Forgotten Heroes: San On County and its Magistrates in the Late Ming and Early Qing | 誠品線上

Forgotten Heroes: San On County and its Magistrates in the Late Ming and Early Qing

內容簡介

內容簡介 This book is an attempt to clarify the history of San On County — the broader Hong Kong area — centring on the troubled years of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is based on an in-depth study of the San On County Gazetteer, which allows for a detailed discussion of the role, attitudes, and personalities of the San On magistrates, who were the heads of the county administration during this period. Particular focus is given to Zhou Xiyao (magistrate 1640–1644) and Li Kecheng (magistrate 1670–1675). The study finds that they, and at least some of the other magistrates of this period, were genuinely concerned about the county and its people, and tried as best they could to provide good and effective government for them.

作者介紹

作者介紹 Patrick H. HasePatrick H. Hase is a researcher into local history. He is the author of The Six-Day War of 1899: Hong Kong in the Age of Imperialism (2008), Custom Land and Livelihood in Rural South China: The Traditional Land Law of Hong Kong’s New Territories, 1750–1950 (2013) and other books and articles on the history and ethnography of the New Territories area. He is a past president and honorary fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong, and serves as an honorary advisor to museums in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Kaiping. He currently lectures part time at Lingnan University History Department.

產品目錄

產品目錄 1 Introduction: The Origins and Early Years of the County of San On2 The San On Gazetteer: The Magistrates and the County Community3 The Work of the County Magistrates and Their Magistracies4 The Ming Magistrates: Zhou Xiyao and His Predecessors5 Li Kecheng and the Early Qing Magistrates6 Salt and Fish7 Corruption8 Conclusions

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試閱文字

內文 : Introduction:
The Origins and Early Years of the County of San On
Before 222 B.C. the Kwangtung (廣東, Guangdong) area was inhabited by unsinicised barbarian peoples, and the southern border of the Chinese Empire lay along the Lingnan Mountains (嶺南, Ling Nam), on the northern border of today’s province of Kwangtung. During the fourth and third century B.C., however, merchants from South-East Asia started to arrive to trade at Canton (廣州, Guangzhou), and a thriving mercantile town grew up there. Chinese merchants began to travel south from the empire to Canton to take part in this trade, and a Chinese mercantile community began to establish itself. The first emperor (秦始皇) became concerned that a community of Chinese merchants was growing up outside his control, and he sent his armies across the Lingnan Mountains to bring the Kwangtung area into his empire (234–222 B.C.).

After the Canton area had successfully been absorbed into the empire (222 B.C.), Chinese civilisation slowly spread over the surrounding region. As soon as this happened, counties, to administer this newly Chinese territory, were established. The area to the south and east of Canton, the area centred on the lower East River (東江) valley and the eastern coast of the Pearl River estuary (珠江), was thus divided off to form a new county. This county, at most dates called Tung Kwun (東莞, Dongguan, literally “eastern grasslands”), was originally very large, but was slowly reduced in area until, in 972–973, in the early Song dynasty, it was reduced to the size it was to remain until 1573.

This county of Tung Kwun was centred on the fertile lands along the East River. This was where the county city was established. Between the East River and the Pearl River to the west and between the East River and the southern coast, however, were ranges of hills: in the Song and earlier these ranges were very rough, forest-covered land. Most of the people living in these hills in these early centuries were Yao (猺) people, unsinicised barbarian tribes; the last of these Yao people only disappeared from the area at the time of the Coastal Evacuation in the 1660s.

The coastal strip on the western and southern sides of this range of hills, along the Pearl River and the southern coast, did have some good, flat, and fertile land, but initially it would seem, few if any Han Chinese people lived there.

There are only a few written records of the early history of this riverine and coastal area, and hardly any post-prehistoric archaeological information. In the absence of good written or archaeological records, we are left with assumptions arising from what educated guesses suggest are probabilities, centred on what written records have survived. Nonetheless, it is worth the attempt to sketch these probabilities into a coherent story.

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