Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
five
The Politics of Territory in Song
Dynasty China, 960-1276
CE
Elijah Meeks and Ruth Mostern
State power is inherently and fundamentally geo-
graphical. The existence of states is marked by whether or not they hold
sway over some territory on the earth's surface, and their persistence
depends upon how the machinery of dominion is spatially distributed
throughout their territory. However, territorial logic varies from one re-
gime to another, and it may be significantly transformed over time under
the pressure of politics and policies, events and ideologies. Therefore, by
mapping and reading a regime's evolving spatial organization, historians
can gain insights about the spatial distribution of political authority and
changes in sovereign dominion. The advent of historical GIS makes it
possible to manage all of the data about a historical empire in a coherent
system and to track its transformations through time and space.
HGIS and temporally and spatially referenced gazeteers enable his-
torians to study the spatial history of state power empirically.
1
Analysis
of historical gazeteer data reveals shiting geographies of cores and pe-
ripheries, divergent regional paterns of state investment, spatial im-
pacts of catastrophes and policies, and other phenomena that have been
long theorized but difficult to demonstrate. This essay introduces the
Digital Gazeteer of the Song Dynasty (DGSD, htp://songgis.ucmerced
library.info), an innovative and fully implemented digital gazeteer for
frequently changing places.
Now that the DGSD and many other historical gazeteer systems are
completed and functional, it is possible to move beyond discussions of
methodology and to demonstrate that HGIS reveals new insights about
spatial political history. This essay introduces two cases concerning the
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