Environments, people and mining in the Far Southwest of China since 1500: Cross-disciplinary explorations

喜马拉雅山脉的东南端形成了一个非常褶皱的山脉，将中国与印度支那隔开，从世界的顶端向下延伸到热带丛林。中国的西南部是这一地带的高地部分，与现代云南省大致一致。这片面积大约相当于法国的地区，包括自史前时代以来一直是人类文化中心的高原，以及进入20世纪时几乎没有受到人类活动影响的崎岖腹地。由于其丰富的文化和生物多样性，该地区注定要研究人类社会与其环境的相互作用。造成不同动态和变化的因素包括自然和文化障碍、不同的土地利用制度、分区的多样化、遥远的商业网络，以及通常由矿产资源开发推动的移民和经济渗透。拟议项目的核心是对过去五个世纪三个矿区的环境历史进行分析。对技术史和环境史研究的贡献在于促进关于研究不足的区域历史的知识，该区域历史作为大规模工业化前采矿的非欧洲案例具有比较利益。将在开发在数据稀缺的情况下研究环境历史的应用方法方面作出方法论上的贡献，以便能够对不同时期和世界区域的发展进行校准比较分析。该项目采用了结合历史和地理方法的跨学科方法。2005年至2011年，傅高义担任DFG中国与东亚货币、市场与金融研究组主任，期间，申请者与德国图宾根大学地理系教授罗斯纳和上海复旦大学历史地理系教授杨宇达合作开发并测试了该方法。它克服了以中文为主的材料的稀缺性和片面性所造成的局限性，并扩大了来源的基础，从传统的书面来源扩展到年代学和地层学以及田野调查和口述历史的数据。通过本地化数据集，它使用了一种新的数据交叉检查、更正、确认和篡改工具。在这个过程中，可以通过有针对性地寻找决定性的证据和在景观变化模型中测试的解释来解决特定的问题。该项目的目标是在环境历史中获得具体和可证伪的结果，并最终确定打破可持续、不可持续但相对稳定和退化系统之间平衡的因素。因此，它希望实现对文化偏好、系统趋势和技术选择的重新评估，并希望对当前的环境问题作出贡献。

At their southeastern end, the Himalayas form a much folded mountain zone that separates China from Indochina, descending from the top of the world to tropical jungles. The Far Southwest of China is the highland part of this zone and roughly congruent with modern Yunnan province. The area, which is about the size of France, contains plateaus that have been centres of human cultures since prehistoric times and rugged hinterlands that into the twentieth century were little influenced by human activities. For its cultural richness as well as its biodiversity, the region is predestined for research on interactions of human societies with their environments. Factors creating different dynamics and transformations include natural and cultural barriers, a variety of land use systems, compartmentalized diversification, far-flung commercial networks, and migration and economic penetration that was often driven by the exploitation of mineral resources.The core of the proposed project is the analysis of the environmental history of three mining areas through the last five centuries. Contributions to research on the history of technology and the environment consist in advancing knowledge on an under-researched regional history that is of comparative interest as a non-European case of preindustrial mining on a large scale. A methodological contribution will be realized in the development of applied methods for researching environmental history under conditions of data scarcity that are expected to permit calibrated comparative analyses of developments in different periods and world regions.The project applies an inter-disciplinary approach that combines historical and geographic methods. The applicant has developed and tested the approach in collaborative projects with Hans-Joachim Rosner (geography, Tübingen University) and Yang Yuda (historical geography, Fudan University, Shanghai) during the DFG research group Monies, Markets and Finance in China and East Asia, which Hans Ulrich Vogel directed from 2005 to 2011. It overcomes limitations due to the scarcity and one-sidedness of predominantly Chinese materials and widens the basis of sources beyond traditional written sources to data from dendrochronology and stratigraphy, as well as from fieldwork and oral histories. By localizing data sets, it employs a new tool of data cross-checking, correcting, confirming and falsifying. In this process, specific questions can be addressed by targeted search for decisive evidence and interpretations tested in models of landscape change.The project aims at attaining specific and falsifiable results in environmental history and ultimately at identifying factors that tip the balance between sustainable, unsustainable yet relatively stable, and degrading systems. It thus expects to achieve a reassessment of cultural preferences, system trends and technological options historical environmental change and hopes to contribute to ongoing environmental issues.