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The Huayuankou flood event (1938–1947) refers to the prolonged flooding caused by the artificial bursting of the Yellow River embankment at Huayuankou during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). It recreated the historical scenes of frequent floods in the lower Yellow River region of China since the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368–1911), with the counties along the Jialu River in the eastern plains of Henan especially becoming the disaster-stricken areas. The flood lasted for nearly nine years until the completion of embankment restoration work in 1947, causing long-term and extensive environmental impacts. This paper discusses this catastrophic historical flood event caused by human factors, the warfare strategies and hydraulic technology that acted as drives, and the location factors and historical context leading to the start of flooding in flood-prone areas of Henan. Based on spatial perspectives and the historical GIS approach, the paper compiles and integrates historical documents and maps with archival material and topographic maps from the 1930s and 1940s to present the extent of the flood, the associated disasters, and the persistent effects of official relief strategies and political situation in the wider context, examining how the Huayuankou flood was used as a military tactic, but with unpredictable disastrous consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines long-term settlement expansion in western Hunan region of China and presents a case study of socio-cultural landscape transformation. We extract historical settlements from historical documents in the area's representative counties and outline their spatial distributions during the eighteenth century. Following these distributions, we then examine the influencing factors behind the expansion. We found that when compared with older settlements, new settlements were concentrated primarily on sloping, high-elevation fields rather than more level, lower-elevation fields. Multiple factors affected this settlement expansion. Topography strongly influenced settlement distribution, while policy shifts strongly influenced settlement expansion. Among these was a policy shift from prohibition to encouragement. Other contributing factors to settlement expansion included population growth, immigration, the introduction of new crops, improved farming techniques, and farmland water conservation facilities, which likely benefited from temperature rises. Furthermore, a portion of the indigenous people gradually transitioned into permanent agriculture from slash-and-burn farming, possibly resulting in increased settlement activities. Overall, this study makes important contributions to understanding human impacts on mountainous environments of the past, highlighting patterns of historical-geographical continuity and change over time. Future investigations on historical settlements in a typical region would improve knowledge of these human-nature interactions over the long term. • Maps settlement in western Hunan mountainous areas during the eighteenth century. • Showing a trend of new settlements expanding to higher elevations and steeper slopes. • Describing Anthropogenic land cover change associated with settlement expansions. • Revealing historical landscape changes in conjunction with settlement expansions. • Examining the influencing factors behind the settlement distribution in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While 'good government' has long been hailed as a defining feature of colonial Hong Kong, this paper argues that it should be seen as an epistemological ordering frame whose existence relied upon constant processes of moralization undertaken by many actors across multiple scales. Central to this was the invocation of certain ways of thinking about the roles of government and citizens implicit in Chinese historical experience. These moral constructs, transplanted and transformed within the colonial milieu, became central elements in the way many British officials and Chinese residents came to express themselves, and by doing so constituted themselves as governing subjects upholding colonial rule. To explore the role of these constructs in particular situated practices and broader strategies of colonial governance, this paper focuses on two case studies concerning the improvement of public health amidst growing threats of epidemics between 1900 and 1908. Although these efforts were not successful in containing the spread of diseases, the emphasis on self-help and revival of 'local traditions' for encouraging people to improve their neighborhoods helped engender a sense of pride an solidarity amongst the Chinese residents and propagated the idea that Hong Kong was an orderly, 'civilized' Chinese society superior to that of mainland China itself. Although both case studies are drawn from particular sites, it is clear that the initiation, implementation and effects of the projects were not confined to the local scale, but were tied to larger shifts in the forms of governance and emerging political discourses beyond Hong Kong. They thus highlight the 'networks of multiple scales' and the translocal processes through which competing conceptions of Hong Kong and its relations to the world were actively being constructed by different actors under colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the three-month long Sino-Japanese hostilities in the summer of 1937, Shanghai industries suffered the heaviest loss ever sustained during any previous military conflict in the city. Yet as has been shown in a previous study, local