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A gazetteer is a geographical
index Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...
or directory used in conjunction with a map or
atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...
.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or continent. Content of a gazetteer can include a subject's location, dimensions of peaks and waterways,
population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using ...
,
gross domestic product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a money, monetary Measurement in economics, measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjec ...
and literacy rate. This information is generally divided into topics with entries listed in alphabetical order.
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
gazetteers are known to have existed since the
Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium i ...
era. The first known Chinese gazetteer was released by the first century, and with the age of print media in China by the ninth century, the Chinese gentry became invested in producing gazetteers for their local areas as a source of information as well as local pride. The geographer
Stephanus of Byzantium Stephanus or Stephan of Byzantium ( la, Stephanus Byzantinus; grc-gre, Στέφανος Βυζάντιος, ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD), was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethni ...
wrote a geographical dictionary (which currently has missing parts) in the sixth century which influenced later European compilers. Modern gazetteers can be found in reference sections of most libraries as well as on the internet.


Etymology

The ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' defines a "gazetteer" as a "geographical index or dictionary". It includes as an example a work by the British historian Laurence Echard (d. 1730) in 1693 that bore the title "The Gazetteer's: or Newsman's Interpreter: Being a Geographical Index". Echard wrote that the title "Gazetteer's" was suggested to him by a "very eminent person" whose name he chose not to disclose. For Part II of this work published in 1704, Echard referred to the book simply as "the Gazeteer". This marked the introduction of the word "gazetteer" into the
English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to t ...
.White, 658. Historian Robert C. White suggests that the "very eminent person" written of by Echard was his colleague Edmund Bohun, and chose not to mention Bohun because he became associated with the Jacobite movement. Since the 18th century, the word "gazetteer" has been used interchangeably to define either its traditional meaning (i.e., a geographical dictionary or directory) or a daily
newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sport ...
, such as the ''London Gazetteer''.Thomas, 623–636.Asquith, 703–724.


Types and organization

Gazetteers are often categorized by the type, and scope, of the information presented. ''World gazetteers'' usually consist of an alphabetical listing of countries, with pertinent statistics for each one, with some gazetteers listing information on individual
cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
,
town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than city, cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares ...
s, villages, and other settlements of varying sizes. ''Short-form gazetteers'', often used in conjunction with computer mapping and GIS systems, may simply contain a list of place-names together with their locations in
latitude In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north po ...
and
longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east– west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek let ...
or other spatial referencing systems (e.g.,  British National Grid reference). Short-form gazetteers appear as a place–name index in the rear of major published atlases. ''Descriptive gazetteers'' may include lengthy textual descriptions of the places they contain, including explanation of
industries Industry may refer to: Economics * Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity * Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery * The wider industrial secto ...
,
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government ...
,
geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, a ...
, together with historical perspectives, maps and/or photographs. ''Thematic gazetteers'' list places or geographical features by theme; for example fishing ports,
nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...
stations, or historic buildings. Their common element is that the geographical location is an important attribute of the features listed. Gazetteer editors gather facts and other information from official government reports, the
census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...
, chambers of commerce, together with numerous other sources, and organise these in
digest Digest may refer to: Biology *Digestion of food *Restriction digest Literature and publications *''The Digest'', formerly the English and Empire Digest *Digest size magazine format * ''Digest'' (Roman law), also known as ''Pandects'', a digest ...
form.


