Chen Gazetteers MPIWG

Distribution of the 2,000 local monographs of the dabase Zhongguo Fangzhiku, batch 1 published by Erudition, Beijing. Background map: 1820 China with prefecture boundaries from the China Historical GIS.

Source-Based Initiatives (2014-2024)

Local Gazetteers

Local gazetteers (difangzhi 地方志) have been major primary sources for the study of China’s local history. About 8,000 titles of local gazetteers dating from the tenth to the nineteenth century are still extant, covering almost all well-populated regions of historical China. The authors of local gazetteers were officials and local gentry who delineated the landscape, flora and fauna, local products, temples and schools, officials and celebrities, local culture and customs, and much more. This project unlocks this treasure chest of local riches by transforming textual formats into a scholarly, enhanced database for new forms of digital historical analysis. A set of digital tools has been developed to help historians to quickly extract data from the digitized text, to store and share the produced data with peers as a new form of academic collaboration, and to apply analysis tools (including GIS maps) on the produced data in order to observe patterns on larger scales. We have started extracting and visualizing information on regional products from 2,000 digital local gazetteers to unravel their role in the historical construction of China’s “local materialities.” In the second phase, the project will facilitate comparison of literary with artefactual and environmental evidence. We are especially interested in exploring how the change of scales—by turning local records from individual gazetteers into a single global database—can reshape the study of historical China. 

 

News & Press

Research Workshop “Chinese Local Gazetteers”—Senior Researchers (Dept. III). 2017

 

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Wilko Graf von Hardenberg publishes interview with Shih-Pei Chen on Chinese local gazetteers

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Media and Features

Working Groups

Past Events

Chinese Local Gazetteers: Historical Method and Computerized Data Collection and Analysis

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Chinese Local Gazetteers: Local Materiality in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

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Thematic Cluster: Digital Humanities and Local Gazetteers

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Thematic Cluster: Digital Humanities and Local Gazetteers

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Thematic Cluster: Digital Humanities and Local Gazetteers

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Building Materials in Chinese Local Gazetteers: Brain-Storming

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Chinese Local Gazetteers "Terminology"

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Chinese Local Gazetteers "Terminology“ Public Sessions

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The Schistosomiasis Epidemic and Environmental Change

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Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Early Modern Culture in China, 1500–1800

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Tu (圖) in Local Gazetteers

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From Local Gazetteers Project to Asia Network: Working with Licensed Materials in Digital Humanities

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Weather Events or Climate Change? Yuan Dynasty, Local Gazetteers, and Sericulture

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The Use of the Song Notebooks (biji 筆記) in the Local Gazetteers

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Knowing an Empire: Imperial Science in Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Empires

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What One Should Know about a Locality: Analyzing Knowledge Categories from the Chinese Local Gazetteers

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Locality and Geographical Knowledge in Imperial China I

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Locality and Geographical Knowledge in Imperial China II

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Data Collection, Organization, and Presentation in Ming-Qing Local Gazetteers

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Visual Materials in Local Gazetteers

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Visual Materials in Local Gazetteers

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Fenye in Local Gazetteers Workshop

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Empire under the Night Sky: The Role of Fenye (Astrological Contents) in Late Imperial China

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The Transformations of Biographical Section in Chinese Local Gazetteers from Song to Ming: A Preliminary Observation

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Charting the European D-SEA: Digital Scholarship in East Asian Studies

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Digital Humanities Developments in Taiwan and at the MPIWG

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Projects

Digital Resources

Publications

Chen, Shih-Pei, Calvin Yeh, Sean Wang, and Qun Che (2023). “Treating a Genre as a Database: A Digital Research Methodology for Studying Chinese Local Gazetteers.” International Journal of Digital Humanities 4 (1–3): 171–193. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42803-022-00048-5.

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Zhang, Xue (2022). “The Plurality of Reception: Latitude and Longitude in Early Modern China, 1700–1900.” Isis 113 (3): 537–558. https://doi.org/10.1086/721142.

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Lycas, Alexis, Masato Hasegawa, and Chen Shih-Pei 陳詩沛 (2021). “Local Uses of Geographical Knowledge in Imperial China: Introduction to Contributions to the International Workshop held by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, 29 June to 1 July 2020.” Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies 69 (2): 349–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/02549948.2021.1989777.

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Schäfer, Dagmar, Shih-Pei Chen, and Qun Che (2020). “What is Local Knowledge? Digital Humanities and Yuan Dynasty Disasters in Imperial China’s Local Gazetteers.” Journal of Chinese History 4 (2): 391–429. https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2020.31.

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Social Media

Digihum Humanities MPIWG History China

Blog Post: Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China

Pierre Magistry on applying natural language processing (NLP) to Chinese local gazetteers.

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MPIWG China Digital Humanities Digihum

Blog Post: Ant, Spider, Bee

Shih-Pei Chen on Ant, Spider, Bee: "Material Network Analysis."

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Digihum Gazetteers digital humanities medium.com

Blog Post: Roots and Branches

Ian Miller on Medium.com blog, Roots and Branches: "Footprint of the Capitals."

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Chen_Deptiii_Local_Gazetteers_digihum_youtube.

Presentation: YouTube

Gregory Scott on Youtube, "Survey of Religious Reconstruction in Modern China."

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