Guìzhōu tōngzhì 貴州通志
Comprehensive Gazetteer of Guìzhōu supervised by 鄂爾泰 (È’ěrtài / Ortai, 1677–1745) — jiānxiū 監修 compiled by 靖道謨 (Jìng Dàomó, fl. early 18th c.) and 杜恮 (Dù Quán, fl. 1730s) — biānzuǎn 編纂
About the work
The Yōngzhèng-era Guìzhōu tōngzhì in 46 juan, compiled in tandem with the Yúnnán tōngzhì (KR2k0055) under the supervision of the YúnGuì Governor-General Ortai 鄂爾泰. Drafting was directed by Yáozhōu zhīzhōu Jìng Dàomó 靖道謨 (also principal biānzuǎn of the Yúnnán tōngzhì) and continued by Rénhuái 仁懷 zhīxiàn Dù Quán 杜恮; the woodblocks were not completed until Qiánlóng 6 (1741) — the latest of the Yōngzhèng-cohort gazetteers to be issued. The jìnbiǎo was filed by Acting-Governor Zhāng Guǎngsì 張廣泗, then SìchuānYúnnánGuìzhōu Governor-General. Guìzhōu’s prior gazetteer tradition was even thinner than Yúnnán’s: the Míng compiled gazetteers under Zhào Zàn 趙瓚, Xiè Dōngshān 謝東山, and Guō Zǐzhāng 郭子章; the early-Qīng Wèi Jìqí 衛旣齊 added further redactions; Tián Wén 田雯’s Qiánshū 黔書 contributed elegant prose but limited factual detail.
Tiyao
We respectfully note: the Guìzhōu tōngzhì is supervised by Grand Secretary Ortai 鄂爾泰 of our dynasty, and others. This book and the Yúnnán tōngzhì were compiled in the same period and at the same time. The man who took charge of its affairs was likewise the Yáozhōu zhīzhōu Jìng Dàomó 靖道謨, who was succeeded by the Rénhuái zhīxiàn Dù Quán 杜恮. As against the various provincial tōngzhì compilations, this one is the latest to reach completion: only by Qiánlóng 6 (1741) were the cuttings finished. The Governor-General concurrently managing the Provincial Governorship, Zhāng Guǎngsì 張廣泗, presented it with a memorial.
Guìzhōu lies remote in the southwest, where Miáo and Mán peoples are interspersed. Under the Míng, a Dūzhǐhuī sī 都指揮司 was first established; later this was reformed into a Bùzhèng sī 布政司, with prefectures and counties separately set up — and was then ranked alongside the various provinces. Yet before the TángSòng era it had only been jīmí and not entirely separated; the wild forest had not been fully cleared. Hence its records and registers in antiquity are sparse — the most desolate and rough.
In the Míng, Zhào Zàn 趙瓚 first launched the new gazetteer; thereafter Xiè Dōngshān 謝東山 and Guō Zǐzhāng 郭子章, and in our dynasty Wèi Jìqí 衛旣齊 and others, each in turn enlarged and revised — gradually acquiring contour. Yet because the documentary remains were still hard to substantiate, omissions still could not be avoided. Only Tián Wén 田雯’s Qiánshū 黔書 has been called notably bold and elegant in its writing — but its intent lies in adornment of literary refinement, and it does not lay out factual matters in the round. The present book gathers the writings of various authors and compiles them into a single volume. Although it cannot fully reach across antiquity and the present, in the cartography of the Qián province it is far more detailed than the older texts.
Abstract
The 1741 Guìzhōu tōngzhì is the canonical Qīng-era documentary monument of the gǎitǔ guīliú reforms in Guìzhōu — a province whose pre-Yuán political history was almost wholly that of jīmí tributary loose-rein governance. The work documents the unprecedented Yōngzhèng-era assertion of direct bureaucratic control over the Miáo, Bùyī (Yí), and Dòng populations of the WǔlǐngYúnguì watershed. Its principal biānzuǎn Jìng Dàomó (also the lead compiler of the Yúnnán tōngzhì) and the continuing biānzuǎn Dù Quán (the Rénhuái zhīxiàn) both worked in direct administrative contact with the Miáo communities under transformation.
The work succeeds the early-Qīng Kāngxī-era Guìzhōu tōngzhì of Wèi Jìqí (1673), as well as the Míng compilations by Zhào Zàn (Jiājìng-era), Xiè Dōngshān (Wànlì-era), and Guō Zǐzhāng (Wànlì-era). Its principal Míng-era literary precedent is Tián Wén (1635–1704)‘s Qiánshū 黔書, but the Sìkù tíyào explicitly criticizes that work as ornamental rather than substantive. The 1741 tōngzhì in turn was substantially revised by Yáng Wéiyùn 楊維瀛’s Guìzhōu tōngzhì of 1815. The Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū version (vols. 571.1–572.1) is the standard text.
The lateness of the work’s woodblock issuance (1741, twelve years after the imperial mandate of 1729) reflects the disruption of the Yōngzhèng-era Miáo rebellion of 1735–1736 in the eastern Guìzhōu prefectures of Táigǒng 台拱, Qīngjiāng 清江, and Bāzhài 八寨; the gazetteer documents the suppression of that rebellion and the subsequent re-imposition of gǎitǔ guīliú under Zhāng Guǎngsì’s military command.
Translations and research
No comprehensive English translation. Heavily exploited in Western and Chinese scholarship on the gǎi-tǔ guī-liú reforms, the Yōngzhèng Miáo rebellion, and the Sino-Miáo / Sino-Bùyī frontier: John E. Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200–1700 (Harvard, 2007); Jodi L. Weinstein, Empire and Identity in Guizhou: Local Resistance to Qing Expansion (Washington, 2014); Donald S. Sutton, “Ethnicity and the Miao Frontier in the Eighteenth Century,” in Empire at the Margins (UC Press, 2006); Daniel McMahon, Rethinking the Decline of China’s Qing Dynasty: Imperial Activism and Borderland Management at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Routledge, 2014). For comparative ethnography see Norma Diamond, “Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary Views,” in Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers (Washington, 1995).
Other points of interest
The Guìzhōu tōngzhì is the only Yōngzhèng-cohort provincial gazetteer to document an active counter-insurgency campaign in real time — Zhāng Guǎngsì’s TáigǒngBāzhài suppression of 1735–1736. The Wǔbèi and Bīngfáng sections are correspondingly more developed than in any other provincial tōngzhì of the cohort, preserving substantial documentary materials on early-Qīng frontier military logistics, the tǔbīng (native militia) system, and the post-rebellion settlement of the eastern-Guìzhōu prefectures.
Links
- Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11086225 (貴州通志)