South China under the Later Han Dynasty
Abstract
At the end of the second century AD, all southern China was formally under the authority of the imperial government of Han. The territory was divided into three provinces, with a substructure of commanderies and counties. One function of the present chapter is to present a geography of the southern provinces, with indication of local topography, communications routes and the products of the region. <p> For the future, however, the important development of the Han period was the number of Chinese subjects who migrated into the lands of the south, and established themselves within those territories. As they did so, they placed increasing pressure on the non-Chinese people who had formerly inhabited the region, and brought almost endemic disturbance to the region. The physical occupation of the ground, moreover, was accompanied by a cultural aggression, generally supported by official patronage, which integrated the territory still more firmly into the Chinese cultural sphere. <p> The pioneer immigrants, however, had not normally come to the south in order to expand the political and administrative control of the central imperial government based in the north; on the contrary, they were often seeking to escape it, and the unit upon which they based their fortunes was the family, the extended clan, or a local system of mutual defence. By the end of the second century AD, as the authority of the central government was weakened through political conflict and turmoil in the north, the new settlers in the south maintained no particular sense of allegiance to the unified empire. <p> Moreover, whereas in earlier times the territory of the south had been easily and naturally held under the control of whichever power could dominate the north, the increase in population south of the Yangzi now meant there was the possibility of establishing a separate state, Chinese by culture and tradition, but politically independent from the lands of the Yellow River. Upon this demographic foundation the generals of the south would build their fortunes.