Putianze (圃田泽), an ancient lake in the Yellow River Basin, serves as an ideal subject for exploring the evolutionary patterns of lakes and swamps on the alluvial plains of the Yellow River’s lower reaches. Based on the historical geographical reconstruction methods, this study delineates the process of Putianze’s silting and disappearance during the Ming and Qing dynasties and analyzes the driving factors behind the background. According to the study, it reveals that the rapid disappearance of Putianze was the result of the long-term cumulative effects of sediment deposition and lake water drainage. This process is characterized by ‘lake silting and human encroachment’, ultimately leading to its transformation into land between the Qianlong and Tongzhi reigns of Qing Dynasty. The direct cause of Putianze’s disappearance was sediment deposition following Yellow River breaches, while long-term human intervention accelerated this process.

The Huai River is one of the major rivers in China, and its main course is documented in Volume 30 of Commentary on the Waterways Classic (Shuijing Zhu), the Chapter Describing the Huai River, which holds significant historical value. Although existing studies have frequently referenced the Chapter Describing the Huai River, a systematic discussion of its text remains rare. Given this, there is an urgent need for a multidimensional and in-depth investigation of the Chapter Describing the Huai River, which pertains to the segment from the source of the Huai River to Xinxi (新息) County, from perspectives such as textual collation, exploration of historical sources, geographical verification, and map interpretation. Besides, the focus should be on providing reasonable explanations for key issues such as the source of the Huai River, the changes in the administrative center of Yiyang (义阳) Prefecture, and the reconstruction of Hongxi Pond, and depicting scientifically accurate maps of Chapter Describing the Huai River through a comparative analysis of historical and contemporary data. This will advance the study of Commentary on the Waterways Classic and provide essential academic support for related fields.

The Yongshun Tusi (永顺土司) in Huguang (湖广) region was firstly established during the Yuan Dynasty and was subsequently granted titles such as Anfusi (Pacification Commissioner), Xuanfusi (Consolation Commissioner), and Xuanweishisi (Consolation and Pacification Commissioner). It was eventually replaced by the bureaucratization of native officers during the Yongzheng reign of the Qing Dynasty. Historically, this was one of the principal Tusi in the Huguang region, and then was successively subordinate to the Sichuan Provincial Administration, the Huguang Provincial Administration, and the Huguang Military Commission. It governed multiple Zhangguansi (native offices) and Tuzhou (native prefectures). The changes in its rank, office location, and jurisdiction reflect the ebb and flow of its power. This paper takes Yongshun Tusi as the research object. Utilizing a variety of sources, including archives, historical records, official histories, local chronicles, genealogies, ancient maps, inscriptions, archaeological reports, and other materials, it clarifies the geographical evolution of Yongshun Tusi, as well as its administrative subordination, location, and jurisdiction, and provides a detailed and in-depth portrayal of its historical evolution.

The development of modern China’s mechanized flour milling industry can be broadly divided into four stages, yet the development across different regions was highly uneven. The establishment and location selection of typical factories reveal that the site choices for mechanized flour milling were the result of a combination of natural resource endowment, regional economic and cultural environments, and the personal concepts of entrepreneurs. Unlike Western flour industries, which were largely influenced by natural factors, the location selection of modern China’s mechanized flour milling industry was more significantly affected by regional economic factors such as transportation, capital, and sales markets. The locational evolution of the national capital mechanized flour milling industry in modern China conforms to the ‘port-hinterland’ model, with industrial development levels exhibiting a gradient decrease from the coastal areas to the inland regions.

