Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Against this background, we designed our Hong Kong-based “Geographical
Information System Database of Cotton Textile Industry of the Greater Songjiang
Region from the Late Ming to the Mid Qing” as a GIS platform that uses quantitative
and spatial methods to analyze the successful experiences of this cotton-textile
production region over the last few centuries. To facilitate a precise intra-regional
analysis within the Greater Songjiang region, this historical GIS identifies town and
city locations and then draws the sub-county division boundaries (i.e.,
bao
or
du
)in
reference to the location data of temples and schools, trade routes, topology and
so on. This is all executed according to information derived from the different
categories of several generations of local gazetteers from the Greater Songjiang
region.
To build a meaningful GIS that is appropriate for spatial analysis, it is critical
to create spatial units at the highest resolutions possible so that the advantages of
the computer system's calculation and display can be fully exploited. In a GIS,
maps are normally converted into raster data by scanning (Gregory and Ell
2007
:
43). We are well aware of the limitations in using Tan Qixiang's historical maps.
Therefore, our first step was to lay our foundation on a modern Shanghai area map
at a much higher resolution. We selected the digital version of the 1:150,000 map of
Shanghai Municipality circa 1999 prepared by the Shanghai Institute of Surveying
and Cartography (
www.shsmi.cn
)
as our base map, with reference to historical maps
collected from the
Shanghai lishi dituji
(
1999
) and modern maps
上海歷史地圖集
of nearby counties with scales of about 1:200,000.
Because the target of our research is a relatively small region the size of one or
two prefectures (comprising seven to nine counties), drawing the administrative unit
boundaries small enough to suit our meso-level research purpose required drawing
the township boundaries, i.e. the
bao
of the Songjiang prefecture and the
du
of
other counties in the Jiangnan region. The role of these micro divisions in traditional
Chinese administrative systems can be considered as follows. Under a prefecture,
there are counties; under the counties, there are
xiang
units and under the
xiang
units are the
bao
or
du
. From the early Ming Dynasty to the Republican period, a
varied number of taxation and administrative units of 110 households, i.e., tu
鄉
or
圖
li
, were assigned to each
bao
or
du
. In the traditional Chinese administrative
systems, the townships were the principal units by which a county magistrate
organized tax administration and were usually identified by a numbering system.
The Ming Dynasty Founding Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang
里
(1368-1398) saw
the townships in some regions as suitable units for setting up community granaries.
He also ordered every unit to construct altars for conducting state-cult sacrifices.
These units were also used to coordinate water control (Brook
2005
). Although
many new counties in the region were created over the course of the Ming-Qing
periods by re-organizing the original county borders, the basic
bao
and
du
units
remained basically unchanged until the end of the Qing Dynasty. As we used very
similar measures to deal with the region's distinct parts, we now take the Songjiang
prefecture as an example to explain our methods and procedures for drawing the
sub-county unit boundaries.
朱元璋
Search WWH ::
Custom Search