Administrative map of Republican China: Provinces (1912-1928)

Modern China Geospatial Database: the ENP-China project is developing a major resource — MCGD — to facilitate the use of spatial data for late imperial and republican China. It will include shapefiles for administrative divisions (see below), a database and search interface for place names in any form (Chinese, pinyin, other transliteration systems), with their coordinates, and various datasets for direct matching of lists of place names.

Today we have released our collection of shapefiles for Provincial boundaries in Republican China (1912-1949). They are available through ArcGIS Online on our MCGD Historical GIS collection. To see all the map layers, click on the Content button and select the map you want to display. By default the name of the provinces are displayed in Chinese. You can shift to pinyin (English):

• click on the Content button

• click on the three small dots to the right and select “manage labels”.

• select the relevant name layer: layers in Chinese end with _NZ; layers in pinyin ends in _na. Layers are organized by the same period as the map layers.

We plan to release soon the collection for provincial boundaries in the PRC.

More to come with a 1934 map of xian (county) and a 1909 map of prefectures.

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