A key Kangxi-era reform in Yunnan’s local governance incorporated military garrisons (卫所) into adjacent civil administrations, consolidating dispersed garrison taxes and military household registrations. This process was complicated when the rebel Daxi Army (led by Zhang Xianzhong) and Wu Sangui successively established military and princely estates through land confiscations during the Ming-Qing transition, blurring military-civilian land distinctions and social identities. These actions created institutional loopholes enabling military households—whose tax obligations and registrations spanned multiple jurisdictions—to merge into civilian registries. The ensuing ‘Tonghai-Hexi Border Dispute’ (“通河分疆”) exemplifies these tensions: a county-level conflict over corvée obligations from Seven Longhuo military colonies (龙火七营). This case illuminates Qing efforts to unify household registrations and land taxes during garrison-county integration, fundamentally rooted in disparate corvée burdens that critically shaped military-civil administration reforms.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the government began constructing specialized watercourses to drain water from the Huaiyang Canal and the lakes on its western side into the Yangtze River. During the Qing Dynasty, as the main channel of the Huai River shifted southward, investment in water management projects increased significantly. To the east of the Huaiyang Canal and south of Jinjiawan (金家湾), a water transport and drainage hub system gradually emerged, centered around a cluster of watercourses, gates, and dams. This system became known as the ‘Guijiang Water Network’ (water network from the lower reaches of the Huai River to the Yangtze River, 归江水网). During its development, the Guijiang Water Network evolved numerous subsidiary watercourses, Guijiang dams, and overflow channels, which disrupted the navigation environment of the Huaiyang Canal and the Salt Transportation Canal. In response, officials gradually understood the hydrological connections between the Guijiang Water Network and the upstream rivers and lakes, and established the ‘Tenghu System’ (腾湖制度). This system coordinated water storage and discharge between the water network and the upstream areas, while also diverting salt transportation, grain transport, and flood discharge. This fully reflected the ecological governance wisdom of Qing Dynasty water officials in adapting to the southward shift of the Huai River’s main flow and the changes in the water environment.

The Western Han Dynasty bamboo slips unearthed at Zoumalou (走马楼) reveal the existence of several county-level administrative districts in Changsha State during Emperor Wu’s reign, which are not documented in extant literature. Changlai (长赖) and Nanshan (南山) counties show a relationship of succession with the Linxiang (临湘) townships mentioned in the Eastern Han Dynasty bamboo slips found at Wuyi Square. Specifically, Changlai County was located near Yangshahu (洋沙湖) Village, Yangshahu Town, Xiangyin (湘阴) County, Hunan Province. Nanshan County was situated in the Zhaoshan (昭山) area, Yuetang (岳塘) District, Xiangtan (湘潭) City, Hunan Province. Fuyang (富阳) County was on the north bank of the Fushui River (富水), near Dalu (大路) Township, Tongshan (通山) County, Hubei Province. Nanyang (南阳) County was on the north bank of the Nanshui River (南水), within the area of Luxi (芦溪) Town, Luxi County, Jiangxi Province. A systematic investigation of these newly identified county-level administrative districts in the Zoumalou bamboo slips is of great significance for studying the territory and administrative divisions of Changsha State during the Western Han Dynasty.

During the Republic of China period, the establishment of new urban administrative districts (cities) led to territorial disputes between these cities and their original ‘mother counties’, including conflicts over boundary demarcation and government relocation. Unlike most mother counties that moved their seats to towns within their own jurisdictions, Hang County (杭县) sought to incorporate the Gongchenqiao (拱宸桥) area—then under Hangzhou City’s administration—into its territory and establish it as the new county seat. Eventually, Gongchenqiao was transferred to Hang County and became its new administrative center. By examining the complex process of Hang County’s contested relocation, this study reveals that the move resulted from the interplay between national institutional frameworks and multiple local sociopolitical factors, including internal demands, bureaucratic dynamics, and public sentiment. This case also represents the only instance in Republican-era city-county disputes that involved both jurisdictional redivision and government relocation.

This article examines the process of three longitude and latitude measurement activities conducted in the Shanxi and Shaanxi regions during the Kangxi period and analyzes the sources and complexity of the data in the longitude and latitude tables appended to the Description of China (《中华帝国全志》). Firstly, it reviews the courses of the three measurements carried out in 1697, 1708, and 1712-1713, and reconstructs parts of the measurement routes. Secondly, it outlines the compilation process and different versions of the longitude and latitude tables in the Description of China. Finally, by comparing the similarities and differences between the tables in the Description of China and the results of the three measurements, it reveals the complexity of the data sources for these tables.

