“Fire and Society in Modern China: Fire Disasters and Natural Landscapes in East Asian Environmental History” (1820-1965)

Abstract

Using Fire to Teach Environmental History Fire is an amazing natural and unnatural force-it has existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years and it is one of the most anthropocentric forces that humans can employ in the natural environment and on one another. All that a fire requires is fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source. However, the ecology of fire in the natural world is only one facet of the ecology of fire in environmental history. Humans can and have manufactured fire almost at will for millennia, and exerted a tremendous power over the natural environment (especially forests and grasslands) ever since. In particular, humans have used fire to clear land permanently and maintain it for farming and herding, as well as for heating and cooking. With industrialization, anthropocentric fire in the form of fossil biomass (coal, oil, etc.), and not just surface biomass like trees and grasses, fueled the machinery that runs our world. These kinds of fires, from agriculture to industry, are "good fires" that help define our world and act as catalysts of economic and human development. However, there are also "bad fires, " disasters, conflagrations, and accidents-both devastating and horrifying when they serve other purposes. A history of these good and bad fires, which includes an environmental history of both the positive and negative aspects of conflagrations, can serve several teaching purposes. This study of fire in recent Chinese history examines the ramifications of rural and urban conflagrations from approximately the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth century. It outlines how fire in China can reveal patterns of natural, social, and political causes, tied to the both the destructive effects of rebellion, warfare, and human carelessness, as well as the