In this paper, the historical data about drought and flood in the western part of the Jianghuai (江淮) region in Ming and Qing dynasties are sorted out, and quantified hierarchically by year and county. Then, by calculating the average grade value of drought and flood and the 10-year moving average value, the time series of dry-wet change in this area from 1450 to 1911 are reconstructed. The results show that there were six dry-wet phases in this area. From 1450 to 1490, the drought was mainly mild. From 1491 to 1545, drought and flood disasters occurred frequently, and the fluctuation of dry and wet climate was obvious. From 1546 to 1625, there were few droughts and floods, and the dry and wet conditions were relatively stable. From 1626 to 1710, moderate drought events were dominant, and the frequency of extreme drought events increased significantly. From 1711 to 1860, wetness dominated. From 1861 to 1911, dry-wet trend fluctuated and tended to be wet. Lakes in this region were also affected in dry and wet stages.

On the basis of the existing system in late Tang Dynasty, regimes of the Five Dynasties continued to set up Tuanlianshi-governed and Fangyushi-governed prefectures. By the end of the Later Zhou, there were 19 Fangyushi-governed prefectures and 10 Tuanlianshi-governed prefectures. In the meantime, the conglomeration of Fangyushi-governed and Tuanlianshi-governed prefectures gradually moved eastward from Guanzhong and the west of Central Plain to the Central Plain, with Luoyang and Bianzhou as the center. Towards the end of Later Zhou Dynasty, Fangyushi-governed and Tuanlianshi-governed prefectures were concentrated in the Central Plain, Huainan, Southern Hebei, and showed a trend of continuous integration. Furthermore, Fangyushi-governed and Tuanlianshi-governed prefectures had become an important measure of the central government to weaken the power of the Fangzhen. After setting up Fangyushi-governed or Tuanlianshi-governed prefectures, Fangzhen with jurisdiction over more than three prefectures tended dissolve and became similar to those with two prefectures, which greatly strengthened the central government’s control over local military affairs.

This study casts light on the small-scale regional development and city-building in Ruoqiang during the Qing. The main material of the study includes Chinese historical records, English language reports of modern surveys and field investigations. The unparalleled advantageous location of Ruoqiang city in terms of transportation brought it prosperity. Ruoqiang is a nodal city on the passage from Xinjiang to Qinghai and Gansu, and the region is characterised by its dotted oases. However, the migrations and the local inhabitants held different reactions to the central government’s policies. The migrations to Ruoqiang clustered around Chaklik (Ruoqiang), and their cultivation activities held the pattern of discarding after poor harvest. Meanwhile, the native inhabitants, represented by the Lop people, moved to the Milan oasis and readapted to new lifestyles. This study shows that the opening-up of Ruoqiang, under the Qing’s policy of Systems the Same to That of Mainland, resulted in the behaviour readaptations of different social groups, while the dotted oases maintained a relative balance between them.

Since the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the legend that Zong Ze was born in Shibantang (石板塘) village and later moved to Niansanli Town is popular in Yiwu County. Textual research reveals that the related documents about Yiwu Zong’s genealogy descending from the Southern Song Dynasty were counterfeited in the late Ming Dynasty. On this basis and using the biographic chronicle of Zong Ze compiled by Qiao Xingjian, it is pointed out that Zongtang village is the birthplace of Zong Ze. Finally, the relevant geographical information from the epitaphs and poems written by Zong Ze, Chen Liang, Huang Jin, etc. is extracted. From the perspective of life circle, the geographical information proves that Zongtang village is the actual hometown of Zong Ze, while neither Shibantang village or Niansanli Town fit the geographical relationship as documented in Song and Yuan dynasties.

青溪是六朝建康城东一条重要河流。五代杨吴、南唐时期,青溪水被截入金陵城外壕中,原城内青溪部分逐渐湮塞废弃。近些年来,南京城市考古和六朝建康城市空间研究取得重大进展,确定了建康宫城的范围,进而可以明确青溪所在的区域范围,结合史料和在此区域考古发掘的多处河道遗迹,基本可以复原出建康城东侧青溪故道。这一研究为复原六朝建康城水系及城市空间形态提供了新的范例。

唐后期的团练、防御州,即本州刺史兼任团练、防御使的州。在行政层级上,团练、防御州可分为高层政区和支郡两类。从军事属性上而言,州军敕额数一般数千,甚至可达万人,远超一般刺史州,防御州军队的主体为官健,团练州军队则由团结兵和官健组成。会昌五年,团练、防御州主要集中于上、东二都周边诸州,以及沿淮诸州。结合团练、防御州的属性和分布,可知中央设置团练、防御州主要有三个政治意图: 军事上拱卫京师;维护漕运安全;归还州刺史军权,限制方镇军权。

