental history, and the Silk Road.
Co-sponsors: Global Asia Initiative (GAI), Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI) and Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI)
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