祇恐遺珠負九淵：明清易代與《偏關志》書寫

Using the Pingguan Gazetteer as an example, this article explores accounts of the Ming-Qing transition in local gazetteers and the subtle editorial efforts to influence the opinions of readers. Pianguan was originally a Ming military garrison, guarding the border of the empire. During the Ming-Qing transition, soldiers of Pingyuan one after another defected to the Qing after the fall of Beijing. But then, they played an influential role in the military efforts to overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming. Afterwards, local officials were charged with writing a new account of recent local history under great political pressure. The gazetteer editors compiled a history that made it difficult for readers to discern Pianguan's history of defection, and also used their editorial skills to grant biographies to those who had resisted the Qing. In their historical accounts they also exposed the suffering that the war had brought to Pianguan, in an attempt to use some of the written record to preserve orally transmitted historical narratives. But this edition of the gazetteer remained in manuscript form for the entire Qing dynasty, and was only published during the Republican era. Local scholars who read it found it illuminating and rediscovered a part of local history that had been suppressed. With three hundred years of separation from the historical events, in the process of recovering the historical memory, they also overlooked information laid forth in the records of the gazetteer.