The order of places : : translocal practices of the Huizhou merchants in late imperial China / / by Yongtao Du.

• Superior document: Sinica Leidensia, Volume 119
• VerfasserIn: Du, Yongtao, 1970-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Brill,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Sinica Leidensia ; Volume 119.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (277 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

There were over a thousand counties and prefectures in late imperial China; each loomed large in the hearts and minds of the local natives, and had a history of its own. The Order of Places tells a story of how these places were ordered by the long-lived imperial state, and then re-ordered during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries as geographical mobility increased. At the center of the story are the mobile merchants from south China’s Huizhou Prefecture, then the most prominent merchant group in China. The story presents the dynamics of geography in the world’s most enduring empire on the eve of its entry into modern history, as the author explores the changing relationships between people and the place they called “home”, between local place and the life-world the Chinese called “all-under-Heaven,” and between local places.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- 1 The Identity of Huizhou and the Reach of Its Merchants -- 2 Sojourning in Translocal Perspective: Local Encounters and Place-Based Identity -- 3 “The Public” for Sojourners: Xiangyi and the Translocal Network of Public Participation -- 4 Translocal Lineage and the Romance of Homeland Attachment -- 5 The Emergence of Multi-Place Household Registration: Translocality, the State, and Local Communities -- 6 Routes and Places: Spatial Order in Merchant Geographies -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Index.