History


Western world


Hellenistic and Greco-Roman eras

In his journal article "Alexander and the Ganges" (1923), the 20th-century historian W.W. Tarn calls a list and description of
satrap A satrap () was a governor of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic empires. The satrap served as viceroy to the king, though with cons ...
ies of Alexander's Empire written between 324 and 323 BC as an ancient gazetteer.Tarn, 93–94. Tarn notes that the document is dated no later than June 323 BC, since it features Babylon as not yet partitioned by Alexander's generals.Tarn, 94. It was revised by the Greek historian
Diodorus Siculus Diodorus Siculus, or Diodorus of Sicily ( grc-gre, Διόδωρος ;  1st century BC), was an ancient Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history '' Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which ...
in the 1st century BC. In the 1st century BC,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dionysius of Halicarnassus ( grc, Διονύσιος Ἀλεξάνδρου Ἁλικαρνασσεύς, ; – after 7 BC) was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus. His literary style ...
mentioned the chronicle-type format of the writing of the logographers in the age before the founder of the Greek historiographic tradition,
Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known for ...
(i.e., before the 480s BC), saying "they did not write connected accounts but instead broke them up according to peoples and cities, treating each separately".Brown (1954), 837. Historian Truesdell S. Brown asserts that what Dionysius describes in this quote about the logographers should be categorized not as a true "history" but rather as a gazetteer. While discussing the Greek conception of the
river delta A river delta is a landform shaped like a triangle, created by deposition of sediment that is carried by a river and enters slower-moving or stagnant water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, or (more ra ...
in ancient Greek literature, Francis Celoria notes that both
Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of import ...
and Pausanias of the 2nd century AD provided gazetteer information on geographical terms.Celoria, 387. Perhaps predating Greek gazetteers were those made in ancient Egypt. Although she does not specifically label the document as a gazetteer,
Penelope Wilson Penelope ('Penny') Wilson is a British lecturer of Egyptology in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, UK. She is a member of the Centre for the Study of the Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East. She is also the field director of ...
(Department of Archaeology, Durham University) describes an ancient Egyptian
papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...
found at the site of Tanis, Egypt (a city founded during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt) which provides the following for each administrative area of Egypt at the time:Wilson (2003), 98.
...the name of a nome capital, its sacred barque, its sacred tree, its cemetery, the date of its festival, the names of forbidden objects, the local god, land, and lake of the city. This interesting codification of data, probably made by a priest, is paralleled by very similar editions of data on the temple walls at Edfu, for example.


