Ming-Qing Documents

Local gazetteers

Local gazetteers (difang zhi 地方志)

Also referred to as “local histories,” gazetteers (which might cover a province, a prefecture, or a county) as a distinct genre first appeared in the Song dynasty, although Song scholars argued that the form dated from the earliest times. Their compilation was for the most part carried out by the local gentry, usually under official approval. About 8,000 gazetteers are extant today, of which the vast majority (some 70%) date from the Qing. In recent years, the PRC government has encouraged the publication of “new gazetteers,” resulting in the addition of several thousand new titles in this genre, part of the recent boom in local history that has swept the country.

The English term “gazetteer” derives its origin from the French gazette, which in turn was borrowed from the Venetian dialect word gazzetta, the name of an old Venetian coin "worth less than a farthing." One explanation is that the value of one gazzetta corresponded to the price of a local newspaper (or the price of reading it), which therefore came to be called gazzetta dello novità, i.e., “journal of the news.” Another etymology ties the word to the other meaning of gazzetta, "little magpie" (from gazza, magpie); since magpies are known to collect all manner of objects, a gazzetta broadsheet was known by this name for its publication of random information and hearsay. The term was adopted in the English language more with the meaning of “official publication” of a geographical or administrative nature than with that of “newspaper,” and the word was later applied by English-speaking sinologists of the 19th century to the local histories of China (fangzhi). The Chinese word fangzhi derives its origin from a passage in the Zhouli, where one of the functions of the official historians (called waishi 外使) is described as “being in charge of writing the monographs on the four directions” (掌四方之志).

Most gazetteers follow a standard format and contain similar information, very often presented in the same (or similar) order, beginning with geography, local administration, and going on from there. Topics for inclusion might include local notables, major buildings and temples, epigraphic monuments, strange events, virtuous women, customs, local products, etc. They are a basic source for almost any kind of research on the late imperial period and have been exhaustively catalogued and studied as a genre; there is even a special journal devoted to gazetteers. Many have been reprinted or put on microfilm.

In using gazetteers (as with any published source), before one begins to read and take notes it is important first to establish good bibliographic control. There are a number of finding aids to help scholars a) determine the existence of a gazetteer for a given locale and b) find out what the different editions are. Once you have this information, you can begin your search. It is generally wise to examine as many editions as possible, beginning with the earliest one, to establish a chronological baseline. Also, when focusing on an individual county or counties, do not forget to consult gazetteers higher up the chain, as prefectural and provincial gazetteers may also contain valuable material.

In approaching gazetteers, the first order of business is to learn what is out there that is relevant to the geographical region you are interested in. Below are the main reference tools you will need, which are available and searchable online. This database very handy for searching information on Qing-period gazetteers in mainland China. It seems to include information of most gazetteers, but not all of them. If you search for a county, it will list many editions for you. The information of each edition includes the time of compilation, number of juan, names of compilers, whether it is a handwritten copy or print copy, where copies of the edition are located now, etc. Good place to start with, but no content of gazetteers available.

Zhongguo difangzhi zongmu tiyao 中国地方志總目提要. Jin Enhui 金恩輝 and Hu Shuzhao 胡述兆, eds. 3 vols. Taipei: Han Mei tushu youxian gongsi yinxing 漢美圖書有限公司印行, 1996.

This is one of two union catalogues and probably your first choice when searching for gazetteers. Has a few hundred more entries than the following item, and its notes are a bit more detailed. There is a good index.

Zhongguo difangzhi lianhe mulu 中国地方志聯合目錄. Zhuang Weihuang, Zhu Shijia, and Feng Binglin, eds. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1985.

Another union catalogue for locating gazetteers, it records over 8,200 fangzhi published before 1949 to be found in libraries in the PRC as well as in Taiwan. Very helpful in identifying editions, though the lack of a good index is a hindrance.

Other catalogues include:

A Catalogue of Chinese Local Histories in the Library of Congress. Chu Shih-chia (Zhu Shijia). Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942.

This catalogue gives the author of the history, the number of volumes, and the date written. They are separated according to province. There is also an author index.

Nihon shuyō toshokan kenkyūjo shozō Chūgoku chihōshi sōgo mokuroku 日本主要図書館研究所所蔵中国地方史綜合目録. Tokyo, 1969.

This union catalogue of gazetteer holdings in Japan includes approximately 2,900 fangzhi. There is an index organized by Wade-Giles transliteration, in addition to a title index arranged by Japanese kana order.

Zhongguo difang zhi cidian 中国地方志辭典. Huang Wei, ed. Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 1986.

The entries in this useful reference work cover a historical span ranging from earliest times to 1986, and are arranged under ten headings. Includes a character index arranged by number of strokes. In addition, the table of contents lists every single entry in the dictionary, an extremely useful feature.

Zhongguo difangzhi 中国地方志. Lai Xinxia, ed. Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu, 1995.

Written by a longstanding and well-respected scholar of local gazetteers, this work provides an excellent introduction to the genre, beginning with the basic definition of fangzhi and then tracing its development through the various periods up to the present.