The 1930s-1940s witnessed two relocations of Songzi (松滋) County’s administrative center on the south bank of Yangtze River—a quintessential case of water-environment changes triggering cascading effects. During the late Qing Dynasty, the formation of the ‘Bei Jiang Nan Tuo’ (North Mainstream, South Distributaries, 北江南沱) and Songzi River diminished the original shipping advantages of Songzi Town while establishing new hydrological hubs. This transformation reconfigured regional transportation networks and intra-county transit patterns, thereby shifting market-town distributions and economic centers. Consequently, a ‘north-south division’ emerged in political geography, directly driving the administrative relocations. Unlike disaster- or war-induced moves, these transfers resulted from natural geographical changes through causal chains that ultimately altered political geographical patterns. Both relocations reflect compounded effects of transportation, economic, and political geographical factors stemming from water-environment evolution.

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has recently acquired a fragment of a China map drawn by Michal Piotr Boym, a Jesuit missionary who came to China during the late Ming Dynasty. This fragment belongs to the same category as the three previously discovered Type A manuscripts of Boym’s China map. The fragment features annotations in both Latin and Chinese, and its right side is adorned with vignettes depicting human figures along with their respective captions. The annotations indicate that this particular map is the earliest among the Type A manuscripts. It is based on the 1586 edition of the Daming yitong wenwu si yamen guanzhi and may have incorporated several Chinese sources, including the world map by Matteo Ricci. The vignettes, derived from Ming Dynasty prints, faithfully reproduce the originals while integrating Western painting techniques. However, the captions omit the original contexts and assign new narratives to the images, reflecting Boym’s intention to demonstrate the state of Christianity in China during the Chongzhen’s reign. As one of the manuscripts of Boym’s China map, the newly discovered fragment provides insight into the evolution of his cartographic style and the early exchange between China and the West in the fields of geography and art.

Reinforced levees along the Jiangnan Canal disrupted sediment-water balance of Eastern Taihu Lake during the Ming Dynasty. Intense siltation drove rapid expansion of the lake-field water network. During the early Ming period, lake flows could reach canal levees, by the mid-Ming Dynasty, siltation and lake fields fragmented waters west of the canal in Eastern Taihu Lake. Outflow became channel-dependent, forming three key waterways: Xishui Lu (西水路), Dongshui Lu (东水路), and Jiangcao Lu (江漕路). These changes altered lake-canal dynamics, flow patterns, and water network morphology. The Ming-Qing period saw dominant siltation and lake-field consolidation trend of Eastern Taihu Lake force outflow along field edges—north to Guajing Estuary and south to Tangjia Lake (唐家湖). Consequent northward outflow concentration shifted the Wusong River’s main thalweg from Changqiao River (长桥河) to Guajing Port (瓜泾港), triggering major hydrological changes that worsened siltation and reclamation.

Modern annotations of Ming Dynasty historical texts and atlases have confused ‘Wuzhou Island’ (浯洲屿) and ‘Wu Island’ (浯屿) in southeastern Fujian. This paper examines the islands’ names, locations, sizes, economic activities, fortifications, and cartographic labels, confirming that they were distinct geographical entities during the Ming Dynasty. Correcting historical place-name errors help deepen academic understanding of China’s historical maritime sovereignty.

The size of Hangzhou’s urban population on the eve of the Taiping Rebellion has long preoccupied scholars of Ming-Qing economic history. Earlier figures, derived from fragmentary and ambiguous Qing sources, are clearly flawed. Fixing the reference year at 1850, this paper adopts a retrospective method: it tracks changes in the numbers of temples and shops from the mid-Qing to c. 1930 and then links the municipal census data collected by the Hangzhou city government after 1927 back to 1850. The result is an estimated urban population of c. 260 000 for Hangzhou in 1850. The retrospective approach may offer a workable way to reconstruct the pre-Taiping urban populations of other Jiangnan cities.

