Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia critically examines modernization's long-term environmental history. Using local-level studies and the idea of co-production, it suggests new frameworks for understanding as inter-related processes environmental, social, and economic change across China and Japan. The volume opens up new points of comparison and exchange within East Asia and among East Asia, Europe, and North America. Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia adds significant new perspectives to Chinese, Japanese, and global environmental history, as well as world history and development studies. A fascinating buffet of chapters on East Asian environmental history, exploring, within Chinese and Japanese cultural contexts, the problem of how appropriately to link the multifaceted environment with the rest of history. Ts`ui-jung Liu and James Beattie have, as editors, done an impressively well-judged job of bringing together cultural depth with a critical awareness of current theoretical insights.' - Mark Elvin, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK

"This wide-ranging collaboration is packed with material that will intrigue, excite, and inform readers at all levels of scholarship. Those interested in East Asia, modernization, and long-term environmental change will find tremendous utility in the chapters assembled here." - Edward D. Melillo, Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Amherst College, USA