Abstract:
The writing of local histories presented, during the reigns of Emperor Daoguang and Emperor Jiaqing, a general trend of emphasizing the change and continuity of literature and historical facts. As a major initiator of this trend, Ruan Yuan stated that the records of mountains and localities should be incorporated in historians’ work and called for the attention to ‘the interaction between the affairs of men (mainly local governing) and local geography’. Such appeals manifest both his conception of ‘fusing the scholarship of Han and Song’ and the turning of contemporary scholarly interests. Guangdong Tongzhi and Yunnan Tongzhi Gao, both his major works, epitomised both Ruan Yuan’s scholarly interest and contemporary historiographical trends; they incorporated the essence of traditional local historiography and marked a new departure for the writing of local histories in a modern sense.
