The perspective and approach of environmental history can provide new incentives to the studies of Jiangnan regional history. The original natural settings of southeast China due to its location preliminarily conditioned the pattern and orientation of the hydraulic-initiated regional agriculture and civilization. In imperial Chinese history full with unification and division as well as fluctuation, the rich resources of the middle and lower Yangzi Valley had manifested its increasing supremacy, leading to rising economic prominence which steadily surpassed the earlier thoroughly developed Yellow River Valley during the Age of Division, thus in contrast with the continuing political importance in the north. The late imperial era saw mature environmental, economic and cultural complex, demonstrating highest productivity in the national context, and certain pretty humanized landscape resulted from reciprocal nature-human dynamics in certain temporal & spatial continuum. Notwithstanding, the "Jiangnan way" of development noted for exploiting the earth had caused more and more negative ecological consequences, and furthermore its incipient "progressiveness" meant least significance in the grand unified empire's politico-economic framework as well as dynastic cycles, nothing approaching the so-called "English model".