XXX tushuguancang xijian fangzhi congkan XXX圖書館藏稀見方志叢刊

Recently, dozens of libraries across China have one after another reprinted their rare local gazetteers, including 北京大學圖書館藏稀見方志叢刊, 復旦大學圖書館藏稀見方志叢刊, 浙江省圖書館藏稀見方志叢刊, and so forth. If you have a county or prefecture in mind and want to try your luck in the collections, search if the corresponding provincial library has published such series. If not, then try the university library collections. For instance, if you want to know if there are any rare gazetteers for 瀏陽縣, Hunan Province, consult 湖南省圖書館藏稀見方志叢刊 and perhaps 武漢大學圖書館藏稀見方志叢刊 (as Wuhan is close to Hunan). HYL has purchased quite a lot of them, but only in hardcopy. 

Given the universally acknowledged importance of gazetteers for every sort of historical research, many are now becoming available online. Some links follow below.

Erudition Database 愛如生數據庫

A substantial number of gazetteers (seemingly around 2,000) are available here in full-text, searchable form. After log-in, select "Database of Chinese Local Records" (中國方志庫). It is limited to one concurrent Harvard user, and thus is often unavailable, but it is an extremely useful resource. It enables you to browse gazetteers by location, organized according to the contemporary Chinese administrative structure, and also to perform full text searches delimited by dynasty, place, and level of administrative hierarchy (i.e., provincial gazetteer, county gazetteer, etc). The collection is by no means complete, but it is wide-ranging, and there is no similar collection that enables full text search of as many gazetteers. Note that if you want to be able to copy-paste text in the viewing window (which helpfully shows both a scan of the original document and cleaned up text), you need to click on 下載 at the top of the screen.

Zhongguo guojia tushuguan shuzi fangzhi ziyuan ku 中國國家圖書館數字方志資源庫

Offers access to the entire collection of local gazetteers held in the National Library, Beijing, including Qing-period gazetteers and related geographical works. For now, display requires installing the Chinese version of Adobe Reader 7.0. Still, this is useful as a search tool.

Taiwan fangzhi ziliao ku 臺灣方志資料庫. A full-text database as part of the 漢籍電子文獻 by the Academia Sinica.

This database contains 116 Qing-era gazetteers of Taiwan at different administrative levels (including 通志, 府志, 縣志, and 廳志). It also has several travel reports (采訪冊), an atlas, and various miscellaneous records 紀略.

Digital Archive of Chinese Buddhist Temple Gazetteers 中國佛教寺廟志數位典藏 

This is the online database for the Temple Gazetteer Project established by the Dharma Drum Buddhist College 法鼓佛教學院 in Taiwan. The gazetteers collected here come from two twentieth century compilations of woodblock reprints, namely: 1) Zhongguo fosi shizhi huikan 中國佛寺史志彙刊. Taipei, 1980-1985. Compiled by Du Jiexiang 杜潔祥. 110 vols; ii) Fosizhi Congkan 中國佛寺志叢刊. Hangzhou: Guangling shushe 广陵书社 2006 . Compiled by Zhang Zhi 张智. 130 vols. The Temple Gazetteer Project aims to digitize more than one hundred and fifty temple gazetteers by 2010, and to make the image database freely available. At least ten gazetteers will be available as full text, marked up for dates, and for person and place names. Temple gazetteers are compilations of a variety of texts including topographical descriptions, biographies, poems, maps, portraits, miracle stories, and inscriptions. They are very useful sources for scholars interested in local history.

Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan digital collection 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション

The National Diet Library is one of the largest libraries in the world. It collects sources of various languages, including Chinese. Particularly useful for us is that it hosts volumes of Ming and Qing sources, many of which are online in its digital collection website. If you enter 府志 or 县志 in the search box, you will get a few hundreds hits, high-resolution scanned copies of gazetteers which you can also download. For example, after you enter 府志, you will get a full scanned copy of 續脩臺灣府志, compiled in reign of 乾隆. If you have a chance to visit the library for gazetteers, after the pandemic, you may consult the catalog of Chinese local gazetteers first: 中国の地方志. In addition, it is also a good place to look for genealogies (an introduction here for 中国の族譜) and other sources relevant to China studies, such as 支那省別全誌.

China Comprehensive Gazetteers 中國綜合方志庫

This China Comprehensive Gazetteers database has been produced in conjunction with the National Library of China. This particular database contains 7,000 titles(100,000 volumes) of Chinese local gazetteers spanning eight centuries 1229-1949, presented in image and/or full text to date. The database also supports both simplified and traditional Chinese search.

Rare Local Gazetteers at Harvard-Yenching Library

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science(MPIWG), in collaboration with Harvard-Yenching Library, is running this online database which enables you to get an access to full texts of more than 400 rare local gazetteers held at Harvard-Yenching Library. According to MPIWG, these full texts were produced manually rather than by OCR to ensure the highest accuracy (more than 99 percent). To use this database, first go to RISE. Click "catalogue" on the main page, and choose "MPIWG - 哈佛燕京" collection from search bar.

Bibliography

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