畿輔通志

Jīfǔ tōngzhì 畿輔通志

Comprehensive Gazetteer of the Metropolitan Region supervised by 唐執玉 (Táng Zhíyù, 1669–1733), 劉於義 (Liú Yúyì, 1675–1748), and 李衛 (Lǐ Wèi, 1688–1738) — successive jiānxiū 監修 compiled by 田易 (Tián Yì, b. 1682, d. unknown) — biānzuǎn 編纂

About the work

The first comprehensive provincial gazetteer of Zhílì 直隸 (the Metropolitan Region surrounding Běijīng), in 120 juan and 31 categories. Commissioned by the Yōngzhèng emperor’s blanket edict of Yōngzhèng 7 (1729) ordering all provinces to revise their gazetteers as documentary feed for the projected Dà Qīng yītǒng zhì 大清一統志, it superseded the brief Kāngxī 11 (1672) draft compiled in only a few months by Yú Chénglóng 于成龍 and Gē’ěrgǔdé 格爾古德 with the Hanlin compiler Guō Bīn 郭棻. Three successive Zhílì governors-general — Táng Zhíyù, Liú Yúyì, and Lǐ Wèi — held nominal supervision over the project; the actual compilation was entrusted to a working group based at the Liánhuāchí 蓮花池 in Bǎodìng 保定, headed by the former Chénzhōu prefectural sub-magistrate Tián Yì 田易. Compilation ran 1729–1735 (Yōngzhèng 7–13); Lǐ Wèi presented the work and wrote the principal preface in the fourth (清和) month of Yōngzhèng 13 (1735), with earlier prefaces by Liú Yúyì (Yōngzhèng 11/2 = 1733) and Táng Zhíyù (Yōngzhèng 12/12 = early 1735). The Sìkù received the work and re-collated it in Qiánlóng 43/11 (1778).

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Jīfǔ tōngzhì in 120 juan is by Lǐ Wèi 李衛, Minister of War and Governor-General of Zhílì, and others (the Sìkù tíyào writes “…zhuàn”; in the case of provincial gazetteers, however, “撰” stands for “supervised”, not “composed”, as the Sìkù editors themselves note in the appended remark below). From the Yuán onward, although there have been such works as the Xījīn zhì 析津志 recording the antiquities of the capital region, what they record extends only to the capital itself; the territory within the metropolitan region was, under the Míng, directly subject to the Six Boards (六部) and not provided with a Provincial Administration (布政) or a Provincial Surveillance Commission (按察), so that — alone among the provinces — it had no provincial gazetteer to its name.

When our dynasty established its capital, a special Governor of Zhílì (直隸巡撫) was appointed to take charge of the region. In the eleventh year of Kāngxī (1672) the Grand Secretary Wèi Zhōuzuò 衛周祚 memorialised that the prefectures and counties of the empire be ordered each to compile its own gazetteer; the request was approved by edict. Upon this the Zhílì governor Yú Chénglóng 于成龍 and Gē’ěrgǔdé 格爾古德 (and others) undertook a first attempt, entrusting the work to the Hanlin reader-in-waiting (shìdú 侍讀) Guō Bīn 郭棻. The book was finished after only a few months, and its discussion was not exhaustively reliable.

In the seventh year of Yōngzhèng (1729), Shìzōng Xiànhuángdì commanded the empire to revise its provincial gazetteers and submit them to the Bureau of History as material for the selection of the Yītǒng zhì. The Governor-General Táng Zhíyù 唐執玉 reverently received the imperial decree and engaged the former Chénzhōu prefectural sub-magistrate (同知) Tián Yì 田易 and others, setting up an editorial bureau at the Liánhuāchí 蓮花池 to gather and compile materials, examining them in detail. Subsequently Liú Yúyì 劉於義 and Lǐ Wèi 李衛 succeeded one another in this duty; arranging and ordering the matter step by step, they finally brought the book to completion in the thirteenth year of Yōngzhèng (1735). It is divided into 31 categories, with the Rénwù 人物 (“Persons”) and Yìwén 藝文 (“Letters”) sections each further subdivided. It corrects misreadings, fills in lacunae, and is suitably proportioned in detail; compared with the earlier gazetteer it is rather more complete.

Reverently collated and submitted, eleventh month, Qiánlóng 43 (December 1778). Editors-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General collation officer: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

(Editors’ note: In the case of provincial gazetteers, the work is invariably superintended by the Governor-General or Governor of the province, but neither of them is the actual compiler. They are therefore distinct from the directors-in-chief of book-compilations who actually preside over the writing. For this reason we do not write “by 某 zhuàn” but “by 某 jiānxiū”, to reflect the truth. Multiple supervising officials are commonly involved across several reigns; in such cases only the one who actually presents the finished work is given on the title-page, in accordance with the TángSòng practice. We make this matter explicit here in the present case; it is to be applied likewise in all such works hereafter.)

