Akihiro Osawa

Zhaoyuzhi by Gu Yanwu 顧炎武, is a general geographical work, characteristic of the late Ming period. Although commonly regarded as a by-product of Tianxiajunguolibingshu 天下郡國利病書, it was indeed compiled independently. In contrast to statements found in literary geographical encyclopedic works such as DaMingyitongzhi 大明一統志, we can find statements relating to practical statecraft in some works from the late Ming period. Zhaoyuzhi icludes statements from the late Ming period works that emerged as a result of the criticism against the DaMingyitongzhi. Investigating the information in Zhaoyuzhi regarding comments on the local administrations and the number of administrative units in each county, it can be said that Gu Yanwu used material included in Huiji-yutubeikaoquanshu 彙輯輿圖備考全書, which was published in the Chong-zhen 崇禎 reign. Yet a whole series of practical works, which extended to the end of Ming dynasty, formed the background to the compilation of Zhaoyuzhi, Gu Yanwu excluded the references to well-known places and persons to which literary geographical encyclopedic works at that time still paid attention. He pursued historical accuracy based on the use of historical records, and gave consideration to the contemporary problems of each region. Zhaoyuzhi embodies this new approach, and surpasses any other work of the Ming period in respect of its positivism.

The present study treats the 1577 incident involving Qiao Jishi 喬濟時 where a group of miners illegally extracting silver in the border area of Nanyang 南陽 prefecture in Henan cooperated with a religious organization in planning insurrection. In it I wish to explore the development of late Ming popular religious movements from the perspective of their historical background. Nanyang, the stage for the Qiao Jishi incident, was an area into which vagrants had moved since the middle of the Ming dynasty and, furthermore, it was an area where the illicit mining of silver was rampant. For this reason there were also persons who were not peasants among those who belonged to the local religious associations and among these were also silver miners. In this we see a novel element which had arisen from the historical background of the development of a commodity economy and the growth of the circulation of silver during the Ming dynasty. The silver miners were different from the vagrants in that they were orgenized according to principles derived from the productive activity they engaged in, a fact that made possible their organized cooperation with a religious organization. Such cooperation occurred in a period with a high frequency of religious rebellions, but the relations among groups participating in the rebellions at the end of the Ming were also, as can be seen from the example of the silver miners, a result of the social changes that had occurred during the Ming and it shows that a new historical background exited for the epochal development of popular religious rebellions at the end of the Ming dynasty.