South China during Han
Abstract
[Conclusion]: Finally, however, we can look upon the treatises of administrative geography as evidence for the expansion of Chinese power, and of the changing demography of the empire. Naturally enough, many of the Chinese who came to the south were seeking to evade the control of the imperial government, not to extend it, and they pressed beyond the effective frontier, occupying the lands of the aboriginal people and frequently intermarrying with them, in hope of escaping the obligations of taxation and labour or military service. The imperial government, however, followed these pioneers, and in many areas the establishment of a new county administration is a sign of formerly independent colonisation which has now reached the critical point where it is worth-while to bring under control. The process can be observed across many centuries. For the Han period, however, we have also specific figures for the registered population, arranged by households and by individuals, man, woman and child. Obviously, the figures were never perfectly accurate, but there is good evidence that regular serious counting took place. In the heartlands of the empire, we may accept the figures as indicating the real number of people in the territory concerned; on the frontiers, we may take them as the registered population, those under effective government control - with an unspecified number of non-Chinese people still remaining outside the reach of the government account. In Table 2, therefore, I present a summary of the population changes in different regions of the empire south of the Yangzi as indicated by the figures for Former Han, at the beginning of the Christian era, to those of Later Han, in the middle of the second century AD. With the exception of the region of present-day Yunnan, for which there must be some sense of disbelief, the picture presented by these figures is one of energetic colonisation and political expansion by the Chinese. South China at the end of Han was largely under the control of the newcomers. On the other hand, the very success of this development created tension within the unified empire itself. Though the lands of the south contained only about a fifth of the population of the empire as a whole (some eight million out of more than forty million), it appears that this was the "critical mass" required for the establishment and maintenance of the southern state of Wu under the Sun family in the early third century, and this separatist state confirmed the dissolution of the empire and paved the way for centuries of division which followed the fall of Han. By an ironic circle of development, migration and expansion from north China to the south during Qin and Han brought renewed independence to the region when central government collapsed in the north at the end of the second century AD. Indeed, from the fourth century to the seventh, as the north of China was all but overwhelmed by the political and military power of the steppe, it was the southern dynasties which played the major role in maintaining Han tradition in east Asia.