Geo-modernity on the Peripheries of 20th-Century China

In twentieth century China influences from abroad, including the importation of scientific disciplines and ideas about race and nationalism, combined with long running domestic concerns to form a potent new justification for territorial control over peripheral regions. My research draws out some of the underlying continuities between “traditional” Chinese geography and twentieth century developments, when Chinese geographers attempted to remake geography into a science, to make the argument that geo-modernity emerged from this fundamental spatial reconceptualization of Chinese territoriality.

This paper examines the way digital humanities aids this research by extracting data from local gazetteers and the limitations of the technology. Since 2015 the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science has developed a set of digital tools (LoGaRT: Local Gazetteers Research Tools) to help historians to quickly extract data from 4,000 local gazetteers that have already been compiled and digitized, and to apply analysis tools (including GIS maps) on the data in order to observe patterns on larger scales. For the past thousand years, from approximately the tenth century through the twentieth century, local officials and elites in China have produced gazetteers, which contain copious information on the local administration, economies, environment, flora and fauna, cultural and religious practices, and in many cases, maps. Searching for images and maps, however, presents different challenges than for texts. Although they are a common feature of local gazetteers, the maps themselves are not yet searchable, which raises questions about the limitations of digitization and digital humanities and their contribution to spatial history.