2: From Littoral Landscapes to Oceanic Worlds: Reimagining Maritime Guangdong in the Ming-Qing Transition

Amid the dynastic turbulence of the Ming–Qing transition, local literati from Guangdong demonstrated a sustained and nuanced engagement with both their immediate locale (xiang) and the broader maritime world. These Cantonese (Pearl River Delta–centered) literati cultivated a strong affinity for their littoral landscapes, conceptualizing their coastal communities as part of a distinctive maritime kingdom (shuiguo or haiguo), shaped by the internal topography of rivers and estuaries and the external seaborne networks that extended beyond imperial borders. Through geographical and literary writings, they reimagined “Guangdong” not as the culturally marginal “Lingnan,” but as a fluid, interconnected region defined by crisscrossing waterways, sea gates, and oceanic linkages—as well as a maritime hub connecting port-to-port and port-to-hinterland routes between the empire and maritime counterparts across the Eastern and Western Oceans. Their geohistorical texts, often centered on native-place themes, incorporated close observations of Western Ocean (Xiyang) foreigners in Canton, interactions with residents of the Portuguese enclave of Macao, and reflections on maritime encounters and material exchange.

Yet previous scholarship has often cast these literati primarily as Ming loyalists, framing Guangdong’s history through the lens of state-society dialectic and dynastic continuity. This study challenges such vertical, center-periphery paradigms by proposing a maritime perspective that repositions Guangdong within polycentric and interconnected maritime networks. It argues that during the Ming–Qing transition, Guangdong emerged as a cosmopolitan landscape shaped as much by oceanic currents as by political transformations—an overlooked dimension in studies of late imperial Southern China.