Merchants’ route books, which emerged in large numbers after the 16th century, were compiled centered on merchant activities, significantly differing from the route books to the capital since the Southern Song Dynasty. Such merchants’ route books have been frequently discovered in field surveys over recent decades. The author alone has newly discovered nearly twenty handwritten copies of merchants’ route books from Huizhou, most of which are related to the transportation of tea and salt by Huizhou merchants, with only two involving ceramics transportation. This article focuses on the Yun Ji Jianghu Lucheng (云记《江湖路程》), which was compiled after the 11th year of the Guangxu reign (1885) in the Qing dynasty. The manuscript details seven commercial routes, spanning Jiangxi (江西), Hubei (湖北), and Shaanxi (陕西) provinces, and involving the Changjiang (昌江), Ganjiang (赣江), Yangtze, and Hanjiang (汉江) waterways. Its primary content outlines the transportation routes for ceramics merchants shipping goods from Jingdezhen to Hanzhong (汉中) in Shaanxi, with additional references to the trade of tung oil and raw lacquer. Although this manuscript may have been transcribed by Huizhou merchants, the inclusion of two routes centered around Fengcheng (丰城) suggests that its original prototype was closely related to the pioneering trade activities and commercial networks of Jiangxi merchants during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Similar to previously discovered commercial route guides formed by Huizhou merchants operating in the Qingshui River (清水江) Basin of Guizhou (贵州), this manuscript may reflect the exchange of commercial knowledge among different merchant groups in the Qing Dynasty.

Based on the hierarchical quantification of data concerning breach and flooding disasters in the lower reaches of the Yellow River during the Ming Dynasty, this study constructs a disaster severity sequence and explores its spatio-temporal distribution patterns and evolutionary trends. The distribution of disaster severity levels exhibited overall equilibrium and temporal clustering. Three distinct periods were identified: two low-frequency flooding periods, three high-frequency but low-intensity flooding periods, and three high-frequency, high-intensity flooding periods. Kernel density analysis indicates that breach sites were primarily distributed along the old course of the Yellow River from the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the center of flooding gradually shifting from Henan to Shandong and Nan Zhili (南直隶). A strong correlation was observed between the disaster severity sequence in the lower reaches and the precipitation record of the Yellow River Basin, indicating that rainfall variations within the basin significantly influenced flooding disasters downstream. Furthermore, a long-term discrepancy existed between the precipitation record of the Yellow River Basin and the severity of downstream flooding disasters throughout the Ming Dynasty, suggesting that social factors also played an important role in driving disaster occurrence.

Through a combination of quantitative analysis and historical sources, this study compares the coordinate systems and map contents of the Qianlong Shisanpai Tu and the Kangxi Huangyu Quanlan Tu, using the provinces of Zhili and Shandong as case studies. By further comparing results with previous research on Guangdong and Guangxi, it is found that the Qianlong Shisanpai Tu inherits the Huangyu Quanlan Tu primarily through the preservation of original content and the continued use of latitude and longitude positioning. At the same time, the Qianlong Shisanpai Tu incorporates significant revisions and additions, including the extensive westward expansion of mapped territory and regionally differentiated updates. The revisions and omissions evident in the map reflect a disregard for the mathematical foundations and cartographic standards established in the Huangyu Quanlan Tu.

Since modern times, the British Empire has conducted long-term illegal surveys and mapping of Xizang in China for the purpose of colonial expansion. Led primarily by the Royal Geographical Society and the Survey of India, these activities were mainly official in nature, supplemented by sporadic support for explorers entering Xizang. Through decades of persistent mapping of parts of Xizang, the British Empire essentially completed a comprehensive survey of the region. The overall outcomes of this mapping are reflected in the Royal Geographical Society’s ‘Tibet and the surrounding regions: compiled from the latest information’ and the Survey of India’s ‘Tibet and adjacent countries’. The ‘Tibet and adjacent countries’ map project represents the most thorough and detailed cartographic effort. The official maps of Xizang produced by the British Empire bear strong imprints of imperial expansion, yet it is these very maps that further attest to the British Empire’s recognition of the territorial integrity of Xizang as part of China during historical periods.