明朝嘉靖七年,全国范围内爆发了发生概率为2%的特别极端干旱事件。严重的旱灾在北方及南方九省肆虐,导致占缴纳全国赋税额度七成有余的地区遭受大面积的粮食减产。这一事件造成当年明廷不得不在大幅减免内地税粮的同时大规模提高财政支出,以用于内地赈济和边防供给,酿成中央政府的巨额财政赤字。此次干旱暴露了明廷盐政败坏、宗室占田、军屯荒废等方面的弊端,边防供给体系失效。明廷不得不通过改革盐政、核查六部乃至清查勋戚庄田等一系列革新措施来筹备用于赈济和供边的粮饷,以应对危局。这促成了“嘉靖革新”的开启。

清朝乾隆年间统一新疆后,北路伊犁与东路乌鲁木齐两地军府体制逐步建立,随之而来的大量满汉官兵及外藩朝贡人员对口粮稻米大量需求,促使两地开展水稻种植。文章利用满汉文档案资料详细探讨了伊犁与乌鲁木齐等地的水稻种植始末,包括试种时间、稻种来源、种植形式与收获分成等内容,并指出两地水稻种植的总体特色(兵屯、民屯、旗屯与商屯并存,汉人、满人及维吾尔人均参与其中),这些特征正是清朝治理新疆期间当地人文政治地理、自然经济地理及族群分布格局的真实反映。

利玛窦于1608年“木刻墨印+彩色摹绘”的纸质本《坤舆万国全图》,在1922年被发现并入藏北京历史博物馆,1933—1936年间转藏于南京中央博物院,即今南京博物院。从公展记录、摹本比较、现有刊版、图幅尺寸、成图形式、成图底版、摹绘底本、独特价值8个方面可以发现: (1) “南博本”的发现与公展,开启了中国学术界对利氏世界地图研究的现代新篇章; (2) 新发现了有关“南博本”的中外史料; (3) “南博本”的成图形式为“木刻墨印+彩色摹绘”的纸质本; (4) “南博本”与“理格本”有差异; (5) 1602年的原刻版与私刻版有差异。

During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the flood of Fujiang River seriously affected the integrity of Mianzhou city and the normal operation of local governmental institutions after the change of its course. Due to the impending war in Jinchuan and shortage of funds, the governor of Sichuan gave up repairing the walled-city and set Luojiang as the prefecture-leveled city instead. During the Jiaqing period, the local gentry and people jointly maneuvered for the return to the old Mianzhou, which regained its strategic importance during the White Lotus Uprising. The uniqueness of natural setting and historical inertia of human location, which reflected regional difference of flood environmental effect, are the reasons that lead to the relocation and return. The combination of the decision-making process of “actors” and the analysis of geographical mechanism in the study of city relocation is vital to the understanding on the causal relationship and primary or secondary factors, and the presentation of a vivid historical outlook and gaining in-depth historical cognition.

Postal network was a modern element with the characteristic of “spatiality”. For modern China, it was mainly composed of various corporate entities such as Minxin (native postal services), owned by small private capital, and state-run postal services. After its establishment, the Chinese Imperial Post began to encroach on the operating space of Minxin. Based on the digitization work of the 1936 Postal Atlas, published by the Post of Republic of China, it was found that after nearly 40 years, the state-run post had basically completed the integration and construction of a nationwide postal space. In this process, the state-run postal service prudently imitated the operation modes of the Minxin and adopted a variety of innovative business strategies. In addition to building a convenient and fast postal network within and between large and medium-sized cities, the state-run postal service also adopted new business strategies such as “postal agency” in rural areas that could not be covered by railway and road at a very low cost, and completed the coupling with the traditional rural grassroots “periodical market” network. Basically, it has achieved the effect wherever there was commerce, there was postal service. The “postal agglomeration” formed by the state-run postal network and the concentration of postal points have also become a prominent external spatial representation of modernization and a good macro-external indicator for defining the so-called “core” and “peripheral” spaces.

