very act of keeping official records of
tiger encounters was part of an effort
to monitor and manage a natural (or
supernatural) hazard,^6 and the follow-
ing gazetteer entry from Fujian illus-
trates how tigers and people were
engaged in an intricate dance of cosmic
agency and deferential human interven-
tion:In spring of the seventh year of Ming
Chongzhen (1634), in Pinghe county,
there were tigers on the rampage in
the mountain forests...There were
countless attacks on people and live-History, cculture aand cconservation
Figure 2.A temporal profile of human-tiger encounters in
Southeast China. Recorded incidents increased dramatically
in the mid-1500s and peaked in the last quarter of the
1600s, with a smaller peak in the late 1800s. The first rise
corresponds with increased anthropogenic ecological dis-
turbance throughout the southeastern uplands, a result of
agricultural commercialisation, land enclosure, and
engrossment along the densely populated coast. This sent
a wave of settlers into the interior, where increased forest
clearance and contact with tigers may appear to have
caused an increase in tiger incidents. Since the actual
recordsof tiger depredation may have held political signifi-
cance as well (due to the Mandate of Heaven concept), the
peak in political unrest in the late-1600s - the transition
between the Ming and Qing dynasties - may account for
the peak in records. The same may also hold true for the
peak in the early 1900s, around the end of the Qing
(1911). Peaks in typhoons recorded in these periods sug-
gest that the record may have been as important as the
events themselves.
Figure 3.Distribution of human-tiger
encounters in southest China. Records of
tiger attacks and sightings form a wide-
spread pattern across the greater southest
upland region. Interactions from the Wuyi-
Daiyun core area are particularly numerous.
The large number of encounters in Fujian
Province may reflect the fact that data were
gathered in an archive in Fuzhou, the capi-
tal.