Traditional coastal management practices and land use changes during the 16–20th centuries, Jiangsu Province, China

• Jiangsu coast is a typical example of highly centralized management practices.
• We examine characteristics and changes of traditional coastal management system.
• Population growth and ecologic change were the main drives of the system collapse.
• Traditional management pattern has striking differences compared with modern modes.
• Traditional coastal management is an early stage of modern coastal management.

Within the framework of global change research, the issues related to coastal management and adaptation represent an important focus. During the 16–19th centuries, there were complex coastal evolution patterns, diverse human activities and rich historical documents for the Jiangsu coast, eastern China. Hence, this region represents a unique place in the world for the study of the traditional coastal management practice. In the present contribution, we use the historical archives/documents and adopt multidisciplinary methods, to reveal the characteristics and changing patterns of the traditional management practice for the Jiangsu coast. We have found that the Jiangsu coastal management practice was dominated by the central government, including policies and legal norms for the coastal areas, e.g., tax policy. Although there were differences compared with the present-day coastal management, it was already more advanced than the management systems merely based on custom, taboos and cultural norms. To some extent, Jiangsu coastal management practice is typical for the pre-industrial period, which was an initial stage of modern coastal management. The governments of the Ming and Qing Dynasties paid more attention to sea salt industry than reclamation/agriculture in the land use policies, and set a strict administrative management system to implement coastal management for land resources, labors and coastal engineering. It had a profound impact on the Jiangsu coastal land development and socio-economic change. In the 16–19th centuries, with rapid accretion on the Jiangsu coast and the intense control of the central government, salt production was the main coastal exploitation activity. After the 19th century, the land use was converted to agricultural development. However, along with the coastal natural change, population growth and destruction of war, the demand of multifarious land uses increases rapidly. As a result, the traditional management pattern, which emphasized monopoly profits but lack of negotiation and coordination between different stakeholders, became gradually unsustainable and collapsed eventually; subsequently, agricultural development was the dominant socio-economic activity of the Jiangsu coastal region. Thus, the highly centralized management system in the pre-industrial periods for the China coasts was evolved gradually into a decentralization system, which was consistent with the trend of the development of modern coastal management.