The Lives and Afterlives of Imperial Material Infrastructure in Southeastern China (InfraLives)

Infralives critically analyse how large-scale infrastructures such as city walls, roads, and bridges contributed to regional and empire-wide integration, but equally why and how processes of integration regularly broke down, and how infrastructure projects contributed to countervailing trends including local tensions, local autonomy, and cross-border regional formations in late imperial Chinese history (ca. 1000-1800). The preliminary pilot investigation of records on city walls covering three provinces during the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) demonstrated the feasibility of the project’s envisioned methodology and highlighted significant differences in the timing and spatial distribution of construction events, in the types of agents involved in project management, and in materials, features, and causes of deterioration and reconstruction across different regions.