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A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary
or used in conjunction with a map or atlas.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or continent. Content of a gazetteer can include a subject's location, dimensions of peaks and waterways, population, gross domestic product and literacy rate. This information is generally divided into topics with entries listed in alphabetical order.Ancient Greece gazetteers are known to have existed since the Hellenistic era. The first known Chinese gazetteer was released by the first century, and with the age of print media in China by the ninth century, the Chinese gentry became invested in producing gazetteers for their local areas as a source of information as well as local pride. The geographer Stephanus of Byzantium wrote a geographical dictionary (which currently has missing parts) in the sixth century which influenced later European compilers. Modern gazetteers can be found in reference sections of most libraries as well as on the internet.
Since the 18th century, the word "gazetteer" has been used interchangeably to define either its traditional meaning (i.e., a geographical dictionary or directory) or a daily newspaper, such as the London Gazetteer.Thomas, 623–636.Asquith, 703–724.
Gazetteer editors gather facts and other information from official government reports, the census, chambers of commerce, together with numerous other sources, and organise these in form.
Perhaps predating Greek gazetteers were those made in ancient Egypt. Although she does not specifically label the document as a gazetteer, Penelope Wilson (Department of Archaeology, Durham University) describes an ancient Egyptian papyrus found at the site of Tanis, Egypt (a city founded during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt), which provides the following for each administrative area of Egypt at the time:Wilson (2003), 98.
...the name of a nome capital, its sacred barque, its sacred tree, its cemetery, the date of its festival, the names of forbidden objects, the local god, land, and lake of the city. This interesting codification of data, probably made by a priest, is paralleled by very similar editions of data on the temple walls at Edfu, for example.
The Italian monk Filippo Ferrari (d. 1626) published his geographical dictionary "Epitome Geographicus in Quattuor Libros Divisum" in the Swiss city of Zürich in 1605.White, 656. He divided this work into overhead topics of cities, rivers, mountains, and lakes and swamps. All placenames, given in Latin, were arranged in alphabetical order for each overhead division by geographic type;. A year after his death, his "Lexicon Geographicum" was published, which contained more than 9,000 different entries for geographic places. This was an improvement over Ortelius' work, since it included modern placenames and places discovered since the time of Ortelius.
Pierre Duval (1618–1683), a nephew of the French cartographer Nicolas Sanson, wrote various geographical dictionaries. These include a dictionary on the of France, a dictionary on ancient sites of the , Persian Empire, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome with their modern equivalent names, and a work published in Paris in 1651 that was both the first universal and vernacular geographical dictionary of Europe. With the gradual expansion of Laurence Echard's (d. 1730) gazetteer of 1693, it too became a universal geographical dictionary that was translated into Spanish language in 1750, into French language in 1809, and into Italian language in 1810.White, 659.
Following the American Revolutionary War, United States clergyman and historian Jeremy Belknap and Postmaster General Ebenezer Hazard intended to create the first post-revolutionary geographical works and gazetteers, but they were anticipated by the clergyman and geographer Jedidiah Morse with his Geography Made Easy in 1784.Brown (1941), 153–154. However, Morse was unable to finish the gazetteer in time for his 1784 geography and postponed it. Yet his delay to publish it lasted too long, as it was Joseph Scott in 1795 who published the first post-revolutionary American gazetteer, his Gazetteer of the United States.Brown (1941), 189. With the aid of Noah Webster and Rev. Samuel Austin, Morse finally published his gazetteer The American Universal Geography in 1797.Brown (1941), 189–190. However, Morse's gazetteer did not receive distinction by literary critics, as gazetteers were deemed as belonging to a lower literary class.Brown (1941), 190. The reviewer of Joseph Scott's 1795 gazetteer commented that it was "little more than medleys of politics, history and miscellaneous remarks on the manners, languages and arts of different nations, arranged in the order in which the territories stand on the map". Nevertheless, in 1802 Morse followed up his original work by co-publishing A New Gazetteer of the Eastern Continent with Rev. Elijah Parish, the latter of whom Ralph H. Brown asserts did the "lion's share of the work in compiling it".Brown (1941), 194.
