The middle of the nineteenth century has long been seen as a turning point in Chinese history. The Opium War (1839–42) and the Taiping Rebellion (1850–65) are commonly taken to mark the beginning of China's modern history, a history in which the themes of economic development, state formation, and revolution (among others) in the context of a European-dominated capitalist world take center stage in the problematic through which historians interpret Chinese history. But 1850 (or thereabouts) also marks a significant change in terms of the story about Lingnan's environment and economy that I have told here.

By 1850, Lingnan had passed an important divide. As we saw in Chapter 9, the limits of cultivable land were reached by then, and yet the population continued to increase. A colder climate in the first half of the nineteenth century had decreased the already stretched food supplies of the region, and the pressure of people on the land had led to deforestation, the destruction of habitat and ecosystems, and the extinction of an unknown number of species. To be sure, some officials may have become aware of the fate of the wildlife of Lingnan, perhaps presaging an attempt by the state to take corrective action.