Presented by: Tristan Brown
When: 10:45 – 11:45 am Section 2: Regions & Functions of Texts; Panel 3, 3A
Abstract: Ancient trees were ascribed with special powers in imperial China. Often identified as fengshui (geomantic) or “spirit” trees, these plants were thought to provide insights into the past and even potentially portend the future. Accorded with special legal protections from being cut down for their expensive timber, these ancient organisms were identified as the living survivors of wars, famines, and plagues over the centuries and were thus highly valued by people across late imperial society. This paper examines examples of trees that were accorded cosmological and religious significance during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912): trees associated with the ruling emperors and the imperial family, those that grew within famous temples, those owned by prominent lineages and families, and those disputed in law courts. Why were these trees so important? How did people understand them? And how does the Chinese experience resonate with other traditions? Building off the once widely held belief that the felling of a significant tree had the power to end a dynasty or ruin a family, the paper examines imperial Chinese history through the verdant spectators that bore silent witness to it.
Tristan G. Brown is a social and cultural historian of late imperial and modern China. His research focuses on the ways in which law, science, environment, and religion interacted in China from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries.
He is currently working on his first book, which draws on Qing judicial archives and cartographic materials to investigate the uses of cosmology in imperial Chinese law. He is also preparing a second project that employs Chinese, Arabic, and Manchu sources to reveal how Islam was practiced as a local religion in late imperial China. He has published articles in T’oung Pao, Late Imperial China, and Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions.
He has held research fellowships at St John’s College, Cambridge and Stanford University. He has conducted research in China, Taiwan, and Jordan with the support of grants and fellowships from the British Academy, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Henry Luce Foundation.
Professor Brown offers courses on pre-modern and modern Chinese history as well as the environmental history of China. He is particularly keen on getting students involved in digital methods for the study of history.