Medieval and early modern eras

The ''
Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
'' initiated by William I of England in 1086 was a government survey on all the administrative counties of England; it was used to assess the properties of farmsteads and landholders in order to tax them sufficiently. In the survey, numerous English
castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...
s were listed; scholars debate on exactly how many were actually referenced in the book.Harfield, 372. However, the ''Domesday Book'' does detail the fact that out of 3,558 registered houses destroyed in 112 different boroughs listed, 410 of these destroyed houses were the direct result of castle construction and expansion.Harfield, 373–374. In 1316 the Nomina Villarum survey was initiated by
Edward II of England Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327), also called Edward of Caernarfon, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir apparent to ...
; it was essentially a list of all the administrative subdivisions throughout England which could be utilized by the state in order to assess how much military troops could be conscripted and summoned from each region.Ravenhill, 425. The '' Speculum Britanniae'' (1596) of the Tudor era English cartographer and topographer John Norden (1548–1625) had an alphabetical list of places throughout England with headings showing their administrative hundreds and referenced to attached maps.Ravenhill, 424. Englishman John Speed's ''Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine'' published in 1611 provided gazetteers for counties throughout England, which included illustrative maps, short local histories, a list of administrative hundreds, an index of
parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...
es, and the coordinates of
longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east– west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek let ...
and
latitude In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north po ...
for county towns.Ravenhill, 426. Starting in 1662, the Hearth Tax Returns with attached maps of local areas were compiled by individual parishes throughout England while a duplicate of their records were sent to the central government offices of the Exchequer. To supplement his "new large Map of England" from 1677, the English cartographer
John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
compiled the extensive gazetteer "Index Villaris" in 1680 that had some 24,000 places listed with geographical coordinates coinciding with the map. The "Geographical Dictionary" of Edmund Bohun was published in
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
in 1688, comprising 806 pages with some 8,500 entries.White, 657. In his work, Edmund Bohun attributed the first known Western geographical dictionary to geographer
Stephanus of Byzantium Stephanus or Stephan of Byzantium ( la, Stephanus Byzantinus; grc-gre, Στέφανος Βυζάντιος, ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD), was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethni ...
(fl. 6th century) while also noting influence in his work from the ''Thesaurus Geographicus'' (1587) by the Belgian cartographer
Abraham Ortelius Abraham Ortelius (; also Ortels, Orthellius, Wortels; 4 or 14 April 152728 June 1598) was a Brabantian cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer, conventionally recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the '' Theatrum Orbis Terr ...
(1527–1598), but stated that Ortelius' work dealt largely with ancient geography and not up-to-date information. Only fragments of Stephanus' geographical work ''Ethnica'' (Εθνικά) have survived and were first examined by the Italian printer
Aldus Manutius Aldus Pius Manutius (; it, Aldo Pio Manuzio; 6 February 1515) was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and prese ...
in his work of 1502. The Italian monk Phillippus Ferrarius (d. 1626) published his geographical dictionary "Epitome Geographicus in Quattuor Libros Divisum" in the Swiss city of Zurich in 1605.White, 656. He divided this work into overhead topics of cities, rivers, mountains, and lakes and swamps. All placenames, given in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
, were arranged in alphabetical order for each overhead division by geographic type;. A year after his death, his "Lexicon Geographicum" was published, which contained more than 9,000 different entries for geographic places. This was an improvement over Ortelius' work, since it included modern placenames and places discovered since the time of Ortelius. Pierre Duval (1618–1683), a nephew of the French cartographer
Nicolas Sanson Nicolas Sanson (20 December 1600 – 7 July 1667) was a French cartographer who served under two kings in matters of geography. He has been called the "father of French cartography." Life and work He was born of an old Picard family of Sco ...
, wrote various geographical dictionaries. These include a dictionary on the
abbey An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns. The conce ...
s of France, a dictionary on ancient sites of the
Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the As ...
ns,
Persians The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian. ...
,
Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Greek Cypriots, Cyprus, Greeks in Albania, Albania, Greeks in Italy, ...
, and Romans with their modern equivalent names, and a work published in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
in 1651 that was both the first universal and
vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
geographical dictionary of Europe. With the gradual expansion of Laurence Echard's (d. 1730) gazetteer of 1693, it too became a universal geographical dictionary that was translated into Spanish in 1750, into
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
in 1809, and into Italian in 1810.White, 659. Following the
American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of ...
, United States clergyman and historian Jeremy Belknap and Postmaster General
Ebenezer Hazard Ebenezer Hazard (January 15, 1744 – June 13, 1817) was an American businessman and publisher. He served in a variety of political posts during and after the American Revolutionary War: as Postmaster of New York City; in 1776 as surveyor general ...
intended to create the first post-revolutionary geographical works and gazetteers, but they were anticipated by the clergyman and geographer Jedidiah Morse with his ''Geography Made Easy'' in 1784. However, Morse was unable to finish the gazetteer in time for his 1784 geography and postponed it. Yet his delay to publish it lasted too long, as it was Joseph Scott in 1795 who published the first post-revolutionary American gazetteer, his ''Gazetteer of the United States''.Brown (1941), 189. With the aid of
Noah Webster Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5� ...
and Rev. Samuel Austin, Morse finally published his gazetteer ''The American Universal Geography'' in 1797.Brown (1941), 189–190. However, Morse's gazetteer did not receive distinction by literary critics, as gazetteers were deemed as belonging to a lower literary class.Brown (1941), 190. The reviewer of Joseph Scott's 1795 gazetteer commented that it was "little more than medleys of politics, history and miscellaneous remarks on the manners, languages and arts of different nations, arranged in the order in which the territories stand on the map". Nevertheless, in 1802 Morse followed up his original work by co-publishing ''A New Gazetteer of the Eastern Continent'' with Rev. Elijah Parish, the latter of whom Ralph H. Brown asserts did the "lion's share of the work in compiling it".Brown (1941), 194.


Modern era

Gazetteers became widely popular in Britain in the 19th century, with publishers such as
Fullarton Fullarton is a small area in Irvine, North Ayrshire. It is situated close to Irvine Bay and is next to several industrial estates, large supermarkets and retail stores and the town centre itself. Stagecoach Western buses operate the local bus se ...
, Mackenzie, Chambers and W & A. K. Johnston, many of whom were
Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
, meeting public demand for information on an expanding Empire. This British tradition continues in the electronic age with innovations such as the
National Land and Property Gazetteer The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in England and Wales to provide a definitive and consistent address (geography), address infrastructure. Up until recently Great Britain has not held a single list of all addresses in ...
, the text-based Gazetteer for Scotland, and the new (2008)
National Gazetteer (for Scotland) The One Scotland Gazetteer is the definitive national land, property and address dataset for Scotland that is published bwithin the Improvement Service. It is compiled using information from all 32 Scottish Scottish councils, councils and produced ...
, formerly known as the Definitive National Address – Scotland National Gazetteer. In addition to local or regional gazetteers, there have also been comprehensive world gazetteers published; an early example would be the 1912 world gazetteer published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.Aurousseau, 66. There are also interregional gazetteers with a specific focus, such as the gazetteer of the Swedish atlas "Das Bästas Bilbok" (1969), a road atlas and guide for Sweden,
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
,
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...
, and
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establishe ...
.Murphy, 113.


