Negotiating urban space: The making and remaking of the southern metropolis in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China

This dissertation studies the changing urban space in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China through the case of Nanjing in three dimensions, as an urban community, as a region, and as an imagined community. One central paradox informs this work: how, in the only dynasty that defined cities administratively as an extension of the countryside despite significant commercialization and urbanization, did the people of Nanjing experience, perceive, and (re)build their own city? I approach this question by exploring three movements at the turn of seventeenth century: a grass-roots drive for urban corvee reform that reconfigured the spatial structure of Nanjing city; a popular protest against building city walls in neighboring counties under the name of guarding Nanjing; and the marked increase in written and visual representations of Nanjing city by a close-knit group of Nanjing literati. These movements, led and participated in by Nanjing elites, county gentry, and urban residents, reveal the ways in which these social groups perceived and experienced Nanjing: its spatial make-up, social boundaries, and its cultural representations. This study of late Ming Nanjing challenges many modern assumptions about "traditional cities" that are embedded in Chinese urban historiography by demonstrating how the meaning of "city" was rediscovered, disputed, and reconceived in the making of the southern metropolis.