Chinese Responses to Climate Change during the Little Ice Age, ca. 1350-1850

The session explores climatic impacts on multiple regions of China during the Little Ice Age, diverse regional responses to environmental challenges, and their historical consequences. It also expands scholarly inquiry into the “great divergence” between China and Europe by examining Chinese responses to climatic challenges around 1750.

Ruth Mostern focuses on the environmental history of the region around Yulin, a northwestern city at the intersection of the Yellow River and the Great Wall, examining the challenges of creating and maintaining a military frontier and a historically dense population in a multiethnic region during a time of frequent droughts, monsoon seasonality, and endemic arid conditions. Pei Qing then discusses how climatic deterioration and related natural disasters in northern China prompted the northward migration of Chinese peasants beyond the Great Wall. These migrants spurred both economic development and environmental degradation through land reclamation in Manchuria and Mongolia. Next, Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley will analyze visual depictions of the environmental and human impacts of droughts, floods, and famines that struck the North China provinces of Henan, Shanxi, and Zhili. These disaster illustrations reached both national and international audiences, and helped mobilize their engagement in famine relief. Zhongping Chen mainly examines how peasants in the Yangzi Delta adapted to droughts or floods during the Little Ice Age by cultivating cotton as a crop tolerant of arid conditions or expanding high-elevation mulberry fields, and developed related handicraft industries. The rural protoindustrialization enhanced the resilience of the peasant economy to natural disasters. Finally, Peter C. Perdue will scrutinize human responses to typhoons, rainstorms, and other tropical disasters on the southeast coast of China and Taiwan. While peasants and fishermen employed practical and religious methods to cope with such natural disasters, the Qing state and merchants also invested in various ways to overcome climatic variability. Chairperson Kenneth Pomeranz’s general comments will also touch on human-environment interactions in southwestern China. Together, this session calls for broader attention to diverse environmental factors underlying “the great divergence” between China and Europe, particularly the regional variation and the more frequent and severe natural disasters that affected Chinese society during the Little Ice Age.