Local Knowledge and State Development: Evidence from Chinese Gazetteers

Abstract

This paper examines the importance of local knowledge for state building. Drawing upon the quantity and quality of local gazetteers, the regional encyclopedias of imperial China, we measure the accumulation of local knowledge in 267 prefectures over a millennium. We find that the gazetteers facilitated the local penetration of state power and infrastructure between 960 and 1911. Analyzing the content of gazetteers reveals that the gazetteer effect arises from the richness, concretization, and uniqueness of records of local characteristics. These findings indicate that state capacity is built not merely on unified and standardized measures but also on context-based local knowledge that increases the legibility of subjects.