Text and power: A study on local gazetteers of Wanzai County of Jiangxi Province from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China

Abstract

As the main literature of socio-economic history, local gazetteers display the dynamic process of local socio-economic structuring and reflect local conflicts among various interest groups. Focusing on local gazetteers in Wanzai County of Jiangxi Province from the Qing to the Republic, this essay shows how local literati played an active role in constructing their local community. These gazetteers reflected the complicated power relations, especially the conflict between the natives and immigrants, and they themselves became the important part of the process of local power reproduction and culture construction.