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Woodlands, Warlords, and Wasteful Nations: Transnational Networks and Conservation Science in 1920s China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2019

Micah S. Muscolino
Micah S. Muscolino*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article investigates the production of conservation science at nodes of transnational networks of encounter through an examination of field studies conducted during the mid-1920s in North China's Shanxi province by the American forester and soil conservation expert Walter C. Lowdermilk with his student, colleague, and collaborator Ren Chengtong. Even in the politically fragmented China of the 1920s, their research on deforestation, streamflow, and erosion benefited from alliances with Shanxi's regional powerholder, Yan Xishan, and produced environmental knowledge that furthered the agenda of harnessing natural resources to strengthen the state. By paying attention to two-way interactions between Chinese and foreign actors in the construction and transmission of knowledge about nature, the article speaks to the global context of the early twentieth-century conservation movement and adds to recent scholarship that recasts China's encounter with modern science as one of active appropriation, translation, and innovation rather than passive reception.

Keywords

watersoilconservationenvironmentChinaShanxisciencedeforestationerosionfloods
Type
Dirt
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 712 - 738
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2019 

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References

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22 Vetter, “Introduction,” 2.

23 Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2125–27. See also Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 85. F. L. Duley and M. F. Miller of the University of Missouri made the first effort to quantify soil loss using sample plots in 1914; see Showers, “Soil Erosion,” 385.

24 Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2126–27.

25 Vetter, “Introduction,” 2.

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27 Ibid., 2145–46.

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31 Ibid., 2146.

32 Ibid., 2147. In making this claim, Lowdermilk rejected the theory expounded by American geographer Ellsworth Huntington and German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen that the “decline and semi-depopulation of northwest China” was due to adverse climatic fluctuations. Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 63–64; “Helms, “Walter Lowdermilk's Journey.”

33 On historical changes in forests in the middle reaches of North China's Yellow River watershed, see Nianhai, Shi, Huanghe liuyu zhu heliu de yanbian he zhili (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1999), 179–262Google Scholar.

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37 Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2127.

38 Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu zaofu renlei—Ji shuitu baochi zhuanjia Ren Chengtong,” in Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Shaanxi sheng Xianyang shi weiyuanhui and Yangling qu weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui, eds., Hou Ji chuanren: di yi ji (Xi'an: Sanqin chubanshe, 1996), 237–39; Zhongguo kexue jishu xiehui, ed., Zhongguo kexue jishu zhuanjia zhuanlue: Nongye bian: Linye juan (yi) (Beijing: Zhongguo kexue jishu chubanshe, 1991), 156–67Google Scholar.

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41 Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 237–39; Zhongguo kexue jishu xiehui, ed., Zhongguo kexue jishu zhuanjia zhuanlue, 156–67. C. T. Ren also wrote his master's thesis at the University of Nanking: “Forest Survey of Hsu Tai Tao, Northern Jiangsu” (1926), Walter C. Lowdermilk Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box 3.

42 Zhongguo kexue jishu xiehui, Zhongguo kexue jishu zhuanjia zhuanlue, 157.

43 Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 86–87.

44 Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 239.

45 Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 99. Shanxi shuitu baochi zhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Shanxi shuitu baochi zhi (Zhengzhou: Huanghe shuili chubanshe, 1998), 374–75.

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52 Harrison, Henrietta, “Village Identity in Rural North China: A Sense of Place in the Diary of Liu Dapeng,” in Faure, David and Liu, Tao Tao, eds., Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 94–101Google Scholar.

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57 Ren, “Jingying cun you lin,” 9.

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59 Qinyuan xianzhi (1933) colophon 2, 23b.

60 Ren, “Jingying cunyou lin,” 7–8.

61 Ibid., 6–7.

62 Ibid., 7.

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66 Ibid.; Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2133.

67 Vetter, “Introduction,” 6; Kuklick and Kohler, “Introduction,” 2.

68 W. C. Lowdermilk, “The Problem of Forest Conservation in Shansi,” typescript (Nov. 1924), 1–2, Walter C. Lowdermilk Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, box 9; W. C. Lowdermilk, “Forest Destruction and Slope Denudation in the Province of Shansi,” Publications of the University of Nanking College of Agriculture and Forestry, Bulletin 11 [repr. from China Journal of Science and Arts 4, 3 (Mar. 1926): 127–35], 1–9, 2. Ren Chengtong translated this essay into Chinese; see Demin, Luo and Chengtong, Ren, “Shanxi senlin zhi lanfa yu shanpo tuceng zhi boxue,” Jinling daxue nonglinke nonglin congkan 35 (1927): 1–11Google Scholar.

