甘肅通志

Gānsù tōngzhì 甘肅通志

Comprehensive Gazetteer of Gānsù supervised by 許容 (Xǔ Róng, fl. 1730s, d. 1751) — jiānxiū 監修 compiled by 李迪 (Lǐ Dí, fl. early 18th c.) — biānzuǎn 編纂

About the work

The first stand-alone provincial gazetteer of Gānsù 甘肅, in 50 juan and 36 categories. Until the early Qīng, Gānsù had been administered as a constituent of Shǎnxī 陝西 — its eight prefectures and three departments belonging to the Shǎnxī Provincial Administration Commission throughout the Míng. In Kāngxī 2 (1663) the Shǎnxī Right Provincial Administration Commission was relocated to Gǒngchāng 鞏昌 with jurisdiction over the Líntáo 臨洮 prefectures and others; subsequently it was renamed the Gānsù Provincial Administration Commission, with the addition of the GānLiáng 甘凉 prefectures and the appointment of a separate governor — at which point Gānsù became a distinct province for the first time. The Yōngzhèng 7 (1729) edict to compile provincial gazetteers found Gānsù without a provincial gazetteer of its own; the Gānsù governor Xǔ Róng 許容 therefore took on what amounted to a foundational compilation, drawing on what could be recovered of the older QuánShǎn zhì 全陝志 tradition, but plagued throughout by the lack of indigenous documentary materials. The 50-juan compilation was completed and the woodblocks cut in Qiánlóng 1 (1736); the jìnbiǎo (presentation memorial) was filed by Chá Lángā 查郎阿 (Wénhuádiàn Grand Secretary, concurrently SìchuānShǎnxī Governor-General), dated Qiánlóng 1/9/6 (1736/10/10).

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Gānsù tōngzhì in 50 juan is supervised by Xǔ Róng 許容, Governor of Gānsù and Right Vice Censor-in-Chief, and others. The eight prefectures and three departments under Gānsù’s jurisdiction were, under the Míng, all subject to the Shǎnxī Provincial Administration Commission. In the second year of Kāngxī (1663) of our dynasty, the Shǎnxī Right Provincial Administration Commission was first relocated and stationed at Gǒngchāng 鞏昌 with jurisdiction over Líntáo 臨洮 and other prefectures; subsequently this was further reconstituted as the Gānsù Provincial Administration Commission, with the addition of the Gān 甘 and Liáng 凉 prefectures and the establishment of a Governor to preside over the province. From this point, Gānsù became a separate province.

In the seventh year of Yōngzhèng (1729), the various provinces received the imperial decree to compile provincial gazetteers. The Governor Xǔ Róng, observing that Gānsù and Shǎnxī, formerly conjoined and now divided, ought properly to have a fresh draft of its own — but that the older record was lacunose, the relevant archives no longer extant, and the strategic-garrison sub-prefectures and counties (newly converted from wèisuǒ 衛所 military establishments) had had no gazetteer at all and were particularly difficult to document — accordingly carried out a thorough collection. Selecting what was reliable, he set it out under entry-headings, dividing the work into 36 categories. In the first year of Qiánlóng (1736), the woodblocks were finished, and the Wénhuádiàn Grand Secretary, concurrently still managing the SìchuānShǎnxī Governor-Generalship, Chá Lángā 查郎阿 and others presented it with a memorial.

Although the work takes the older QuánShǎn zhì 全陝志 (i.e. the integrated Shǎnxī provincial gazetteer of the pre-1663 period) as its principal source-text (lánběn 藍本), in its evidentiary work and corrections the additional matter amounts to fully sixty or seventy percent of the whole, and it accordingly differs considerably from the older gazetteer. As to those institutions that crossed both provinces — for example, the title-rolls of the Governor-General and Education Commissioner, and the various circuits (Provincial Administration, Provincial Surveillance, Grain, Postal) of earlier dynasties, all of which were stationed at Xī’ān and concurrently administered the whole of Shǎnxī, and so cannot be forcibly partitioned — these are also for the most part cross-listed with the Shǎnxī gazetteer.

Reverently collated and submitted, twelfth month, Qiánlóng 46 (1781).

