The Great Wall of China as a Climate Frontier

The Great Wall—the most imposing manifestation of Chinese frontier history—crosses a vast territory subject to political, environmental and climatic instabilities that the volume approaches as mutually conditioning, focusing on the Ordos region. This has been a central point of contact between sedentary East Asian and nomadic Inner Asian peoples throughout Chinese premodern history (500 BCE-1800). The contributors emphasize the significance of human-natural interaction affecting environmental and climatological variability central to historical processes on this critical frontier zone. Four case studies are supported by paleoclimatic evidence from documentary information and natural proxies as well as from land-use models showing the complexity of climate-human interplay, in terms of demography, economy, and administrative-military presence. The volume’s interdisciplinary methodology achieves an authoritative integration of both scientific (quantitative) and historical (narrative) approaches to produce a comprehensive history of long-term frontier dynamics.