Electronic resources

• The China Historical Geographic Information System (CHGIS) project was launched in December 2000, with funding from the Luce Foundation. The CHGIS will establish a standardized coding system to identify historical administrative units for different periods in Chinese History, and will also provide a base GIS platform for researchers to use for spatial analysis,temporal statistical modeling, and representation of selected historical units as digital maps. The project will begin with several temporal slices from the Qing Dynasty and work backwards in time, allowing for additional information about intervening points in time to be added at any stage in the process. The objective is to create a flexible tool that can be used to investigate any sort of geographically specific data related to China. The CHGIS geocodes can be used as unique identifiers in databases, or to mark up texts, which will enable users to import their own datasets into the CHGIS platform. Users will be able to sort, query, and display their data, for different historical periods, or at different levels of aggregation. In addition, the CHGIS is designed to allow for alternate versions of both feature attribute tables, and their related spatial objects. This will enable users to create their own interpretations of historical administrative changes, should they wish to do so, and to store them in a separate spatial data table. In this way, alternate versions and interpretations of Chinese History can be displayed, overlayed, compared, and analyzed statistically. Similarly, alternate feature data tables can be associated with the spatial data in CHGIS, which could be used to generate tables and maps in different languages, or for analysis of highly specialized data, such as environmental change, population studies, the spread of religions, historical linguistics, etc. As part of the CHGIS Project, several useful free search utilities, i.e., non-interactive, are available online:
  • Contemporary Counties – Search a list of all 3,389 official Chinese county level administrative units for the year 1990. Based on the National Standard (Guobiao Table #2260), this search engine provides the County names in Pinyin and Chinese Characters (BIG5 encoding) and their corresponding GB code number.
  • Local Histories – Local Histories (difang zhi) held in the Harvard Yenching Library collection can be searched by Province or by title (Wade-Giles romanization). There are 3,700 searchable records of local histories online, which provide title, author, date and publisher information, as well as HYL call numbers. This is only a partial list of HYL holdings, which we hope to expand in the future.
  • Harvard Map Collection – East Asian Map series have been cataloged by CHGIS and can be searched by Chinese region or by keyword. The map index represents some 29,000 map sheets held in the Harvard Pusey Map Library. In addition to title, date, and publication info, the index provides a description of the map series, Pusey Library call numbers, and rough guide maps showing the area of coverage.
  • Qing Dynasty Place names – Some 9,000 place names for the year 1820 can be searched with direct links to CHGIS webmaps. Each record displays the place names (in Pinyin and Chinese Characters, UTF-8 encoding), the prefecture and province where the place is located, and an automatic guidemap showing where the place is located within China and within its respective province. Users may also launch an interactive guide map for zooming and browsing the GIS data.
  • Chinese Place names Database – 140,000 place names (including variations) for more than 80,000 named features in China are available in a streamlined search engine based on the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency dataset. This utility is useful to look up names in Pinyin, Wade-Giles, or Variant romanized forms. Results include an automatic guidemap (showing the general location of the place), the latitude and longitude coordinates, and the feature type.No special software or plug-ins are needed to use the search engines. For those who wish to have direct access to the complete datasets, including GIS layers, all CHGIS data is available for free download to academic users. CHGIS users may also obtain the data on CD-ROM. The CD-ROM for the CHGIS Version 1.0 has been available for $7.50 (plus postage) from the Cheng & Tsui Company
  • As of November 2003, the project has added time-series geographic datasets for the years 222 BCE to 1911 CE (covering Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu), revised time-slice datasets for all of the Qing empire as of 1820 CE, and new time-slice datasets for seven provinces as of 1911 CE (Shaanxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu). One can access the data by download or by purchase of a CD Rom (available from Cheng and Tsui).The CHGIS Version 2.0 Time Series contains 45 layers of data covering: Prefecture Capitals, County Capitals, Towns and Villages, County Boundaries, Prefectural Boundaries, Province Boundaries, Rivers, Lakes, Historical Coastline, Topographic Background Images, administrative hierarchy table, source notes, and numerous other GIS layers. These datasets, and software for viewing them, are also available for free download from the CHGIS website, and can be searched online using the CHGIS search engine. As new time-series data sets and time-slice data for other regions are finished they will be made available through the CHGIS website.
  • For a parallel project under Academia Sinica, Taiwan, see mention of the “Chinese Civilization in Time and Space” project immediately below.
• See also:
  • 1. “Chinese Civilization in Time and Space Project” (CCTS), which is based on the requirements of multi-disciplinary research applications. The goal of this system at Academia Sinca, Taiwan, in the Institute of History and Philology, is to construct an integrated GIS-based application infrastructure on the spatial extent of China, in the timeframe of Chinese history, and with the contents of Chinese civilization. Although target users of this system are primarily set to be scholars, academic experts, and school teachers, most general spatial- and temporal-based applications are also provided. They are expecting to establish a feedback mechanism of collecting research and application results continuously to fertilize contents and elaborate the value of information integration for users. For example, UC, Berkeley, has established a mirror server at the East Asian Library for the use of scholars and students there. For information, contact Dr. I-chun Fan at: ccts@sinica.edu.tw.
    Note: The creation of the “Chinese Civilization in Time and Space” project is mainly based on Professor Tan Qixiang’s