Abstract

The Gānsù tōngzhì of Yōngzhèng 7 – Qiánlóng 1 (1729–1736) is the foundational provincial gazetteer of Gānsù as a separate province, the only such work in the Yōngzhèng provincial-gazetteer corpus to be a de novo compilation rather than a revision of an existing tradition. The fánlì (general guidelines) preserved at the head of the present juàn 0 articulate the project’s distinctive challenges:

• “Gānsù previously had no separate gazetteer, having always been included under the Shǎnxī tōngzhì — but the Shǎnxī tōngzhì gives full coverage to the Xī’ān, Yánān, Fèngxiáng, Hànzhōng, and Xīngān prefectures and only summary coverage to the Píngliáng, Gǒngchāng, Líntáo, and Qìngyáng prefectures, with the Héxī (west of the Yellow River) garrison-establishments slighter still.”
• “The frontier territory has few books to begin with, and previously suffered two episodes of military fire (1644 Lǐ Zìchéng; 1648 Mǐ Lāyìn / Dǐng Guójú revolt). Pre-Kāngxī 14 (1675) archives are mostly burnt and unrecoverable.”
• “Tax-acreage and tax-quota figures are taken as of Yōngzhèng 10 (1732); items in Tiánfù, Bīngfáng, and Zhíguān are dated to that year as the cut-off.”

The principal biānzuǎn was Lǐ Dí 李迪 (CBDB Qing-dynasty entry 358316; lifedates not given), with substantive editorial input from the Governor Xǔ Róng 許容 himself; Xǔ’s jìnbiǎo notes that the work had been begun under his tenure as Sùzhōu 肅州 zhōu official, and that on his transfer the cut blocks reached fifty juan. The presentation was deferred to await the new accession (Qiánlóng); Chá Lángā 查郎阿, Wénhuádiàn Grand Secretary and acting SìchuānShǎnxī Governor-General, filed the actual jìnbiǎo on Qiánlóng 1/9/6 (1736/10/10).

The 50-juan / 36-category structure follows the standard Yōngzhèng pattern, with the closing Yìwén sub-divided (juan 48: zhuàn, shū, shuō, biàn, kǎo, tíbá; juan 49: shī) and Zájì in juan 50. The work was substantially superseded by Yáng Yìshù 楊義樹’s Guāngxù Gānsù xīn tōngzhì (1909) in 100 juan, but the Yōngzhèng version preserved in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (vols. 557–558) remains the definitive Qīng-era documentary baseline for Gānsù’s eighteenth-century geography. As Wilkinson observes (§63.388), modern Gānsù provincial-gazetteer compilation has built on the documentary baseline of this work even into the late twentieth century.

Translations and research

No English translation. Heavily exploited in Western scholarship on the Qīng-era northwest frontier, the Hé-xī corridor, and Sino-Tibetan / Sino-Mongolian relations: Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard, 2005); James Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864 (Stanford, 1998); Jonathan Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Washington, 1997); David A. Bello, Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China’s Borderlands (Cambridge, 2016). For Gānsù-specific economic history see Wáng Xī-lóng 王希隆, Qīngdài Xī-běi tún-tián yán-jiū 清代西北屯田研究 (Lánzhōu dàxué, 1990). Pierre-Étienne Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers: An Historical and Practical Introduction (1992) is the standard methodological framework. Wilkinson §66.4.3.4 places the work within the broader Qīng provincial-gazetteer corpus.

Other points of interest

The Gānsù tōngzhì is the only Yōngzhèng-era provincial gazetteer to be a foundational rather than a revisionary compilation — Gānsù having become a separate province only in the early Kāngxī era, with no antecedent provincial gazetteer to revise. The fánlì’s candid acknowledgment of the regional documentary deficit (two cycles of military fire, missing archives, no wèisuǒ gazetteers) makes this a particularly valuable methodological document in the early-Qīng historiography of frontier gazetteer-making. The work is also unusual in its formal cross-listing of items shared with the Shǎnxī tōngzhì (KR2k0050), reflecting the institutional reality that the SìchuānShǎnxī Governor-General’s office at Xī’ān continued to administer matters spanning both provinces.

Links

• Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11062940 (甘肅通志)
• Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers (1992).