That said, I do think, and try to show in the book, that many of the practices and concepts that were operative in the Qing — for example, the ways the court organized policies around “purity” in Mongolia and the idea of “nurturing the mussels” in Manchuria — were in many ways congruent with what you see in other parts of the world in the 19th century. In the Qing, ethnic identity profoundly informed environmental politics, and Qing officials justified environmental protection in part as a way of defending the Manchu and Mongol homelands — just as many in the German-speaking world saw nature protection as a pathway to redemption for the German “Volk,” and Americans called for national parks to preserve the country’s national spirit. This powerful connection between identity and environment is not unique to modern Western environmentalism. It has a more complicated past.

Image Credit... Stanford University Press

You say we should think about environmental history outside a Western paradigm.

Sometimes it’s easy to think that the environmental history of the West is the standard by which we should measure environmental histories of other places, and I just don’t think that’s the appropriate method for understanding the history of the Qing empire. Now, I do think there are fruitful comparisons between what was going on in Europe or the Qing empire at the time. But I don’t necessarily think we should measure the Qing solely using terminology or models that we assume to be universal, but that in fact derive from and best describe European or American history.

Does this history hold any lessons for modern China?

One of the lessons is that there’s no place in China, or in countries around China, where there is unspoiled, pristine nature. If something appears to be unspoiled and pristine, chances are it’s because someone worked to make it that way at some point in time, and people have consistently worked to make it that way.

Which protected lands in China are you thinking of?

I think of Changbaishan. It’s this volcano on the border between North Korea and China, and the Manchus considered the lake inside the crater at the top to be holy territory. It was special because it was the birthplace of the Manchus. The court had special rules on collecting ginseng or trapping sable or other fur-bearing animals on the mountain. When British explorers first climbed the mountain in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they referred to it as untouched and unspoiled nature.

In fact, it was very much touched. People had been poaching on the land, but the court had been using its resources to protect that territory. The People’s Republic of China has converted this space into a nature reserve. They are in many ways picking up where the Qing left off.