Zou Yilin followed Tan Qixiang to Zhengzhou, Xingyang, Anyang, Xunxian, Huaxian, Puyang, Daming, Handan, Xinxiang, Yanjin, Kaifeng and Xuzhou from June 3rd to July 9th in 1977, making a field trip to investigate the old watercourses of Yellow River. During the trip, Zou Yilin wrote a diary of itinerary, experience and thoughts. The diary is meaningful for recorded the whole field work of Tan’s team, as well as for researchers to know more about the changes of Yellow River watercourses.

This paper compares the surviving and excavated documents and points out that the commandery’s capital county was the highest-ranking among the counties belonging to the same commandery in the Han Dynasty. Based on the rank and order of a commandery’s counties recorded in the Statutes on Salaries (Er Nian Lü Ling: Zhi lü) from Zhangjiashan Han Slips, we can analyze the governance of some commanderies in the early Western Han Dynasty. According to the Statutes on Salaries, the capital of Longxi Commandery in the early Western Han Dynasty was Shangli County; Shang Commandery’s capital was Gaonu County, and the capital of Beidi Commandery was Panyang County. Besides, the capital of Hanzhong, Hedong, and Hainai Commanderies in the early Western Han Dynasty can also be further inferred by the Statutes on Salaries. This document’s value in the study of capital counties in the early Western Han Dynasty needs to be emphasized.

The ranking system of counties first emerged during Yongzheng’s reign, and was generally founded in the 12th year of Qianlong. However, up to 124 adjustments of descriptions and ranks on counties ranks still occurred during the 12th and 43rd year of Qianlong, most of which happened on lower-ranked counties changing into a Zuiyao (most significant) or Yao (significant) ranked ones. In the 43rd year of Qianlong, a new regulation on standardized adjustments of descriptions and ranks was promulgated. Although implemented strictly, many exceptional adjustments were still allowed down to Daoguang’s reign. Changes to description hardly happened during the reigns of Xianfeng and Tongzhi, only to emerge again from the end of Guangxu’s reign to Xuantong’s reign. Provinces had different modes of county distribution, including anti core-edge distribution, core-edge double centered distribution, linear distribution along a river, coastline or transit lines, similar distribution to developed towns, etc. Fuguo(附郭)counties were generally ranked higher than others in 1911, except for only 48 cases non-conformative to the rule. Moreover, as Hunan province showcases, ranks of counties were not in accordance with commercial benefits for the county magistrate.

The office of the Yingtian Governor originated directly from the Governor of Nanzhili and Zhejiang Province, both of which were set up in the first year of Hongxi. When it was officially set up in the fifth year of Xuande, its governing areas should be Yingtian and other ten prefectures rather than only the three prefectures of Suzhou, Songjiang and Changzhou as considered in traditional researches. During the period of Zhengtong, due to the abolishment of the Zhejiang Governor, as well as the need of supervising grain tax collection and water conservancy in the Taihu Lake Basin, the administrative areas of the Yingtian Governor was extended to Western Zhejiang for a long time. Thus, a total of fourteen prefectures were under its administration. As for the prefecture of Chengtian, it had been under the administration of the Huguang Governor after the fourteenth year of Jiajing, but never taken over by the Yingtian Governor. The opinion that Chengtian had been a detached enclave of the Yingtian Governor from the fourteenth year of Jiajing to the beginning of Longqing is not credible. Researchers holding this opinion might be misled by the related records in the current version of the Records of Emperor Shizong of the Ming Dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty Chinese cliff carvings discovered in the Dil mountain of Ulziit in the central Gobi Province of Mongolia indicate that this area was an important node on the grassland transportation line at that time. The route through the desert to capital of the Uyghur Empire, as recorded in the New Book of Tang passed through this area as the ‘Eastern Uyghur Road’, also known as the ‘the road of having an audience with Tengri Khan’. The inscriptions were carved during the rule of restraint period of the Tang Dynasty in the second year of Linde, which confirmed the historical event that Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty offered sacrifices to heaven and earth in Mount Tai and invited the leaders of Tiele tribes in the Boreal desert to come, which reflected the communications between the Tang Dynasty and the northern nomads and the control of the Tang government over the vassal prefectures in the Boreal desert.

