dibao-research/wanli-dibao-corpus

Wanli Dibao Corpus / 萬曆邸鈔校訂語料庫

Dataset Description

Summary

English: The Wanli Dibao Corpus is a structured, proofread digital corpus of the Wanli Dichao (萬曆邸鈔), a collection of manuscript copies of official gazettes (dibao 邸報) from the Wanli reign (1573–1620) of the Ming dynasty. The dibao system was the primary channel of official communication in imperial China, transmitting memorials, edicts, personnel appointments, and policy decisions from the capital to provincial officials across the empire.

The original manuscripts are held by the National Central Library of Taiwan (國家圖書館) and are in the public domain. This corpus represents the first publicly available, digitally structured edition of these documents, with historical annotations and cross-references to the Ming Shilu (明實錄).

中文： 萬曆邸鈔語料庫是對萬曄朝（1573–1620）邸鈔抄本的結構化校訂數位語料庫。邸報制度是明代官方信息傳播的核心渠道，負責將奏疏、詔令、人事任免、政策決定從京師傳遞至各省官員。

原始抄本藏於臺灣國家圖書館，屬公有領域。本語料庫是這批文獻首次以結構化數位形式公開發布的版本，附有歷史註釋及與《明實錄》的交叉參照。

Research Background / 研究背景

The dibao has been studied as a precursor to modern journalism and a key institution of political communication in the late imperial Chinese state. Theoretical frameworks applied to this corpus include:

• Habermas's public sphere theory — examining the dibao as a semi-public channel of political information
• Luhmann's systems theory — analyzing the dibao as a functional subsystem of political communication
• Innis's communication theory — investigating the time-space bias of the dibao medium
• Latour's Actor-Network Theory — tracing the network of human and non-human actors in dibao production and circulation

邸報研究涉及政治傳播、新聞史、明代制度史的交叉領域。本語料庫的理論框架包括哈貝馬斯的公共領域理論、盧曼的系統理論、英尼斯的傳播理論，以及拉圖爾的行動者網絡理論。

Languages

• Classical Chinese (文言文 / Literary Chinese, ISO 639-3: lzh)
• Annotations in Modern Chinese (zh) and English (en)

Dataset Structure

Data Fields

Field	Type	Description (EN)	說明 (中文)
id	string	Unique entry identifier	條目唯一識別碼
year	integer	Year (Wanli reign year + CE)	年份（萬曆紀年 + 公元）
month	integer	Lunar month	月份（農曆）
day	string	Day (if available)	日期（如有）
wanli_year	integer	Wanli reign year (1–48)	萬曆紀年（1–48）
category	string	Content category	內容分類
title	string	Document title / heading	文書標題
raw_text	string	Original proofread text	校訂原文
persons	list[string]	Person names mentioned	涉及人名
offices	list[string]	Official titles mentioned	涉及官職名
locations	list[string]	Place names mentioned	涉及地名
institutions	list[string]	Government institutions mentioned	涉及機構名
mingshilu_ref	list[string]	Cross-reference to Ming Shilu entries	明實錄對應條目
notes	string	Editorial and historical notes	校注與歷史註釋

Content Categories / 內容分類

Category	Description	說明
memorial	Memorials to the throne (奏疏)	臣僚上奏文書
edict	Imperial edicts (詔令)	皇帝詔令
appointment	Personnel appointments (除授)	官員任免
impeachment	Impeachment cases (彈劾)	彈劾案件
military	Military affairs (軍事)	軍事相關
disaster	Natural disasters and relief (災異)	災害與賑濟
fiscal	Fiscal and taxation matters (財政)	財政稅收
ritual	Ritual and ceremonial matters (禮儀)	禮制儀典
other	Other	其他

Data Splits

Split	Entries	Description
full	TBD	Complete corpus
By reign year	TBD	Partitioned by Wanli year (1–48)

Dataset Creation

Curation Rationale

This dataset was created to support computational analysis of Ming dynasty political communication, enabling large-scale studies that were previously impossible with manual methods alone. The structured format allows cross-referencing with other historical corpora (Ming Shilu, Chinese literary collections, Joseon Wangjo Sillok).

本數據集旨在支持對明代政治傳播的計算分析，實現以往僅靠人工方法無法進行的大規模研究。結構化格式允許與其他歷史語料庫（明實錄、中國文集、朝鮮王朝實錄）進行交叉參照。

Source Data

Primary Source: Manuscript copies of the Wanli Dichao (萬曆邸鈔), held by the National Central Library of Taiwan (臺灣國家圖書館). Downloaded as public domain digital images.

Proofreading: All texts have been manually proofread and corrected against the original manuscript images by domain experts with specialized knowledge in Ming dynasty paleography and administrative terminology.

Annotations

• Named entities (persons, offices, locations, institutions) identified through expert annotation
• Cross-references to the Ming Shilu (明實錄) verified against the Academia Sinica digital edition
• Content categories assigned based on the nature of each entry

Personal and Sensitive Information

This dataset contains historical records from the 16th–17th century. All persons mentioned are historical figures deceased for over 400 years. No modern personal or sensitive information is included.

Considerations for Using the Data

Licensing

The original manuscript images are in the public domain (held by the National Central Library of Taiwan). The structured dataset, annotations, and editorial notes are released under CC BY 4.0.

Known Limitations

1. The corpus is based on manuscript copies (chaoben 鈔本), not the original dibao documents themselves, which are lost. Copying errors may exist in the source material.
2. Coverage is uneven across the Wanli reign — some years have significantly more entries than others.
3. Proofread text accuracy depends on the legibility of the manuscript; some characters remain uncertain and are marked accordingly.

Bias

The dibao system inherently reflects the perspective of the central government. Provincial and local perspectives are underrepresented. The selection of entries in the surviving dichao collections may not represent the full range of topics covered in the original gazette.

Additional Information

Dataset Curators

• Kwanyong Kim (humanet2) — Digital Humanities, Ming-Qing political communication studies
• [Additional curator information to be added]

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite:

@dataset{wanli_dibao_corpus_2026,
  title={Wanli Dibao Corpus: A Structured Digital Edition of Ming Dynasty Official Gazettes},
  author={Kim, Kwanyong},
  year={2026},
  publisher={Hugging Face},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/dibao-research/wanli-dibao-corpus}
}

Related Resources

Resource	Description	Link
Ming Shilu (明實錄)	Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty	Academia Sinica
Joseon Wangjo Sillok	Annals of the Joseon Dynasty	sillok.history.go.kr
National Central Library Taiwan	Original manuscript source	ncl.edu.tw

Contact

For questions, corrections, or collaboration inquiries, please use the Discussions tab on this repository or contact via the dibao-research organization page.