This is an outdated version published on 2021-09-08. Read the most recent version.

Structuring, Recording, and Analyzing Historical Networks in the China Biographical Database

Authors

  • Michael Fuller
  • Hongsu Wang Harvard University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25517/jhnr.v5i1.123

Keywords:

China Biographical Database project, Prosopography, Relational Database

Abstract

The China Biographical Database (CBDB) is a relational database of over 450,000 individuals from pre-modern Chinese history.  CBDB is distinctive as a prosopographical database in that it allows users to generate kinship and social networks for individuals—and groups of individuals—in the database.  At the beginning of the project to develop CBDB, we sought models among other digital prosopography projects but realized that, with CBDB’s focus on analytic procedures and extracting data from the vast resources of the historical Chinese textual archive, we were developing a very different model for digital prosopography. This paper presents an overview of the China Biographical Database, it capacities for exploring networks, and how we are extending those capacities through the ever-broadening extraction of data from the corpora of historical sources.

Downloads

Published

2021-09-08

Versions

How to Cite

Fuller, M. and Wang, H. (2021) “Structuring, Recording, and Analyzing Historical Networks in the China Biographical Database”, Journal of Historical Network Research. Luxembourg, 5(1). doi: 10.25517/jhnr.v5i1.123.

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2021): Beyond Guanxi: Chinese Historical Networks

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Michael Fuller, Hongsu Wang

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-ND 4.0) license applies to all contents published in JHNR. While articles published on JHNR can be copied by anyone for noncommercial purposes if proper credit is given, all materials are published under an open-access license with authors retaining full and permanent ownership of their work. For details please consult the Open Access and Copyright Notice.