This paper will present the open-source methodology developed as part of the InfraLives/RegInfra projects. This combined team, based at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam and KU Leuven, is examining how the construction and maintenance of major infrastructures such as roads, walls, and bridges shaped relationships between state power and regional entities in late imperial China (1000-1900). The creation of infrastructure involved the intentions and actions of many different actors at local, regional, and state levels, which were mitigated by factors such as economic realities, environmental events, and conflicts. Untangling these factors requires the ability to handle large datasets from a variety of different sources in a spatiotemporal framework. This paper will demonstrate the methodology developed to address such needs, both within our specific project and spatial humanities projects in general.
We will first explain the workflow of our project. The workflow involves 1) the annotation of infrastructural events (including spatial references) in historical gazetteers and visual images, 2) organizing and structuring the data into an event schema, and 3) analyzing data in a spatial and network analysis platform. We will demonstrate and discuss the processes involved in each of these steps, and the programs which were developed for this work.
Subsequently, we will present three case studies focused on city walls and bridges in late imperial Shanxi, Fujian, and Hebei provinces, which use this methodology to address the following questions: 1) what kinds of actors were involved in the creation, maintenance, and destruction of infrastructure, 2) what were the driving forces (environmental, political etc.) behind the construction of these objects, and 3) what were the physical materials and processes that were involved and how was labor organized?
The first case study, focused on Shanxi, will examine the material transformation of walls in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this time, walls were newly built or rebuilt using more solid materials such as bricks or stones to strengthen their defense capacities against foreign incursions and internal disturbances. The subjects of this transformation include both the extensive wall structures built on Ming-Mongol boundaries (known as the Ming Great Walls) and the enclosed wall structures, including military forts and cities under the civilian administration. Based on the textual inscriptions and city maps in gazetteers, this work visualizes the evolution of masonry walls in Ming northern frontiers of Shanxi, and analyses who drove this transformation. Local magistrates and elites led this transformation despite famines and local food crises in the challenging time of the Little Ice Age. This case study investigates the contribution of local actors, and how their interests were reflected in the physicality of city wall compounds in terms of the choices of building materials, dimensions, and attached facilities to the main wall body, such as barbicans, towers, and platforms.
The second case, focused on Fujian, examines the spatial distribution of Buddhist involvement in bridge and city wall constructions and overlaps the results with a spatial visualization of Buddhist institutions to explore relationships between state power and regional entities. Inscriptions in late imperial Chinese gazetteers give the impression that infrastructure construction was primarily a joint undertaking between local magistrates and elites, which is not surprising considering the importance of both in the compilation of gazetteers. However, frequent references to Buddhist monks hint at an important role for religious groups in the construction of infrastructure. The comparison between city walls and bridges, which differ significantly in terms of scale, cost, and strategic value, helps to visualize the extent of Buddhist involvement in infrastructure construction. In addition, while inscriptions often mention individual Buddhist monks involved in construction projects, the spatial visualization of Buddhist institutions shows the extent to which these individuals were embedded in broader Buddhist infrastructures. This case study uses infrastructure events to highlight the role of Buddhists in local society and their relationship with local magistrates and elites.
The final case study, focused on Hebei, examines the representations of bodies of water and infrastructures such as city walls. It makes use of a comparative analysis of textual inscriptions preserved in gazetteers and visual materials such as sketches of maps found in these same gazetteers. Hebei exhibits vastly different geographical conditions. By locating counties in their geographic reality, we can identify patterns of vulnerability regarding water-related issues that counties in specific locations faced. Comparison to events mentioned in inscriptions that directly impacted walls and bridges at these locations shows how this vulnerability was understood and managed. After collecting relevant information on destruction and construction events through text annotation the visual representation of the counties in question within the gazetteers is annotated and analyzed by looking at the image in detail, utilizing an iconographical approach. Here the divergence of the images depicting the county landscape from other maps and the topographical reality comes into focus and reveals the attitudes of the producers toward the environment and their perceived place within it.
The methodology discussed here is generalizable and open source and therefore can be adapted by scholars working in spatial humanities. We will conclude our paper by discussing how other researchers can take advantage of this workflow for their projects.