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(Ann)
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expanded arablization of southern Manchuria concurrent with the fur-
ther development of imperial foraging throughout. However, nineteenth-
century officials such as Nayančeng were realizing the adverse conse-
quences of this success for the basis of imperial security, Manchu venery.
This was certainly an“environmental crisis”for the empire’s non-Han
elite as well as for many indigenous peoples in the region. It was simul-
taneously, however, indicative of an environmental development toward
“maximal arablization”for the Han masses, as well as for their requisite
domesticatedflora and fauna. Such paradoxes go unacknowledged by
work that praises dynastic“resource protection”policy for conversion of
“wilderness”to farmland as well as its, hardly comparable, commitment
to forest protection.^33
virtue under pressure at the peripheries:
south-central inner mongolia
Imperial pastoralism in south-central Inner Mongolian was undergoing
similar crisis and development in the nineteenth century as Russian incur-
sion reemerged and multiple environmental disasters mounted in north-
ern China. Writing in 1879 – 80 , the famous scholar official Zhang
Zhidong’s solution to both problems was the enhanced arablization of
Mongols and grasslands. His views reflected wider contemporary trends
throughout the empire’s northern borderlands. In contrast to its past
practices of attempting to balance the needs of both farmers and herders,
the state would shift to full support for cultivation for primarily strategic
reasons. In this way, the Qing state and its burgeoning Han population
became mutually enhancing causes of regional environmental change
during this period. The scale of these synergistic relations, however, was
made possible only by the Inner Mongolian ecotone’s hospitality to
arablism.
Zhang memorialized in 1879 that drought was a major problem in
Zhili. The province by that time had been stricken for several years, but
deliberations for large-scale water control projects,“which should have
been initiated in the north,”had been going on intermittently since the
Yuan dynasty. Zhang said implementation had been obstructed because
“the terrain, water quality, soil content and custom are not at all suitable
for wet rice cultivation.”Furthermore, the requisite major undertakings
such as dredging were“difficult to begin and easy to abandon”as had
already happened in the Yongzheng reign. Although he suggested some
forms of immediate relief, such as well-digging, Zhang, nevertheless, felt
234 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
