Guǎngdōng tōngzhì 廣東通志
Comprehensive Gazetteer of Guǎngdōng supervised by 郝玉麟 (Hǎo Yùlín, d. 1745) — jiānxiū 監修 compiled by 魯曾煜 (Lǔ Zēngyù, d. 1753) — biānzuǎn 編纂
About the work
The Yōngzhèng-era Guǎngdōng tōngzhì in 64 juan and 35 categories (four newly added, thirty-one revising older categories), the work was supervised by Hǎo Yùlín 郝玉麟 (Governor of Guǎngdōng, Vice-Minister of War, Right Vice Censor-in-Chief) under the imperial edict of Yōngzhèng 7 (1729). Its drafting bureau opened in Yōngzhèng 8/6 (1730/7) and concluded in Yōngzhèng 9/5 (1731/6) — the earliest among the Yōngzhèng-era provincial gazetteer cohort to be completed. Notable for its dedicated Wàifān 外蕃 (foreign-tribute) section — a rare feature in provincial gazetteers — reflecting Guǎngzhōu’s role as the principal Qīng maritime entrepôt and the Sino-Western trade nexus prior to the 1842 Treaty of Nanking.
Tiyao
We respectfully note: the Guǎngdōng tōngzhì in 64 juan is supervised by Hǎo Yùlín 郝玉麟, Governor of Guǎngdōng, Vice-Minister of War, and Right Vice Censor-in-Chief, and others. Lǐngnán is a recondite zone of the yánhǎi (sea of fire) — its cartography traceable from the HànWèi onward. Yet such works as the Nánfāng cǎomù zhuàng 南方草木狀 record only natural products; the Lǐngbiǎo lùyì 嶺表錄異 collects only miscellaneous matters; the topography of mountain-pass strategic-points was not in any of them given in detail. Under the Míng there were the works of Dài Jǐng 戴璟, Guō Bì 郭棐, Xiè Zhàozhè 謝肇淛 謝肇淛, and Zhāng Yúnyì 張雲翼 — these were the cartwright’s first attempts (dàlù chuīlún 大輅椎輪), giving only the rough outlines.
In Kāngxī 22 (1683) of our dynasty, a tōngzhì was first compiled, and compared with older versions began to acquire systematic order. The present is the work that Hǎo Yùlín and others received the imperial mandate to compile in Yōngzhèng 7 (1729): collecting and supplementing, comparatively complete and well-rounded. The drafting bureau opened in Yōngzhèng 8/6 and concluded in Yōngzhèng 9/5 — its completion uniquely earlier than that of any other province. Hence amid the work, in some places the older text is taken over and is over-extended; in others the conventions are not consistent, with internal contradictions; none of these have been wholly emended.
Yet the entire work in 35 categories — four newly added, thirty-one redactions of older — has on the whole detail and clarity beginning and end, and is suitable for examination and reference. As to the Wàifān category — which is rare in other gazetteers — the maritime mercantile traffic of the Yuè region runs together; what Hán Yù 韓愈 called “the southeast borders of heaven and earth, in their tens of thousands” — none does not look up to the Pole Star and adore the Imperial Court. Setting them down in a record displays the far-reaching influence of our August Court, on the principle of the Tōngdiǎn’s treatment of the frontier-defense — extending also to the various overseas states.
Abstract
The 1731 Guǎngdōng tōngzhì is one of the earliest of the Yōngzhèng-cohort provincial gazetteers, only the third Qīng-era tōngzhì of Guǎngdōng (after Kāngxī 22 / 1683 and the Hǎo Yùlín-era beginning Kāngxī 14 / 1675 was incomplete). The Sìkù tíyào notes both the work’s strengths (rapid completion, clear organization) and its weaknesses (insufficient editorial harmonization, residual contradictions among different sections). Its most distinctive feature is the Wàifān 外蕃 section recording tributary states and overseas peoples — Sìkù tíyào explicitly compares this to the Tōngdiǎn’s combined treatment of frontier defense and overseas relations.
The biānzuǎn Lǔ Zēngyù 魯曾煜 (d. 1753), zì Qǐmèi 啟美, was a Zhèjiāng (Kuàijī) jǔrén of 1696 and was one of the most experienced provincial-gazetteer editors of the Yōngzhèng period; he subsequently directed several Fújiàn provincial-gazetteer projects. The work is preserved in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (vols. 562.1–564.1).
Translations and research
No comprehensive English translation. Heavily exploited in Western and Chinese scholarship on the Canton trade system, the South China Sea tributary network, and Sino-Western maritime relations: Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong, 2005); Jonathan E. Schlesinger, A World Trimmed with Fur (Stanford, 2017); Pär Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (Oxford, 2012). The Wàifān section has been mined by Geoff Wade, Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu (Singapore, 2005), as a comparand for Míng-era data. For methodology see Pierre-Étienne Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers (1992).
Other points of interest
The Yōngzhèng Guǎngdōng tōngzhì is the only provincial gazetteer in the Sìkù to retain a separate Wàifān category — the Sìkù compilers explicitly approve of this innovation as a Tōngdiǎn-style extension of the frontier-defense treatment to overseas tributary relations. The category preserves substantial documentary materials on early-Qīng Sino-Western maritime contact and the Sino-Vietnamese, Sino-Siamese, and Sino-Lusitanian (Macao) tributary relations.
Links
- Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11062944 (廣東通志)
- Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers (1992); Wilkinson §66.4.3.4.