  The Historical Atlas of China

   and the 1:1,000,000

Digital Map Database of China

 (Arc/China). The copyright of the former is owned by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Academia Sinica, Taiwan, has been exclusively licensed to vectorize it. The copyright of the vectorized

The Historical Atlas of China

 belongs to Academia Sinica and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The copyright of the 1:1,000,000

Digital Map Database of China

 (Arc/China) belongs to the National Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, P.R.C. Academia Sinica, Taiwan, has been authorized to integrate it with the vectorized

The Historical Atlas of China

, and make it available to specific scholarly organizations and persons for academic purposes. Users of the “Chinese Civilization in Time and Space” project should acknowledge the copyright as the follows: Academia Sinica, “Chinese Civilization in Time and Space,” Version 1, (Taipei, September 2002). See also mention of the Harvard-Yenching China Historical Geographic Information System project above.

2. China In Time And Space (CITAS), which is a project initiated by William Lavely to create and maintain databases of spatially- and temporally-referenced data on China. CITAS aims to provide access to a wealth of contemporary and historical information on China at minimal cost to scholars and other non-commercial users. The project utilizes state-of-the-art geographic information system (GIS) technology to integrate tabular and vectorized map data. An unusual aspect of CITAS is its emphasis on the temporal dimension: one project goal is the capability of reconstructing Chinese administrative geography for specific historical dates, and the ability to compare spatial data at two points in time, whether over years or over centuries. Collaboration with Chinese scholars and organizations is integral to the project goals. CITAS is a partnership of China scholars, sponsored by the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies (JCCS), and the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)

3. The Jingban tianwen quantu (Capital Edition of a Complete Map of the World Based on Astronomy) is available in interactive form from Rice University. Users can click on this 18th century map of the world to zoom in for detailed views of particular areas. Richard J. Smith provides a description of the map and its history.

4. Historical and Commercial Atlas of China by Albert Herrmann. Originally published by Harvard in 1935. 59 digitized maps of China, including maps of prehistoric sites, Zhou through Qing dynasties, maps of capital cities (including Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Beijing), and numerous maps of commercial activities, especially for the Republican period. Click here.

5. The Regional Systems Analysis at UC Davis organized by the G.W. Skinner Research Team, Department of Anthropology Young Hall, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA. An interdisciplinary research team led by professors of anthropology, geography, and history is conducting spatial analyses of regional systems in contemporary China as well as early modern Japan and France. For each project they are constructing a spatial framework, referred to as Hierarchical Regional Space (HRS), building on central place theory from Christaller and regional systems theory from von Thunen. Geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical tools facilitate modeling the core-periphery structures of macroregional systems at multiple hierarchical scales. In the societies under analysis here, the HRS model provides a useful framework for explaining the spatial variation in many demographic and ecological phenomena.

The HKUST (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library) Antique Maps Database: The maps included in this database are from the Special Collections of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library. The Antique Maps of China collection includes more than 230 maps, charts, pictures, books and atlases. It represents almost all samples of China maps produced by European cartographers from the 16th to 19th centuries.