The 19th century was also a time that gazetteers became popular in American states. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia were among states with their own versions. Other states appeared in collections, such as The New England Gazetteer (1839).Hayward, J. The New England Gazetteer. 9th edition. Concord, NH: Boyd & White, 1839 and The Western Gazetteer (1817).Brown, S.R. The Western Gazetteer; or, Emigrant's directory, containing a geographical description of the western states and territories, viz. the states of Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi: and the territories of Illinois, Missouri, Alabama, Michigan, and North-Western. Auburn, NY: H.C. Southwick. 1817 New York State, which underwent rapid changes in population and infrastructure (canals; railroads) during the 19th century, saw published at least six substantial gazetteers.Goodman, W.M. “New York’s Century of Gazetteers: 1800-1899”. NewYorkAlmanack website. April 24, 2025. URL: https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2025/04/new-yorks-gazetteers-1800-1899/ The first two (1813 and 1824) were compiled by the writer and inventor Horatio Gates Spafford,Spafford, H.G. A Gazetteer of the State of New York ... Albany, N.Y.: B. D. Packard, 1824. Archived and available online at: https://archive.org/details/gazetteerofstate00spaf/page/30/mode/2up father of lawyer and poet Horatio Spafford (jr.) For John Homer French’s gazetteer (1860), he extensively re-surveyed the entire state, to improve the accuracy of his maps and geographic descriptions.French, J.H. Gazetteer of the State of New York ... Syracuse, N.Y.: R.P. Smith, 1860. Archived and available online at: https://archive.org/details/gazetteerofstate04fren/page/n11/mode/2up Franklin B. Hough, a statistician who later gained renown in forestry, published his own gazetteer in 1872.Hough, F.B. Gazetteer of the State of New York ... Albany, N.Y.: Andrew Boyd, 1872. Archived and available online at: https://archive.org/details/gazetteerofstate00houg/
In 610 after the Sui dynasty (581–618) united a politically divided China, Emperor Yang of Sui had all the empire's commanderies prepare gazetteers called 'maps and treatises' (Chinese: tujing) so that a vast amount of updated textual and visual information on local roads, rivers, canals, and landmarks could be utilized by the central government to maintain control and provide better security.Hargett (1996), 409–410.Needham, Volume 3, 518. Although the earliest extant Chinese maps date to the 4th century BC,Hsu, 90. and tujing since the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) or Han dynasties, this was the first known instance in China when the textual information of tujing became the primary element over the drawn illustrations.Hargett (1996), 409. This Sui dynasty process of providing maps and visual aids in written gazetteers—as well as the submitting of gazetteers with illustrative maps by local administrations to the central government—was continued in every subsequent Chinese dynasty.Hargett (1996), 410.
Historian James M. Hargett states that by the time of the Song dynasty, gazetteers became far more geared towards serving the current political, administrative, and military concerns than in gazetteers of previous eras, while there were many more gazetteers compiled on the local and national levels than in previous eras.Hargett (1996), 412. Emperor Taizu of Song ordered Lu Duosun and a team of cartographers and scholars in 971 to initiate the compilation of a huge atlas and nationwide gazetteer that covered the whole of China proper, which comprised approximately 1,200 counties and 300 prefectures.Bol, 44. This project was completed in 1010 by a team of scholars under Song Zhun, who presented it in 1,566 chapters to the throne of Emperor Zhenzong. This Sui dynasty process of infrequently collecting tujing or "map guides" continued, but it would be enhanced by the matured literary genre of fangzhi or "treatise on a place" of the Song dynasty. Although Zheng Qiao of the 12th century did not notice the fangzhi while writing his encyclopedic Tongzhi including monographs to geography and cities, others such as the bibliographer Chen Zhensun of the 13th century were listing gazetteers instead of the map guides in their works. The main differences between the fangzhi and the tujing was that the former was a product of "local initiative, not a central command" according to Peter K. Bol, and were usually ten, twenty, or even fifty chapters in length compared to the average four chapters for map guides.Bol, 46. Furthermore, the fangzhi were almost always printed because they were intended for a large reading audience, whereas tujing were exclusive records read by the local officials who drafted them and the central government officials who collected them. Although most Song gazetteers credited local officials as the authors, already in the Song there were bibliographers who noted that non-official literati were asked to compose these works or did so on their own behalf.Bol, 47. By the 16th century—during the Ming dynasty—local gazetteers were commonly composed due to local decision-making rather than a central government mandate.Bol, 38. Historian Peter K. Bol states that local gazetteers composed in this manner were the result of increased domestic and international trade that facilitated greater local wealth throughout China. Historian Richard Britnell writes of gazetteers in Ming China, "by the sixteenth century, for a county or Chinese Buddhism not to have a gazetteer was regarded as evidence that the place was inconsequential".Britnell, 237.