After the principle of setting taxes based on the original amount of Wanli was determined in the early Qing Dynasty, a large number of wasteland figures were formed through “removing wasteland and collecting reclaimed land”(Ti Huang Zheng Shu). Through the investigation of Shanxi Province in the early Qing Dynasty, it can be seen that the number of wasteland mainly refers to the excluded wasteland in the original land amount. In the process of wasteland classification and successive census, the numbers showed characteristics of delay, stratification and systematic missing. Under the influence of the policy of exemption, on the one hand, it included some uncultivated or wasteland difficult to cultivate formed in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, on the other hand, it did not include a large number of easily reclaimed wasteland formed in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty. In the reclamation process in early Qing Dynasty, these wasteland number became an important basis for the rulers to judge the reclamation situation and the starting point of reclamation. Therefore, although the situation of reclamation in Shanxi was not good before Yongzheng’s era, the actual reclamation process of wasteland started earlier, was larger in scale and completed faster than that was reflected in the reclamation figures, and it’s different in terms of spatial process.

The Jianghan Plain has long maintained a dominant position in rice-based grain production, and this dominance has persisted continuously into modern times. With the constantly evolving domestic and foreign economic conditions and the growing connection between ports and the hinterland, there has been a gradual increase in the proportion of cotton cultivation. This resulted in a spatial division of labor in crop cultivation. Research on the changes in crop cultivation in the Jianghan Plain reveals that the geographical environment in which small-scale farmers are located influenced their crop selection. While external economic conditions enhanced the competitiveness of specific crops, the location of ports constrained the extent of trade expansion. Finally, the analysis of changes in crop cultivation demonstrates that the economic advantages historically held by Hankou had become a significant factor in the widening gap between inland and coastal areas during the process of modernization.

Tao River, which is recorded in the volume of Zhuozhang River of Notes to the Book of Rivers, was thought to be the current Tao River by many scholars through history, while Yan Gengwang argued that it should be Guguan River. However, there are discrepancies between the two opinions. Actually, the watercourse of the ancient Tao River include the watercourse of present Gantao River, Ye River and the ancient watercourse of Ye River. We thought the reason the current Tao River bears the name is that Cai Gui misunderstood Notes to the Book of Rivers.

Reconstructing the temporal and spatial process of population change in mountainous settlements is a significant way to understand the population development in historical periods.Taking Yanhe village, a mountainous settlement in Southwest China, as an example, we estimated the whole number and average size of households, and reconstructed the population change process of the village in the past three hundred years mainly with fieldwork and document research.The number of households was converted on the basis of a proxy index, namely the number of marriageable men from the predominant generation at a given time point.We used the family structure model to calculate the average size of households according to the marriage, birth and death data of several villages in the basin.Then, we calculated an empirical value as a substitution, with the age composition data of 1953, and the average size of children and elderly per household in the basin, to reconstruct the average size of households before 1920.Therefore, a long-term average size of households was obtained.This method is meaningful for the population sequence reconstruction in the intergenerational resolution of mountainous settlements in historical period.The population change in mountainous area has the characteristics of large fluctuations and obvious stages, and it fell faster than rose.

The formation of sandbanks in the Lijiang River was a result of the interactions between natural environment and human activities. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, people continuously flowed into the upper reaches of the Lijiang River to engage in agricultural work and land reclamation. They also reshaped the natural environment of the mountainous upstream area. The soil unearthed left from agricultural work and those carried by rainwater were then swept out into the Lijiang River, resulted in sediment, which accelerated the formation and development of sandbank, and shaped the appearance of the Lijiang river bed in Guilin city. The settlements were also transferred from the sandbars to sandbanks. The relationship between man and land in Lijiang River basin changed as thus.

Against the background of modernization, the distribution pattern of roads in Qinghai changed significantly from the beginning of Qing Dynasty to the founding of People's Republic of China. The Xining-Lhasa road was the main line of the traffic network of Qinghai. The changes of the distribution pattern in modern times epitomize the road network distribution patterns of those in the history. Based on a set of old maps from 1935 in the National Library of China, the changing process of the distribution pattern of Xining-Lhasa road in Qinghai were restored. Three driving forces led to road network changes in modern Qinghai: the abolition of the postal system, which led to the collapse of the official road system in last Qing Dynasty, the new transportation system brought by new vehicles, and the developing activities in the period of Republic of China in Qinghai. The changes of the distribution pattern of Xining-Lhasa Road showed the road network pattern in ecologically vulnerable area was prone to the influences from ever changing human factors in the historical period. The restoration of modern roads based on richly surveyed map data was a preliminary work towards accurate restoration of ancient roads.

After the port opening of Shanghai city, social condition experienced great changes. A founding was that the main worshipers of Hong Temple became the prostitute group. The main reasons of such transformation were the prosperity of prostitution thereby and the policy change for sacrificial ceremonies. Newspapers and modern novels accelerated the transformation of traditional folk beliefs in modern Shanghai as well.