Abstract

The Jīfǔ tōngzhì belongs to the second wave of Yōngzhèng provincial gazetteers commissioned by the edict of Yōngzhèng 7/3 (1729), which sought to harvest contemporary administrative-geographic data from every province as material for the projected Dà Qīng yītǒng zhì (an effort that would consume a further fourteen years before the first imperial gazetteer was completed under Qiánlóng in 1743 — Wilkinson §66.4.3.3). The Zhílì project differed from the others in two respects: the region had no late-Míng provincial gazetteer of its own (Zhílì being directly administered from Běijīng under the Míng), and the Kāngxī-era Jīfǔ tōngzhì compiled in 1672 by Yú Chénglóng 于成龍 (1617–1684) and Guō Bīn 郭棻 had been hastily produced and was widely regarded as inadequate. Compilation accordingly began effectively from a clean slate, in an editorial bureau established at the Liánhuāchí 蓮花池 in Bǎodìng 保定 (the Zhílì governor-general’s seat). The principal biānzuǎn was Tián Yì 田易 (b. 1682, fl. into the 1730s; native of Dàxīng, jìnshì of Kāngxī), formerly tóngzhī of Chénzhōu prefecture in Húnán.

The supervision passed through three successive Zhílì governors-general:

• Táng Zhíyù 唐執玉 (1669–1733; Wǔjìn 武進 native; jìnshì of Kāngxī 42 = 1703), under whom the project was launched in 1729 and pursued until his death in office in early Yōngzhèng 11 (1733); his preface dated Yōngzhèng 12/12 (early 1735) was clearly written posthumously or, more likely, dated retrospectively from a draft.
• Liú Yúyì 劉於義 (1675–1748; Wǔjìn native; jìnshì of Kāngxī 51 = 1712), serving as acting Zhílì governor-general from late 1732, who wrote the second preface dated Yōngzhèng 11/2 (1733) — Liú later went on to supervise the Shǎnxī tōngzhì (KR2k0050) in 1734.
• Lǐ Wèi 李衛 (1688–1738; qíng of Tóngshān 銅山 in Xúzhōu prefecture; jail-purchase magistrate, the most colourful Yōngzhèng administrator), who took up the Zhílì governorship-general in Yōngzhèng 10 (1732) and presented the finished work with his own preface dated Yōngzhèng 13/4 (清和月, 1735). Lǐ Wèi is the official whose name appears on the imperial copy and who is therefore credited as principal jiānxiū in the Sìkù tíyào; in fact the project crossed three administrations.

The 120-juan structure is set out in 31 categories: Zhàoyù 詔諭 (juan 1–6), Chénzhāng 宸章 (juan 7–10, imperial compositions), Jīngshī 京師, Xīngyě 星野, Jiànzhì yán’gé 建置沿革, Xíngshèng jiāngyù 形勝疆域, Shānchuān 山川 (juan 17–24), Chéngchí 城池, Gōngshǔ 公署, Xuéxiào 學校, Hùkǒu 戶口, Tiánfù 田賦, Cāng’ào 倉厫, Yánzhèng 鹽政, Bīngzhì 兵制, Guānjīn 關津, Yìzhàn 驛站, Héqú 河渠, Shuǐlì yíngtián 水利營田, Línglǐng 陵墓, Císì 祠祀, Sìguān 寺觀, Gǔjī 古蹟, Fēngsú 風俗, Wùchǎn 物產, Rénwù 人物 (further subdivided), and Yìwén 藝文 (further subdivided). The substantial Shuǐlì yíngtián section reflects the prominence of the Yōngzhèng-era Zhílì irrigation and rice-paddy reclamation programme directed by the imperial princes (Yìnxiáng 胤祥 in particular), to which Lǐ Wèi’s preface explicitly alludes.

The work was superseded in late Qīng usage by Huáng Péngnián’s 黃彭年 Guāngxù Jīfǔ tōngzhì of 300 juan (1884), but the YōngzhèngQiánlóng Jīfǔ tōngzhì preserved here in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū remains the principal documentary source for the Yōngzhèng-era reorganisation of the metropolitan region’s hydraulics and military deployments.

Translations and research

No English translation. The work is a major primary source for Western scholarship on Zhílì agriculture, military reform, and the Yōngzhèng reign more broadly: cited extensively in Pierre-Étienne Will’s Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford, 1990) and in his methodological survey Chinese Local Gazetteers: An Historical and Practical Introduction (Notre Dame, 1992); also in Madeleine Zelin, The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century Ch’ing China (California, 1984). For the Zhílì rice-paddy programme see Pierre-Étienne Will, “Un cycle hydraulique en Chine: la province du Hubei du XVIe au XIXe siècles”, Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 68 (1980): 261–87, and Wèi Pīpī 魏丕信 (Will), Shíbā shìjì Zhōngguó de guānliáo zhìdù yǔ huāngzhèng 十八世紀中國的官僚制度與荒政 (Jiāngsū rénmín, 2003). Standard mainland reprint: 文淵閣四庫全書 facsimile (Shanghai Guji, 1987), vols. 504–506.

Other points of interest

The tíyào’s appended editorial note on usage of “監修” versus “撰” for provincial-gazetteer authorship is itself a methodologically important statement by the Sìkù compilers — an explicit declaration that all subsequent provincial-gazetteer entries in the Sìkù are to be read as ascribing nominal supervision rather than composition. This is the locus classicus for that catalogue practice and is cross-referenced in the tíyào of every following provincial gazetteer in Dìlǐ lèi 地理類.

Links

• Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §§16.4.1, 66.4.3.3, 66.4.3.4.
• Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers (1992).