This book explores the interplay between war and the environment in Henan Province from 1938-50.

Micah Muscolino is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Oxford.

Introduction; 1. A militarized river: the 1938 Yellow River flood and its aftermath; 2. Stories of survival: refugee migration and ecological adaptation; 3. Military metabolism and the Henan famine of 1942-3; 4. Against the flow: hydraulic instability and ecological exhaustion; 5. The ecology of displacement: social and environmental effects of refugee migration; 6. The land needs the people, the people need the land: beginnings of postconflict recovery; 7. Reconstruction and revolution; Conclusion.