The Historical Value Of Late Ming Travels

Late Ming was an age encountered with great social changes. With the dramatic changes of the social context, travels literature developed to a new peak and produced many outstanding works. During this period the travels payed great attention to the relationship between physical geography and human geography closely. The travels of Late Ming have high reliability by the impact of science in this times and provide us a comprehensive study of the Late Ming society. This paper extracts some representative works to reflect the historical value of the travels through their recorded content.The first chapter includes three parts. The first part outlines the social changes in Late Ming as the right background of the travels' development. The second one generally introduces the situation of the travels during Late Ming. The final part contrasts the travels of Late Ming with substituting works as to study the new characteristics of Late Ming travels.Chapter II is the most important section of this paper. The development of historical social consists of various common factors, the record of travels is just the comprehensive reflection of the social history. The papers demonstrates from 9 aspects, that is, economic, politics, social life, folk customs, urban geography, military geography, national geography, religious culture and social life of women in Ming and so on. Travels, as its author's personal experience, can reflect the ancient social history most directlly and truely, so it has high historical value.The third chapter is about the travels authors' historical outsight. These authors of the travels do not simply record their trips but also conduct a deep observation and thinking through their investigations. They make an objective evaluation about things and this attitude achieves them the reputation in the future.The summary refers to the influences of Late Ming's travels to Qing Dynasty, also notes the feasibility and importance from the historical perspective to study the Late Ming's travels. From the historical perspective to study the Late Ming's travels, is not only providing us a wealth of historical data for our research about the 17th community, will also extend the study of history to a broader area.