Lishui in the Republican Period

Lishui was still a county

Lishui was reduced from a prefecture to a county in 1369, the second year of the Hongwu era, and until it became a district in 2013 no record shows it being raised to a prefecture again or renamed (Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer, Volume One, Annals; State Council reply Guohan [2013] No. 24). It follows that Lishui was still a county during the Republican period. The authority it reported to, its rank, its county government and its divisions below county level are, however, not given in any source held by this site, and are not supplied by inference here.

The editorial rules in the prefatory volume of the Guangxu edition state that "the county of Lishui was founded in the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era, and the table of changes through the dynasties has been fully collated" — the old gazetteers' collation of the administrative sequence stops with the Qing, and the Republican period lies outside them.

What the sources do contain

The district government's "Historical Evolution" page does not list the changes of jurisdiction during the Republican period, and the source record notes that "this page is brief on jurisdiction in the Republican period, and the Republican section must be checked against gazetteers and other local materials".

What the sources held by this site do contain for the Republican period is mostly events and heritage listings rather than administrative material: the Nanjing municipal list of protected cultural relics records the Huifeng Mountain Counter-Diehard Campaign Site (Huifeng Mountain, Baima Town, Lishui District; fifth municipal batch) with the Republican period as its date; and the events that took place in Lishui during the War of Resistance have entries of their own. These materials show how the Republican period is dated in other contexts, but they contain no information on jurisdiction above the county or on divisions below it.

Gaps

The following are left until a dedicated source can be added:

• the provincial-level jurisdiction at each stage of the Republican period, including province, circuit and administrative inspection district;
• the rank of the county and the organisation and staffing of its government;
• the districts and townships below county level and their successive adjustments;
• whether the county seat was moved and whether the county boundary changed;
• the changes of organisation during the War of Resistance and after it.

The obvious sources to look for are Republican-period reference works on the administrative divisions of Jiangsu, and gazetteers or archives compiled in those years.

Uncertainties

First, the district government gives only a general statement for the Republican period, and no specific years or jurisdictions are inferred from it here.

Second, the heritage lists use "Republican period" as the date of a monument, which is not the same thing as a period in administrative history; the two cannot be used to corroborate each other.