While working in the Department of Arms, the Tang dynasty cartographer Jia Dan (730–805) and his colleagues would acquire information from foreign envoys about their respective homelands, and from these interrogations would produce maps supplemented by textual information.Schafer, 26–27. Even within China, Ethnography information on ethnic minorities of non-Han Chinese peoples were often described in the local histories and gazetteers of provinces such as Guizhou during the Ming and Qing dynasties.Hostetler, 633. As the Qing dynasty pushed further with its troops and government authorities into areas of Guizhou that were uninhabited and not administered by the Qing government, the official gazetteers of the region would be revised to include the newly drawn-up districts and non-Han ethnic groups (mostly ) therein. While the late Ming dynasty officials who compiled the information on the ethnic groups of Guizhou offered scanty details about them in their gazetteers (perhaps due to their lack of contact with these peoples), the later Qing dynasty gazetteers often provided a much more comprehensive analysis.Hostetler, 634. By 1673 the Guizhou gazetteers featured different written entries for the various Miao peoples of the region. Historian Laura Holsteter writes on the woodblock print illustrations of Miao peoples in the Guizhou gazeteer, stating "the 1692 version of the Kangxi Emperor gazetteer show a refinement in the quality of the illustrations by comparison to 1673".Hostetler, 637–638.
Historian Timothy Brook states that Ming dynasty gazetteers demonstrate a shift in the attitudes of Chinese gentry towards the traditionally lower Four occupations. As time went on, the gentry solicited funds from merchants to build and repair schools, print scholarly books, build on geomancy, and other things that were needed by the gentry and scholar-officials in order to succeed.Brook, 6–7, 73, 90–93, 129–130, 151. Hence, the gentry figures composing the gazetteers in the latter half of the Ming period spoke favorably of merchants, whereas before they were rarely mentioned. Brook and other modern sinologist historians also examine and consult the local Ming gazetteers to compare population info with the contemporary central government records, which often provided dubious population figures that did not reflect the actually larger population size of China during the time.Brook, 28, 94–96, 267.
Although better known for his work on the Gujin Tushu Jicheng encyclopedia, the early-to-mid Qing scholar Jiang Tingxi aided other scholars in the compilation of the "Daqing Yitongzhi" ('Gazetteer of the Qing Empire').Fairbank & Teng, 211. This was provided with a preface in 1744 (more than a decade after Jiang's death), revised in 1764, and reprinted in 1849.
The Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci created the first comprehensive world map in the Chinese language in the early 17th century,Wong, 44. while comprehensive world gazetteers were later translated into Chinese by Europeans. The Christian missionary William Muirhead (1822–1900), who lived in Shanghai during the late Qing period, published the gazetteer "Dili quanzhi", which was reprinted in Japan in 1859. Divided into fifteen volumes, this work covered Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Ocean Archipelagos, and was sub-divided further into sections on geography, topography, water masses, atmosphere, biology, anthropology, and historical geography.Masuda, 18–19. Chinese maritime trade gazetteers mentioned a slew of different countries that came to trade in China, such as United States vessels docking at Guangzhou in the "Yuehaiguanzhi" ('Gazetteer of the Maritime Customs of Guangdong') published in 1839 (reprinted in 1935).Fairbank & Teng, 215. The Chinese language gazetteer Haiguo Tuzhi ('Illustrated Gazetteer of the Sea Kingdoms') by Wei Yuan in 1844 (with material influenced by the "Sizhou zhi" of Lin Zexu)Masuda, 32. was printed in Japan two decades later 1854.Masuda, 23–24. This work was popular in Japan not for its geographical knowledge, but for its analysis of potential defensive military strategy in the face of European imperialism and the Qing's recent defeat in the First Opium War due to European artillery and gunboats.
Continuing an old tradition of fangzhi, the Republic of China had gazetteers composed and created national standards for them in 1929, updating these in 1946.Vermeer 440. The printing of gazetteers was revived in 1956 under Mao Zedong and again in the 1980s, after the reforms of the Deng Xiaoping to replace the people's communes with traditional townships.Thogersen & Clausen, 161–162. The difangzhi effort under Mao yielded little results (only 10 of the 250 designated counties ended up publishing a gazetteer), while the writing of difangzhi was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), trumped by the village and family histories which were more appropriate for the theme of class struggle.Thogersen & Clausen, 163.Vermeer, 440–443. A Li Baiyu of Shanxi forwarded a letter to the CCP Propaganda Department on May 1, 1979, which urged for the revival of difangzhi. This proposal was sponsored by Hu Yaobang in June 1979 while Hu Qiaomu of the CCP Politburo lent his support for the idea in April 1980. The first issue of a modern national journal of difangzhi was issued by January 1981.
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