Abstract
Agricultural manuals and handbooks are the most important source of information on the early development of forestry in China, indicating that trees have long been managed as a component of agricultural systems (Menzies, 1985: 3–11). Trees were planted to supply basic needs for building materials and for fuel, but were usually less important than grains and other food crops. Some agricultural systems did evolve, however, in which trees were grown by individual landholders, as a cash crop to supply urban markets for timber.
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Notes
Abel, who accompanied the Amherst Embassy to the capital saw plantations of pollarded oak near Boyang Lake, north of Nanjing, reportedly used as fuelwood to supply the city (Abel, 1818: 164–5).
An archaeological survey of very early kilns in northern China notes that they too were located near forested areas (Anon, 1974).
On trees used for sericulture, see Bretschneider (1881). On the history of silk in China, see Needham, vol. 5, Pt.1, Sec.3.
On the silviculture and utilisation of oaks, see Menzies. (1985: 99–106)
There are many examples from south-western China of forest being managed as cover for a cash crop of medicinal plants, usually by minority ethnic groups. In Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province, the Jinuo thin the tropical forest under which they grow a special variety of tea as a well as a number of medicinal plants. In the same area, the Dai people extract and market camphor from trees grown as a cover crop for tea. (Pei Shengji, 1982, and personal communication, 1987). Similar practices are found among the Dulong people of north-western Yunnan (Quan Fu, Zhang Maosong, and Hu Fuxing, personal communication, 1987).
This account does not say that the trees were planted, but a shorter, earlier description by the same author states that the logs came from coppiced plantations of oak. (Yan Ruyu, 1806: 32)
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© 1994 Nicholas K. Menzies
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Menzies, N.K. (1994). Trees in Agricultural Systems. In: Forest and Land Management in Imperial China. Studies on the Chinese Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372870_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372870_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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