| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S NOTE

ISSUE BY ISSUE, the book reviews in this journal provide an overview of the progress of scholarship in environmental history. These reviews point to the increasing diversity and richness of the field. The literature reviewed spans the globe—including parts of all continents (except Antarctica) and one ocean (the Pacific), and cover a wide variety of topics—from public policy (the EPA, nuclear earthmoving, wolves, healthy forests) to corporate policy to gender. Notably, two prize-winning studies are reviewed: James McCann's Maize and Grace, which won this year's ASEH George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History and John Soluri's Banana Cultures, which stems from an article that won the ASEH Leopold-Hidy Prize for Best Article in Environmental History in 2003.

MELISSA WIEDENFELD

The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. By Mark Elvin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. xxviii + 564 pp. Bibliographical references, index, maps, and illustrations. Cloth $39.95, paper $22.00.
Mark Elvin's book wears a marvelous title. Although the fate of China's elephants is only one among many narratives of nature and culture elucidated by this reliable environmental history of China, it is an engaging one. Found today in dwindling numbers in a corner of Yunnan Province, elephants ranged across China as far north as the future site of Beijing four thousand years ago, Elvin says, were used in warfare seven hundred years ago, and for transport as late as 1662 CE. Their recessional is emblematic of the diminution of many species of megafauna such as the rhinoceros, tiger, and panda. The reasons behind this and other environmental narratives are the subject of more than mere speculation. Elvin shows us that China's historical record is unusually long and comprehensive, and gives evidence for comparisons with other regions such as Europe.	1
Although the organization is not chronological, the sweep of the book extends through the period from the time of the earliest records to the end of the Chinese Empire in 1912. Elvin readily admits that one of the most important uses of his study will be to provide background for understanding the turbulent and often destructive history of the last hundred years, and he gives a number of stimulating hints in this regard, but makes no sustained exposition. One hopes for a second volume that may do this.	2
The present volume consists of three sections, "Patterns," "Particularities," and "Perceptions." "Patterns" looks at the major interactions of human culture with the natural environment, including a general consideration of the comprehensiveness of environmental exploitation in Chinese history, which reached its apogee in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; an overview of the process of near extinction of the elephant; the long story of the "great deforestation" (which deservedly occupies two of the six chapters in this section); the environmental impacts of warfare and military organization; and the control of water distribution, irrigation, and flood control. "Particularities" contains three case studies, each of a province or region in contrasting parts of China: Jiaxing on the eastern coast south of the lower Yangzi delta; Guizhou, a colonial frontier area in the southwestern interior; and the relatively undeveloped Zunhua on the old northeastern border near the Great Wall. These examples are well chosen to suggest the variety of environmental experience in the huge and diverse realm of China. "Perceptions" uses writings from various periods to investigate the possibility of identifying Chinese attitudes to nature. Early views relating natural and supernatural; scholars who, however tentatively, exhibited the beginnings of a scientific approach; and the interplay between official imperial doctrine and the reflections of learned individuals are typified and compared.	. . .

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