East Asia


China

In
Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by th ...
(202 BC–220 AD) China, the '' Yuejue Shu'' (越絕書) written in 52 AD is considered by modern sinologists and historians to be the prototype of the gazetteer ( Chinese: ''difangzhi''), as it contained essays on a wide variety of subjects including changes in territorial division, the founding of cities, local products, and customs.Hargett (1996), 406. However, the first gazetteer proper is considered to be the Chronicles of Huayang by Chang Qu 常璩. There are over 8,000 gazetteers of pre-modern China that have survived.Hargett (1996), 405.Thogersen & Clausen, 162. Gazetteers became more common in the
Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the res ...
(960–1279), yet the bulk of surviving gazetteers were written during the
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
(1368–1644) and
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
(1644–1912). Modern scholar Liu Weiyi notes that just under 400 gazetteers were compiled in the era between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 and the
Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdo ...
(618–907).Hargett (1996), 407. Gazetteers from this era focused on boundaries and territory, place names, mountains and rivers, ancient sites, local products, local myths and legends, customs,
botany Botany, also called plant science (or plant sciences), plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "bot ...
,
topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary s ...
, and locations of palaces, streets, temples, etc.Hargett (1996), 408. By the Tang dynasty the gazetteer became much more geographically specific, with a broad amount of content arranged topically; for example, there would be individual sections devoted to local astronomy, schools, dikes, canals, post stations, altars, local deities, temples, tombs, etc.Hargett (1996), 411. By the Song dynasty it became more common for gazetteers to provide biographies of local celebrities, accounts of elite local families, bibliographies, and literary anthologies of poems and essays dedicated to famous local spots. Song gazetteers also made lists and descriptions of city walls, gate names, wards and markets, districts, population size, and residences of former prefects. In 610 after the Sui dynasty (581–618) united a politically divided China, Emperor Yang of Sui had all the empire's commanderies prepare gazetteers called ' maps and treatises' (Chinese: ''tujing'') so that a vast amount of updated textual and visual information on local roads, rivers, canals, and landmarks could be utilized by the central government to maintain control and provide better security.Hargett (1996), 409–410.Needham, Volume 3, 518. Although the earliest extant Chinese maps date to the 4th century BC,Hsu, 90. and ''tujing'' since the Qin (221–206 BC) or Han dynasties, this was the first known instance in China when the textual information of ''tujing'' became the primary element over the drawn illustrations.Hargett (1996), 409. This Sui dynasty process of providing maps and visual aids in written gazetteers—as well as the submitting of gazetteers with illustrative maps by local administrations to the central government—was continued in every subsequent Chinese dynasty.Hargett (1996), 410. Historian James M. Hargett states that by the time of the Song dynasty, gazetteers became far more geared towards serving the current political, administrative, and military concerns than in gazetteers of previous eras, while there were many more gazetteers compiled on the local and national levels than in previous eras.Hargett (1996), 412. Emperor Taizu of Song ordered Lu Duosun and a team of cartographers and scholars in 971 to initiate the compilation of a huge atlas and nationwide gazetteer that covered the whole of
China proper China proper, Inner China, or the Eighteen Provinces is a term used by some Western writers in reference to the "core" regions of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China. This term is used to express a distinction between the "core" regions pop ...
, which comprised approximately 1,200 counties and 300 prefectures.Bol, 44. This project was completed in 1010 by a team of scholars under Song Zhun, who presented it in 1,566 chapters to the throne of Emperor Zhenzong. This Sui dynasty process of infrequently collecting ''tujing'' or "map guides" continued, but it would be enhanced by the matured literary genre of ''fangzhi'' or "treatise on a place" of the Song dynasty. Although Zheng Qiao of the 12th century did not notice the ''fangzhi'' while writing his encyclopedic ''Tongzhi'' including monographs to geography and cities, others such as the bibliographer Chen Zhensun of the 13th century were listing gazetteers instead of the map guides in their works. The main differences between the ''fangzhi'' and the ''tujing'' was that the former was a product of "local initiative, not a central command" according to Peter K. Bol, and were usually ten, twenty, or even fifty chapters in length compared to the average four chapters for map guides.Bol, 46. Furthermore, the ''fangzhi'' were almost always
printed Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...
because they were intended for a large reading audience, whereas ''tujing'' were exclusive records read by the local officials who drafted them and the central government officials who collected them. Although most Song gazetteers credited local officials as the authors, already in the Song there were bibliographers who noted that non-official literati were asked to compose these works or did so on their own behalf. By the 16th century—during the Ming dynasty—local gazetteers were commonly composed due to local decision-making rather than a central government mandate.Bol, 38. Historian Peter K. Bol states that local gazetteers composed in this manner were the result of increased domestic and international trade that facilitated greater local wealth throughout China. Historian R. H. Britnell writes of gazetteers in Ming China, "by the sixteenth century, for a
county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
or
monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whic ...
not to have a gazetteer was regarded as evidence that the place was inconsequential". While working in the Department of Arms, the Tang dynasty cartographer Jia Dan (730–805) and his colleagues would acquire information from foreign envoys about their respective homelands, and from these interrogations would produce maps supplemented by textual information.Schafer, 26–27. Even within China,
ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
information on ethnic minorities of non- Han peoples were often described in the local histories and gazetteers of provinces such as
Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to t ...
during the Ming and Qing dynasties.Hostetler, 633. As the Qing dynasty pushed further with its troops and government authorities into areas of Guizhou that were uninhabited and not administered by the Qing government, the official gazetteers of the region would be revised to include the newly drawn-up districts and non-Han ethnic groups (mostly
Miao people The Miao are a group of linguistically-related peoples living in Southern China and Southeast Asia, who are recognized by the government of China as one of the 56 List of ethnic groups in China, official ethnic groups. The Miao live primarily in ...
s) therein. While the late Ming dynasty officials who compiled the information on the ethnic groups of Guizhou offered scanty details about them in their gazetteers (perhaps due to their lack of contact with these peoples), the later Qing dynasty gazetteers often provided a much more comprehensive analysis.Hostetler, 634. By 1673 the Guizhou gazetteers featured different written entries for the various Miao peoples of the region. Historian Laura Holsteter writes on the woodblock print illustrations of Miao peoples in the Guizhou gazeteer, stating "the 1692 version of the Kangxi era gazetteer show a refinement in the quality of the illustrations by comparison to 1673". Historian Timothy Brook states that Ming dynasty gazetteers demonstrate a shift in the attitudes of Chinese gentry towards the traditionally lower merchant class. As time went on, the gentry solicited funds from merchants to build and repair schools, print scholarly books, build Chinese pagodas on auspicious sites, and other things that were needed by the gentry and scholar-officials in order to succeed.Brook, 6–7, 73, 90–93, 129–130, 151. Hence, the gentry figures composing the gazetteers in the latter half of the Ming period spoke favorably of merchants, whereas before they were rarely mentioned. Brook and other modern sinologist historians also examine and consult the local Ming gazetteers to compare population info with the contemporary central government records, which often provided dubious population figures that did not reflect the actually larger population size of China during the time.Brook, 28, 94–96, 267. Although better known for his work on the '' Gujin Tushu Jicheng'' encyclopedia, the early-to-mid Qing scholar Jiang Tingxi aided other scholars in the compilation of the "Daqing Yitongzhi" ('Gazetteer of the Qing Empire').Fairbank & Teng, 211. This was provided with a preface in 1744 (more than a decade after Jiang's death), revised in 1764, and reprinted in 1849. The Italian Jesuit
Matteo Ricci Matteo Ricci, SJ (; la, Mattheus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610), was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the , a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. ...
created the first comprehensive world map in the
Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the ...
in the early 17th century,Wong, 44. while comprehensive world gazetteers were later translated into Chinese by Europeans. The
Christian missionary A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such ...
William Muirhead (1822–1900), who lived in
Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...
during the late Qing period, published the gazetteer "Dili quanzhi", which was reprinted in Japan in 1859. Divided into fifteen volumes, this work covered Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Ocean Archipelagos, and was sub-divided further into sections on geography, topography, water masses, atmosphere, biology, anthropology, and historical geography.Masuda, 18–19. Chinese maritime trade gazetteers mentioned a slew of different countries that came to trade in China, such as United States vessels docking at
Canton Canton may refer to: Administrative division terminology * Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland * Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French Arts and ent ...
in the "Yuehaiguanzhi" ('Gazetteer of the Maritime Customs of Guangdong') published in 1839 (reprinted in 1935).Fairbank & Teng, 215. The Chinese language gazetteer ''
Haiguo Tuzhi The ''Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms'', or ''Haiguo Tuzhi'', is a 19th-century Chinese gazetteer compiled by scholar-official Wei Yuan and others, based on initial translations ordered by Special Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu. The ...
'' ('Illustrated Gazetteer of the Sea Kingdoms') by Wei Yuan in 1844 (with material influenced by the "Sizhou zhi" of Lin Zexu)Masuda, 32. was printed in Japan two decades later 1854.Masuda, 23–24. This work was popular in Japan not for its geographical knowledge, but for its analysis of potential defensive military strategy in the face of European imperialism and the Qing's recent defeat in the First Opium War due to European artillery and gunboats. Continuing an old tradition of ''fangzhi'', the
Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northea ...
had gazetteers composed and created national standards for them in 1929, updating these in 1946.Vermeer 440. The printing of gazetteers was revived in 1956 under
Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...
and again in the 1980s, after the reforms of the Deng era to replace the people's communes with traditional
townships A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...
.Thogersen & Clausen, 161–162. The ''difangzhi'' effort under Mao yielded little results (only 10 of the 250 designated counties ended up publishing a gazetteer), while the writing of ''difangzhi'' was interrupted during the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated go ...
(1966–1976), trumped by the village and family histories which were more appropriate for the theme of class struggle.Thogersen & Clausen, 163. A Li Baiyu of
Shanxi Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-lev ...
forwarded a letter to the CCP Propaganda Department on May 1, 1979, which urged for the revival of ''difangzhi''. This proposal was sponsored by Hu Yaobang in June 1979 while Hu Qiaomu of the CCP Politburo lent his support for the idea in April 1980. The first issue of a modern national journal of ''difangzhi'' was issued by January 1981.