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70 Ibid., 15 July 1924, 27.

71 Ibid., 17 July 1924, 28.

72 Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 2.

73 Ibid., 4–5. See also Lowdermilk, W. C., “Some Practical Possibilities for Forestry in China,” Journal of the Association of Chinese & American Engineers 6, 4 (1925): 1–6Google Scholar.

74 Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 6.

75 Lowdermilk, “Some Practical Possibilities,” 4.

76 Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 6. See also Lowdermilk, “Some Practical Possibilities,” 4.

77 Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2125–26. See also Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 64.

78 Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 239.

79 Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2123, 2126–27; Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 64.

80 Lowdermilk and Chall, Soil, Forest, and Water, 66.

81 Ibid.; Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2133.

82 Lowdermilk, “Factors,” 2133.

83 Lowdermilk, “Field Trips,” 13 July 1924, 22b.

84 Ibid., 23a.

85 Chengtong, Ren, “Shanxi Ningwu xian senlin jingji tan,” Zhonghua nongxuehui congkan 62 (1928): 43–50Google Scholar, 43–44, 49.

86 Ibid., 44–45.

87 Ibid., 47–48.

88 Ibid., 49–50.

89 Lowdermilk, “Field Trips,” 30 July 1924, 64a.

90 Ibid., 64b.

91 Lowdermilk, “Some Practical Possibilities,” 4. See also his, “Forest Destruction,” 12; and “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 3.

92 Lowdermilk, “Forest Destruction,” 12.

93 Lowdermilk, “Field Trips,” 29 July 1924, 61a.

94 Ibid., 8 Aug. 1924, n.p.

95 “Shanxi sheng qudi baomai senlin ji lanfa xiaoshu buchong tiaoli” (1924), in Wen Guichang, ed., Shanxi linye shilao (Beijing: Zhongguo linye chubanshe, 1988), 197–98.

96 Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 10; see also “Some Practical Possibilities,” 6.

97 Lowdermilk, “Problem of Forest Conservation,” 11.

98 Ibid., 1.

99 Ren Chengtong, Shanxi linye huiyi (Nanjing: Shanxi lü Jing xueyouhui, 1929), 4.

100 Ibid.,16–17.

101 Ibid., 19–20.

102 Ibid., 21–24.

103 Wang, Zhai and Wenjing, Mi, Shanxi senlin yu shengtai shi (Beijing: Zhongguo linye chubanshe, 2009), 270–71Google Scholar. On the railway, see Gillin, Warlord, 181–85.

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105 Lowdermilk, Conquest of the Land, 17.

106 See, for example, Person, H. S., Little Waters: A Study of Headwater Streams and other Little Waters, Their Use and Relations to the Land (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936)Google Scholar; C. R. Enlow and G. W. Musgrove, “Grass and other Thick-Growing Vegetation in Erosion Control,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men: Yearbook of Agriculture 1938 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office), 621. Both refer to Lowdermilk, W. C., “The Role of Vegetation in Erosion Control and Water Conservation,” Journal of Forestry 32, 5 (1934): 529–36Google Scholar. There, Lowdermilk cites his studies in China as evidence for the influence of vegetation on runoff and erosion. See ibid., 530.

107 A visit to Palestine during this trip won Lowdermilk over as a supporter of Jewish settlement. After retiring from the Soil Conservation Service, he worked closely with the newly founded state of Israel to implement soil conservation and irrigation programs. See Helms, “Walter Lowdermilk's Journey”; Radkau, Joachim, The Age of Ecology (Malden: Polity Press, 2014), 54–55Google Scholar.

108 Agricultural experiments in Suiyuan are discussed in Merkel-Hess, Kate, The Rural Modern: Reconstructing the Self and State in Republican China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 103–8Google Scholar.

109 Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 249–55.

110 Before Lowdermilk arrived in 1942, Ren resigned from his post in the Yellow River Commission because of antagonism that built up against him among political leaders in northwest China, so he could not join the expedition. Letters dated 25 Dec. 1942 and 11 Apr. 1943, in “Typed Transcripts of Handwritten Letters from Walter C. Lowdermilk, Agricultural Adviser to the Chinese Government, to his Wife and Family October 1942–November 1943,” W. C. Lowdermilk Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. BANC MSS 72/206, carton 8; Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu,” 248.

111 Ren Chunguang, “Pingzhi shuitu.” For Ren's report on his visit to the United States, see “Nonglinbu fu Mei shixi renyuan Ren Chengtong shixi shuitu baochi baogao” (1947), Institute of Modern History Archives, Academia Sinicia, Taiwan: 20-21-034-03.