Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- Dynasties, Qing Dynasty Emperors' Reign Dates, and Weights and Measures
- Acknowledgments
- Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt
- Introduction
- 1 “Firs and Pines a Hundred Spans Round”: The Natural Environment of Lingnan
- 2 “All Deeply Forested and Wild Places Are Not Malarious”: Human Settlement and Ecological Change in Lingnan, 2–1400 CE
- 3 “Agiriculture Is the Foundation”: Economic Recovery and Development of Lingnan During the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644
- 4 “All the People Have Fled”: War and the Enviroment in the Mid-Seventeenth Century Crisis, 1644–83
- 5 “Rich Households Compete to Build Ships”: Overseas Trade and Economic Recovery
- 6 “It Never Used to Snow”: Climatic Change and Agricultural Productivity
- 7 “There Is Only a Certain Amount of Grain Produced”: Granaries and the Role of the State in the Food Supply System
- 8 “Trade in Rice Is Brisk”: Market Integration and the Environment
- 9 “Population Increases Daily but the Land Does Not”: Land Clearance in the Eighteenth Century
- 10 “People Said that Extinction Was Not Possible”: The Ecological Consequences of Land Clearance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - “All the People Have Fled”: War and the Enviroment in the Mid-Seventeenth Century Crisis, 1644–83
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- Dynasties, Qing Dynasty Emperors' Reign Dates, and Weights and Measures
- Acknowledgments
- Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt
- Introduction
- 1 “Firs and Pines a Hundred Spans Round”: The Natural Environment of Lingnan
- 2 “All Deeply Forested and Wild Places Are Not Malarious”: Human Settlement and Ecological Change in Lingnan, 2–1400 CE
- 3 “Agiriculture Is the Foundation”: Economic Recovery and Development of Lingnan During the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644
- 4 “All the People Have Fled”: War and the Enviroment in the Mid-Seventeenth Century Crisis, 1644–83
- 5 “Rich Households Compete to Build Ships”: Overseas Trade and Economic Recovery
- 6 “It Never Used to Snow”: Climatic Change and Agricultural Productivity
- 7 “There Is Only a Certain Amount of Grain Produced”: Granaries and the Role of the State in the Food Supply System
- 8 “Trade in Rice Is Brisk”: Market Integration and the Environment
- 9 “Population Increases Daily but the Land Does Not”: Land Clearance in the Eighteenth Century
- 10 “People Said that Extinction Was Not Possible”: The Ecological Consequences of Land Clearance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the eighth month of 1642, residents in a northern ward of the city of Guangzhou were startled by the appearance of a tiger just outside the city wall. Residents of the northern suburbs had not seen a tiger there in decades — maybe a century. Villagers in neighboring Shunde county had reported a tiger attack in 1627, but for the city of Guangzhou itself the last reported tiger attack had been in 1471.
The appearance of this tiger so near the great metropolis thus was unusual. But so too was the way in which the residents handled this unusual tiger. In all of the other recorded incidents of tigers approaching towns or villages in Lingnan, the villagers had the same reaction: to kill the tiger. Now, killing a tiger is no small matter. Certainly, a marksman with a rifle could do it, but seventeenth-century guns weren't called “fowling” pieces or “blunderbusses” for nothing. So too could an archer with poison arrows kill a tiger, but men with that kind of skill and weapons usually were in the army, not at home tilling the vegetable patch. No, the way unarmed villagers approached a tiger was en masse, advancing on the animal behind a thicket of spears and lances until the tiger was cornered and netted. The tiger was then killed, dismembered, and its various body parts sold.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tigers, Rice, Silk, and SiltEnvironment and Economy in Late Imperial South China, pp. 134 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998