Korea

In
Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republi ...
, scholars based their gazetteers largely on the Chinese model.McCune, 326. Like Chinese gazetteers, there were national, provincial, and local prefecture Korean gazetteers which featured geographic information, demographic data, locations of bridges, schools, temples, tombs, fortresses, pavilions, and other landmarks, cultural customs, local products, resident clan names, and short biographies on well-known people.Provine, 8.Lewis, 225–226. In an example of the latter, the 1530 edition of "Sinjŭng tongguk yŏji sŭngnam" ('New Edition of the Korean National Gazetteer') gave a brief statement about Pak Yŏn (1378–1458), noting his successful career in the
civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
, his exceptional filiality, his brilliance in music theory, and his praisable efforts in systematizing ritual music for Sejong's court. King Sejong established the Joseon dynasty's first national gazetteer in 1432, called the "Sinch'an p'aldo" ('Newly Compiled Geographic Treatise on the Eight Circuits').Lewis, 225. With additional material and correction of mistakes, the title of this gazetteer was revised in 1454 as the "Sejong Sillok chiriji" ('King Sejong's Treatise on Geography'), updated in 1531 under the title "Sinjŭng tongguk yŏji sŭngnam" ('Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea'), and enlarged in 1612.Pratt & Rutt, 423. The Joseon Koreans also created international gazetteers. The "Yojisongnam" gazetteer compiled from 1451 to 1500 provides a small description for 369 different foreign countries known to Joseon Korea in the 15th century.


Japan

In Japan, there were also local gazetteers in pre-modern times, called '' fudoki''.Miller, 279. Japanese gazetteers preserved historical and legendary accounts of various regions. For example, the Nara-period (710–794) provincial gazetteer ''Harima no kuni fūdoki'' of Harima Province provides a story of an alleged visit by Emperor Ōjin in the 3rd century while on an imperial hunting expedition.Taryō, 178. Local Japanese gazetteers could also be found in later periods such as the
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional ''daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...
.Levine, 78. Gazetteers were often composed by the request of wealthy patrons; for example, six scholars in the service of the ''
daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominall ...
'' of the Ikeda household published the ''Biyō kokushi'' gazetteer for several counties in 1737.Hall, 211. World gazetteers were written by the Japanese in the 19th century, such as the ''Kon'yo zushiki'' ("Annotated Maps of the World") published by Mitsukuri Shōgo in 1845, the ''Hakkō tsūshi'' ("Comprehensive Gazetteer of the Entire World") by Mitsukuri Genpo in 1856, and the ''Bankoku zushi'' ("Illustrated Gazetteer of the Nations of the World"), which was written by an Englishman named Colton, translated by Sawa Ginjirō, and printed by Tezuka Ritsu in 1862.Masuda, 18. Despite the ambitious title, the work by Genpo only covered ''Yōroppa bu'' ("Section on Europe") while the planned section for Asia was not published. In 1979 the 50 volume gazeteer ''Nihon rekishi chimei taikei'' ("Japanese Historical Place Names") series was launched and it is currently also available online with "200,000 headings with detailed explanations of achplace name".


