A Study On Wenzhou Man-Nature Relationships: 960--1840

The development history of human society can be regard as a process essentially that the human understand and exploit the nature. The impulsion of human's subsistence, which composing the everlasting dynamics of the whole social history, has boosted human acquiring and organizing the nature resource, and trying to improve their living condition. In the agriculture society, the human acquiring, organizing and distributing the nature resource mostly base on the output of land. Therefore, man-nature relationships (MNRs for short) are the primary clue of the agriculture society. Taking Wenzhou region as the object of study, this paper inquires in detail into the clue of the agriculture society and the logic structure. The paper gives a new discussion on the environment and the growth of the population, the environment and emigration, the environment and society vicissitude, the environment and the culture shock, and tries to point out the skeleton map of MNRs change in Wenzhou society pre-modern era..We extend the discussion over MNRs and argue the population pressure problem firstly, which derive from the population growth in Wenzhou region pre-modern era. The first phase is pre-Tang's dynasty. During this period, the characteristics of MNRs are mostly those more-population-less-land, material pinch and awing of the human to the nature.. The second phase is Tang & Song era. During this period, MNRs embodied as the growth of the ability of the human acquiring nature resource as the increasing in population and productivity. The third phase is Ming & Qing era. MNRs of this period is mostly tensional relationship between human and nature, the activity of the human appeared to devastate the nature, and the nature retaliated. It is the important period of this era that MNRs evolved in deepness and extent. Forefathers of Wenzhou tried to balance the MNRs by all ways.