The construction of Japan’s modern East Asian colonial financial sphere was not a short-term economic measure limited to the Pacific War period, but a prolonged colonial process propelled by the continuous expansion of the ‘continental policy’. This financially hegemonic order, established through yen aggression and the enforcement of a yen standard, was dominated by Japanese so-called ‘special banks’ and puppet-regime banks, occupying vast territories both within and outside Japan proper. It was rooted not only in tangible currency systems but also embedded within the intangible clearing network of the ‘Special Yen’ as an international settlement system — exhibiting both institutional domination and spatial variation.

The debate over the location of ‘Dabie’ (大别) recorded in Yugong (《禹贡》) has persisted for nearly two millennia, with the most intense disputes emerging during the Qing Dynasty. Two mainstream viewpoints crystallized: the ‘Hanyang’ theory and the ‘Anfeng’ theory. These interpretations first appeared during Han and Tang Dynasties, initially documented in Hanshu Dilizhi (《汉书·地理志》) and Yuanhe Junxian Tuzhi (《元和郡县图志》), respectively. During Han and Jin periods, the ‘Anfeng’ theory was widely accepted. Between Han and Tang Dynasties, doubts raised by scholars such as Du Yu and Li Daoyuan in their commentaries on classical texts gradually led to diverging opinions. By Tang Dynasty, Li Jifu (李吉甫) formally proposed the ‘Hanyang’ theory. Subsequently, during Song and Ming Dynasties, increasing numbers of scholars endorsed the ‘Hanyang’ theory, which gradually supplanted the older ‘Anfeng’ theory. Finally, in Qing Dynasty, different academic schools reignited a fierce debate over the location of ‘Dabie’. In summary, the shifts in the dispute over the location of ‘Dabie’ since medieval times reflect not only differences in the perspectives of writers and their sources of geographical knowledge, but also the interplay and adaptation between geographical records and classical commentaries.

In 2017, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) adopted the Principles Concerning Rural Landscapes as Heritage, which emphasize the recognition of rural landscapes as a form of heritage. As dynamic and continuously evolving cultural landscapes, rural landscapes are increasingly valued not only for their aesthetic and historical significance but also for their vital role in promoting sustainability. Particular attention is given to the integrated agricultural and ecological values embedded in the sustainable use of natural resources. Grounded in the evaluation criteria for cultural landscapes outlined in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, these principles highlight the global universality and importance of rural landscapes and underscore their critical contribution to sustainable development worldwide. This paper provides a comprehensive review of international theories on rural landscape conservation, traces the evolution of value perceptions, and proposes a six-dimensional framework for understanding rural landscapes as heritage.

During the Song Dynasty, the spatial forms of the Salt Supervisor (盐监), the Mining Supervisor (矿冶监), and the Coin Minting Supervisor (钱监) exhibited considerable diversity. The root cause lays in their fundamental nature as fiscal offices, which also assumed administrative functions beyond resource development according to temporal and local conditions. The overlap between salt production centers and government seats, as well as the coincidence of mining sites and strategic military towns, were key prerequisites for Salt Supervisors and Mining Supervisors to administer entire counties. Furthermore, the locational relationships among salt-producing areas, mining sites, and government seats influenced both the spatial layout and practical functions of these ‘Jian’ (监). The siting of Coin Minting Supervisors was primarily oriented toward proximity to government seats, reflecting a comprehensive balance of factors such as raw material supply, water resources, and transportation. These arrangements illustrated the flexible strategies adopted by the Song rulers to develop resources and govern society in an economical and efficient manner.