industries seem to have recovered fairly quickly. All statistics point to a return to pre-war levels of production in most sectors by the end of 1938 in some cases and during 1939 for most industrial branches. The purpose of this paper is to try to highlight the spatial dynamics at work in this recovery process. It relies not just on original sources, but on the unique capabilities GIS offers in processing large amounts of historical data and exploring connected issues in land use, demography, and urban life. The paper argues that Shanghai industries went through a thorough phase of relocation and migration within the city, but also of inbound migration from the surrounding regions. This study is based on a particular set of documents produced by the Shanghai Municipal Council, the largely independent body that administered the International Settlement. In this study, therefore, I shall argue that what happened in the territory of the International Settlement mirrored what happened next door and possibly in other parts of the Chinese-administered/Japanese-occupied areas. Beyond the issue of industrial movement. this paper also examines connected issues in land use, demography, and urban life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a powerful dynasty ruling northern China from 386 to 534 CE, the Northern Wei dynasty unexpectedly moved its capital from Pingcheng to Luoyang in 494 CE. This move has great significance in Chinese history, and the reasons for it have aroused intense and long-lasting controversy. To explore the environmental factors underlying this event, this study focuses on the impact of natural disasters on Pingcheng in the fifth century based on continuous high-resolution paleoclimatic data combined with extensive historical records. It finds that Pingcheng experienced a significant decline in the late 470s CE as a result of continuous droughts and a low-temperature environment. Moreover, it is argued that the rapid growth of the population in Pingcheng might have increased its societal vulnerability to natural disasters. By comparing the food systems and geographical locations of Pingcheng and Luoyang, this study suggests that the relocation of the capital should be considered as an adaptation to climate change and a mitigation of its effects by the Northern Wei dynasty. In addition, the paper shows that other important cities along latitude 40° N in East Asia also stopped growing during this period of rapid climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an agent-based simulation (ABS) and cellular automata (CA) coupled model to simulate the spatial evolution of the population of China over the past 2000 years. In the model, agents are used to simulate individuals who live in a geographic environment represented by the CA. The choice to migrate is influenced by climate change, potential agricultural productivity change, and waves of mass migrations. Using the simulation, we can observe the spatial evolution of the population, as well as the shift of the population center of gravity, and we can analyze the driving forces of these changing spatial patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of historical change in cultivated land use in Northeast China have become important in the discussion of food supply safety and the reconstruction of land use/cover changes in China. This paper subjects a number of sources relating to land use change in the three provinces of Northeast China to comparative analysis. The data examined include Russian survey data (1914), data from local and regional Chinese governments during the Republic of China (1931), data from the Japanese Society of Manchuria Railway (SMR) for 1940 and various sets of contemporary Chinese data for the second half of the 20th century. A unified method of reconstructing the data and estimating the rate of cultivated land use change in Northeast China during the 20th century is developed here. A relational model is proposed for this purpose. It establishes a general framework for relating the various sets of data generated in different time periods and indicates ways in which the data have to be calibrated to ensure their comparability. The calibration of the data involves correlation and regression analysis. The results of the comparative analysis show that the area of and rate of change in cultivated land use in Northeast China increased until the last decade of the twentieth century. Increase rates were particularly high between 1914–1931 and 1950–1960. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Based on an original survey and a critical evaluation of the Chinese historical and scientific literature, this paper ascertains that by as early as the fifth century AD, the typhoon had been recognized by the people of southern China as a distinct meteorological phenomenon. A specific term, ju or jufeng, was accordingly coined, with rather accurate specifications given to it. A typhoon that struck the coastal city of Mizhou in Shandong Province of northern China in AD 816 is the earliest recorded tropical cyclone landfall in China, and perhaps also in the world. The typhoon as a weather phenomenon was frequently mentioned, described, and discussed in many works, including history books, poems and government documents, in the ninth century AD. Such a societal understanding of typhoons made an accurate report of typhoon landfall in AD 816 possible. Another typhoon that struck Qingyuan County in central Guangdong Province in AD 819 was encountered by a leading scholar who described it in his poem. This is the second earliest typhoon landfall recorded in China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]