ann
(Ann)
#1
their identity was empirically and historically rooted in the very ground
upon which they stood. Hanspace embodied the natural law of Han
nature physically realized primarily by agriculture of a very distinctive
type by a very specific sort of person. As the material basis for the
construction and maintenance of Hanspace, agriculture was almost a
type of wilderness“terraforming”intended to render a space Han habit-
able in both ecological and cultural, that is, environmental, terms. Arab-
lism environmentally constituted China proper as the empire’s distinctive
Han core.
arablism
The agrarian relations of the Han core have been the primary focus of
Chinese environmental history for obvious and compelling reasons. Agri-
culture was the basis both of urbanization in premodern China and of the
imperial system itself. So Chinese agriculture and empire are inextricably
linked.^54 This relationship fosters a particular character of both land and
people to produce an easily manageable revenue, ideally in the form of
grain or silver, for the state. The immense ecological and cultural diversity
existing within dynastic boundaries, however, complicated the concen-
tration of this diversity within a single polity, which had to adapt
accordingly.
Imperial arablism was the Qing adaptation to the environmental con-
ditions connecting people and plants that formed China proper. This
cultivation of crops and culture related people to land so as to effect their
mutual constitution as Han commoners, orliangmin, whose cultivation
of grainfields produced sustenance, revenue, and identity. Liangmin
cultivated and were themselves cultivated in the process to realize a
Hanspace that sustainably connected China proper to Inner Asia.
The imperial Chinese state, from its inception, was fully conscious of
the existential significance of arablism. One of the most straightforward
expressions of the conscious need for state management of environmental
ties binding imperial relations can be found in Legalist writings, such as
those of theShangjunshu(Book of Lord Shang).^55 The second chapter,
“Orders to Clear Wilderness for Cultivation”(“Ken ling”), presents a
classical program for such management to effect an intense and sustain-
able concentration of resources, centered on grain. Upon deciding on legal
reform as the basis for mobilizing state power, the ruler Duke Xiao’sfirst
act is to“issue an order to clear wilderness for cultivation.”This is the
material initiation of the general Legalist principle, that“the means by
40 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
