Guest Editor's Introduction

Abstract

One of the most dynamic and innovative subfields within Chinese social and economic history in the past two decades has been regional and local history, which has seen an explosion of research, conferences, and publications.1 Influenced by trends in Japanese and Western scholarship, regional history, practiced both by historians and anthropologists, has become one of the dominant strands in late imperial and Republican history.2 Not only has research in local history continued in its traditional areas of concentration—such as the major cities and a few rural areas where the source material is particularly rich, like Huizhou or the Pearl River Delta—but its scope has also broadened considerably, and it is safe to say that local historians are now at work in virtually every part of China. Professional academic historians frequently work closely with local cultural cadres, who, as part of their efforts to compile the latest editions of local gazetteers, are gathering all kinds of local source materials and publishing some of them in the various Literary and Historical Documents (Wenshi ziliao) series.3 The development of the field represents more than just a turn to increasing use of local sources to explore familiar issues such as peasant rebellions or the appearance of the "sprouts of capitalism"; indeed, the recent scholarship under discussion here reflects very little of the predictably formulaic quality of much scholarship in the People's Republic of China in the Maoist era. New questions, especially in the field of cultural history, are being considered. Local history is being used to explore the complex relationship between the imperial state and local society, and the role of the literati elite as well as other groups in mediating that relationship. Popular religion, kinship, ethnicity, and environmental history are other new areas of interest. There is also great interest in regional and local cultural and economic distinctiveness and dynamism. Ye Xian'en has suggested that the recent rise of local history is simply the historical profession's response to the decentralization and increase in regional autonomy of the reform period as a whole.4 It is certainly no coincidence that while regional history is being done throughout China, it is concentrated in those areas where reform is most advanced.