Local Interests and the Impartiality of Texts: Documents on Water Disputes from Tianmen County in Late Qing and Republican China

In the late Qing and Republican periods, a series of disputes over water occurred in the Jianghan plains of the Han river, Hubei. These disputes set counties to the north against those to the south and upriver counties against downriver counties. During and after these events, prominent local figures of the Tianmen county gentry compiled numerous collections of documents about the disputes. This paper places these compilations into the context of local history, illustrating that behind the impartial and comprehensive appearance of the texts lay an orientation to local interests, and explores the character of grass-roots popular opinion in the period.