Brian Lander defines his project as “the first English-language monograph on the environmental history of early China” (11). Lander tells the story of people in early China transforming the environment through the combination of technology and social organization, culminating in a centralized bureaucratic empire. Natural ecosystems were replaced with artificial ones, which were amenable to the extraction of energy by humans in general and state rulers in particular.
The book's dual focus is on agriculture and the state. The opening chapter provides a theoretical introduction to the nature of political power. According to Lander, it is embedded in the production and extraction of surplus, intensified through violent competition among the states. The rest of the book traces the interplay between agricultural expansion and political power from the origins of agricultural food production in China circa 6000 BCE to the foundation of the empire in 221 BCE. Lander shows how domestication...
