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
6 - “It Never Used to Snow”: Climatic Change and Agricultural Productivity
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
“The climate has changed,” China's Kangxi emperor declared near the end of his 61-year reign in 1717:
I remember that before 1671, there was already new wheat [from the winter wheat crop] by the 8th day of the fourth month. When I was touring in Jiangnan, by the 18th day of the third month new wheat was available to eat. Now, even by the middle of the fourth month, wheat has not been harvested … I have also heard that in Fujian, where it never used to snow, since the beginning of our dynasty, it has.
To the Kangxi emperor, the climate not only seemed to have turned colder during his lifetime, but the cooler climate had noticeably delayed the wheat harvest. Indeed, the colder regime had begun much earlier, as we saw in Chapter 4, with the cold snaps in the early 1610s. Moreover, about the time that the Kangxi emperor commented upon the colder temperatures, the climate was about to change again, this time toward a warmer, wetter regime.
In this chapter I explore the relationship between climatic fluctuation and harvest yields that the Kangxi emperor observed, focusing mostly on the eighteenth century because of the availability of data and sources. In the first part of the chapter, I reconstruct the climate history of Lingnan from 1650 to 1850, examine in a general way the mechanisms by which climatic factors affected agriculture, and chart, using reports from Qing officials, annual fluctuations in harvest yields.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tigers, Rice, Silk, and SiltEnvironment and Economy in Late Imperial South China, pp. 195 - 225Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998