A Comparative Study On Forestry Modernization In China Late Qing Dynasty And Japan Meiji Period

Since the reform and opening-up, the modernization research in historiography progresses with the modernization of the socialism. Meanwhile, there is not much research in forestry modernization. This dissertation studies the modernization of forestry, while comparing late Qing Dynasty and Japan Meiji government's forestry modernization, in areas like geographical environment, human factors, evolvement, and history.The dissertation consists of a preface, four parts, thirteen chapters and a conclusion. The preface explains the main idea and objectives of doing a comparative research on forestry modernization in order to gain better historical reference for our country's modernization construction.The "introduction part", consisting of three chapters, generally explains the targets, meaning, range, content, methods and characteristics of this topic on a theoretical base. The "basic part" and "evolvement part" become more detailed. The preceding part, including four chapters, showcases the historical conditions, like the nature, economy, social and cultural environment and forest condition being influenced by the previous factors, before the forestry modernization in late Qing Dynasty and Japan Meiji Period. The latter part, including five chapters, studies how Chinese and Japanese social and forestry evolvement is affected by human factors, such as wars and ferments, forestry thoughts, revolutions, social reforms and national education, in the period from 1840 to 1912, and analyzes whether these influences are positive or negative, direct and indirect.The "practical part", enhances the research of forestry modernization to the operation level in the real society, covering the chapter of "The Historical Chance and Responsibility in Forestry History Research".In the end, the conclusion summarizes the apperceptions of forestry modernization research anddiscusses the influences of geographic environment on forestry development, the role of human and social factors over modern forestry and thoughts on how to study the forestry history into a more depth.This dissertation adopts a comparative research method of the history, both horizontally and longitudinally, with micro- and macro-comparison (the latter more primarily). Thus, the state of forestry modernization in the Chinese Late Qing Dynasty and Japan Meiji Period is thoroughly displayed based on the comparative analysis of historical materials, with history and arguments integrated and theoretical realization achieved.With the desire for achieving a socially instructive effect, this dissertation is studied also in the sincere hope that:--Forestry history research can be served to build a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized and harmonious modern socialist country.--The research on cause of formation and regulation of forestry modernization proves that human society should develop in a scientific way.--This history research can provide a useful warning for modern people against making the same mistakes in history, and the comparison between China and Japan can inspire Chinese people to strive for the great revival of our nation.