Across forest, steppe, and mountain : environment, identity, and empire in Qing China's borderlands / David A. Bello.

New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

©2016

xviii, 336 pages ; 24 cm.

The multicultural Qing is reconsidered in "multi-ecological" terms of three borderland case studies from northeastern Manchuria, south-central Inner Mongolia, and southwestern Yunnan. Human pursuit of game, tending of livestock, and susceptibility to disease vectors required imperial adaptation beyond the cultural constructs of banners or chieftainships in order to maintain a "sustainable Qing periphery" based on these environmental relations between people and animals. The resulting borderland spaces are, therefore, not simply contrivances of more anthropocentric administrative fiat, but environmental interdependencies constructed through more "organic" and conditional relations of imperial foraging, imperial pastoralism, and imperial indigenism.

English

April 21, 2016

Includes bibliographical references and index.