Jonathan D. Felt's Structures of the Earth is the first study of the emergent genre of geographical writing in China. It provides a comprehensive and thorough account of geographical writing in early medieval China as a means of understanding and interpreting Chinese history. The work brings to prominence the importance of geographical knowledge to challenge concepts of Chinese exceptionalism, namely, the fixed imperial framework of unity and centrality. Felt problematizes this conception, which is often accepted uncritically in Western scholarship, revealing a simplistic understanding of China and the Chinese world order. The book shows how geographical writing helped articulate the unusual circumstances of this complex period of disunion and, likewise, how the chaotic nature of the period inspired the burgeoning of local writing that would help make sense of the world.
Felt argues that the major historical shifts during the early medieval period contributed to a reconceptualization of the fixed standard of centrality and unity. The disintegration of the Han imperial order into regional regimes, the transformation of the Yangzi River basin from a southern frontier into the core region of Sinitic civilization, and the transplantation of Indian-born Buddhism into Sinitic culture brought about the expansion of geographical writing from the third century to the fifth century. To address these changes, Felt introduces the concept of metageography as an organizational system of spatial frameworks to order knowledge and understanding of the natural and human worlds. The book structures its own analysis around four metageographies: ecumenical regionalism, northern and southern dynasties, the hydrocultural landscape, and the Indo-Sinitic bipolar worldview.
Metageographies highlighted the importance of regional, frontier, natural, and foreign spaces, undermining court centrality and cultural universalism. Felt argues that the newly emergent genre of geographical writing was a response to a postimperial Sinitic world that was “more spatially vast, culturally diverse, environmentally varied, and politically fragmented than it had ever been before” (p. 3).
In chapter 1, Felt traces the history of the genre of geographical writing as a reflection of the differences in the sociopolitical landscape from pre-Han to Tang. The pivoting point of his analysis in this and subsequent chapters is the contrast of the metageographies with the imperial metageography through which knowledge of Chinese history was organized. Developed by Qin-Han officials and literati, the imperial metageography reflected the foundational imperial tenets of centrality, unity, and universality, where the imperial court was the central and structuring point of Sinitic civilization. Chapter 2 examines local geographies of the third and fifth centuries and the reciprocal relationship between the distinctiveness of regional cultures and the unity of the Sinitic ecumene. In chapter 3, Felt discusses imperial geographies of the fifth to the seventh centuries, focusing on the political and cultural binary of north and south within the Sinitic ecumene between the Yellow River basin and the Yangzi basin.
Chapters 4 and 5 primarily focus on ideas in Li Daoyuan's work on water and canals, Shuijing zhu (Guide to waterways with commentary), whose guiding organizing principle was natural river systems. Informed by Li Daoyuan's work, chapter 4 focuses on the natural geography of mountains and rivers that structured the social, political, and cultural patterns of human geography. In parallel with chapter 3 on north and south, chapter 5 provides a comparative framework of east and west, Sinitic and Indic cultural ecumenes, each centered on its own parallel “central realm,” and the way the entry of Buddhism disrupted traditional views of Sinocentrism.
Lastly, in conclusion, Felt strengthens his argument about the usability of the alternative frameworks and their enduring relevance and influence throughout Chinese history. By providing examples from time periods not limited to the early medieval, Felt displays his deep engagement with the material and broad knowledge. In general, the monograph is informed by a wide range of primary and secondary sources, expanding beyond the topic of geography, the historical period in question, and even China itself, bringing examples from political thought, religion, and literature. Despite the shortage of existing primary materials that Felt acknowledges, he compensates with a meticulous and detailed analysis of the sources in hand, focusing much of his study on Li Daoyuan's Shuijing zhu, whose text represented the five subgenres of geographical writing that Felt explores: world empires, local regions, foreign lands, natural spaces, and capital (cities) geographies. To summarize and draw general conclusions about overall trends in geographical writing, Felt makes use of several quantitative tools, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping software.
Felt's Structures of the Earth is a must-read not only for scholars of historical geography and early medieval Chinese history. By delineating patterns that transcend the specifics of the early medieval world in which they were first constructed, the book provides an alternative framework for thinking about Chinese history in new and more complex ways, and therefore would be of interest to Sinologists in general. By showing how alternative spatial frameworks illuminated spaces, historical actors, and ideas that are not highlighted otherwise, Felt likewise brings to light the value of the field of historical geography and the early medieval period.
