| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Randall A. Dodgen. Controlling the Dragon: Confucian Engineers and the Yellow River in Late Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2001. Pp. ix, 243. $29.95.

Randall A. Dodgen's book explores the relationships among nature, technology, and political culture in late imperial China. Well researched and filled with judicious analysis, this environmental history examines the ways imperial policy, bureaucratic management, and fiscal realities both altered and were altered by the flood-prone, silt-laden Yellow River of north China. Providing insight into the bureaucratic and geological problems of river conservancy in imperial China, this study argues that, far from discouraging technological innovation and independent thought, Qing rulers welcomed new ideas that were practical and compatible with political realities. Ultimately, imperial management projects failed because the river itself had been altered by successful previous policies into a condition of increased sedimentation and meander activity that could no longer be controlled by the standard bureaucratic solutions of more extensive dikes, locks, spillways, and drainage canals. . . .

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