South Asia

In pre-modern
India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...
, local gazetteers were written. For example, Muhnot Nainsi wrote a gazetteer ( Nainsi ri Khyat and Marwar rai Pargana ri Vigat) for the
Marwar Marwar (also called Jodhpur region) is a region of western Rajasthan state in North Western India. It lies partly in the Thar Desert. The word 'maru' is Sanskrit for desert. In Rajasthani languages, "wad" means a particular area. English tran ...
region in the 17th century.Gole, 102. B. S. Baliga writes that the history of the gazetteer in
Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil languag ...
can be traced back to the classical corpus of Sangam literature, dated 200 BC to 300 AD.Baliga, 255. Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, the
vizier A vizier (; ar, وزير, wazīr; fa, وزیر, vazīr), or wazir, is a high-ranking political advisor or minister in the near east. The Abbasid caliphs gave the title ''wazir'' to a minister formerly called '' katib'' (secretary), who was ...
to Akbar the Great of the
Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the ...
, wrote the ''
Ain-e-Akbari The ''Ain-i-Akbari'' ( fa, ) or the "Administration of Akbar", is a 16th-century detailed document recording the administration of the Mughal Empire under Emperor Akbar, written by his court historian, Abu'l Fazl in the Persian language. It for ...
'', which included a gazetteer with valuable information on India's population in the 16th century.Floor & Clawson, 347–348.


Muslim world

The pre-modern
Islamic world The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. In ...
produced gazetteers. Cartographers of the Safavid dynasty of
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkm ...
made gazetteers of local areas.


List of gazetteers


Worldwide

* Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names * Marine Regions


Antarctica

*
Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica The Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica (CGA) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) is the authoritative international gazetteer containing all Antarctic toponyms published in national gazetteers, plus basic information about ...


Australia

* Gazetteer of Australia


United Kingdom

*
National Land and Property Gazetteer The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in England and Wales to provide a definitive and consistent address (geography), address infrastructure. Up until recently Great Britain has not held a single list of all addresses in ...
* National Street Gazetteer * The Gazetteer for Scotland * ''
Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland The ''Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland'' is a topographical dictionary first published in parts between 1854 and 1857, edited by the Reverend John Marius Wilson. It also appeared in two undated volumes in 1868 and was described as "A Dictionary of S ...
'' * '' Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales''


India

* ''
The Imperial Gazetteer of India ''The Imperial Gazetteer of India'' was a gazetteer of the British Indian Empire, and is now a historical reference work. It was first published in 1881. Sir William Wilson Hunter made the original plans of the book, starting in 1869.
''


See also

* List of geography topics *
Toponymy Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name o ...


Notes


References

* * * Baliga, B.S. (2002). ''Madras District Gazetteers''. Chennai: Superintendent, Government Press. * * Britnell, R.H. (1997). ''Pragmatic Literacy, East and West, 1200–1330''. Woodbridge, Rochester: The Boydell Press. . * Brook, Timothy. (1998). '' The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China''. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Paperback). * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Lewis, James B. (2003). ''Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan''. New York: Routledge. . * Masuda, Wataru. (2000). ''Japan and China: Mutual Representations in the Modern Era''. Translated by Joshua A. Fogel. New York: St. Martin's Press. . * * * * Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. * Pratt, Keith L. and Richard Rutt. (1999). ''Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary''. Richmond: Routledge; Curzon Press. . * * * Schafer, Edward H. (1963). ''The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A study of T’ang Exotics''. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1st paperback edition: 1985. . * * * * * * * Wilson, Penelope. (2003). ''Sacred Signs: Hieroglyphs in Ancient Egypt''. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. . *


External link

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