Interplay between Official Careers and Local Identity among Puyang Literati during the Late Southern Song

Historians of the Song dynasty have long recognized that the paucity of positions in both local and central government forced many literati to remain in their hometowns. This phenomenon of localization was more acute in the Southern Song than in the Northern Song. For example, Liu Kezhuang 劉克 莊 (1187–1269), one of the most famous scholar-officials of the late Southern Song, spent more than half of his life in his native place of Xinghua commandery 興化軍 in Fujian circuit 福建路, otherwise known as Puyang 莆陽, except when he served four tours at court and several times as a local official.1 Given this shortage of available positions, an identification with locality had greater significance for Southern Song than for Northern Song literati; yet, when offered official positions, they still accepted the appointments and left their hometowns. How, then, did these stronger local connections affect the political behavior of literati during the Southern Song? Literati localism has been a focus of scholarly research in Song social history for the past three decades. Robert Hartwell and Robert Hymes pointed