Shuntian Prefecture
| Shuntian Prefecture | |||||||
| Chinese | 順天府 | ||||||
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin |
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Shuntian Prefecture was an administrative region of China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, equivalent to Beijing Municipality in today's People's Republic of China. However, the area of the prefecture jurisdiction was different. The term Shuntian fu also referred to the yamen (office) of the prefecture's local government.
During the Yuan dynasty, the imperial capital circuit known as Dadu circuit (大都路; Dadulu) was under control of the Central Secretariat (Zhongshu Sheng). During the eighth month of the first year of reign of the Hongwu Emperor of the new Ming dynasty, this was renamed to Beiping prefecture, and in the tenth month it was attached to Shandong province. In the first lunar month in the first year of the reign of the Yongle Emperor, the capital was renamed Beijing and the prefecture as Shuntian.
Shuntian prefecture went through many changes during the Qing dynasty, and it was only in 1743 during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor that its borders and administrative divisions were settled. Then, Shuntian prefecture was divided into four sub-divisions (路厅, luting) and twenty four sub-prefectures (州, zhou) counties (县, xian). It was also placed under an imperial magistrate (府尹, fuyin).
In 1910 with the demise of the Qing dynasty, Shuntian prefecture was slowly abolished on 4 October 1914 which became Capital Area (京兆地方; Jīngzhào Dìfāng) later became Beiping Special City on 20 June 1928. The remains of the Shuntian yamen can be found in today's Dongcheng District in Beijing at Donggong street (东公街).
During the Ming era, Shuntian had 5 sub-prefectures (州) and 22 counties (縣). In 1490, Shuntian had 100,518 households and a population of 669,033. In 1578, Shuntian had 101,134 households and a population of 706,861.
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