Reaching “the Southern Wilderness”: Expansion and the Formation of the Lingnan Transportation Network during the Qin and Han Dynasties (original) (raw)
Related papers
Southern Sea Ports of the Han Empire: Urbanization and Trade in Coastal Lingnan
Sitta von Reden, ed. Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies. Vol. 3. Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange. De Gruyter. 295-337., 2023
The historical region of Lingnan straddles the line between East and Southeast Asia. The official history of the Western Han Empire (202 BCE–9 CE) describes the sea-trade route between the Lingnan ports and the distant lands of the South China Sea and Indian Ocean basins. The archaeological remains of two of these coastal towns, Hepu and Xuwen, have recently been identified. This paper uses archaeological and textual evidence to explore the sea-oriented urban economies of the Han Far South and address the following questions: Did these ports have a distinctive economic, social, and cultural profile compared to other urban centers in the early Chinese empires? How were they integrated into the imperial economy, if at all? What role did they play in the political-economic changes that accompanied the empire’s decline from the late second century CE onward and in the intensification of Afro-Eurasian connectivity networks during late antiquity?
On the Emergence of the Qinghai Sections of the Silk-Road
Corridor) in northern Gansu 甘肅 was controlled by a number of short lived states and was often a scene of military operations. During these centuries trade routes emerged across the territory of Tuyuhun 吐谷渾 Kingdom, in present-day Qinghai 青海 Province and grew more and more important toward the end of the period. It is a popular assumption that the ascent of these routes is a result of instability in the Hexi corridor and its occupation by the non-Chinese dynasties of North-China. A research of the political events of the era indicates that the importance of these southern routes cannot confidently be explained by instability and foreign powers in the Hexi corridor.
2020
This dissertation explores the relationship between the empire-building and economic change during the formative process of the Qin Empire. It employs transmitted and excavated textual materials as well as archaeological evidence to reconstruct institutions and practices of surplus extraction and economic management and their evolution during the period of Qin’s expansion culminating in the emergence of the first centralized bureaucratic empire in continental East Asia. I argue that the commercial expansion and the formation of markets for land, labor, and commodities during China’s early imperial period (221 BCE – 220 CE) can only be understood by considering their origins in the distributive command economy of the late Warring States and imperial Qin. The study focuses on the southern frontier zone of the empire, which is exceptionally well documented in the official and private documents excavated from the Qin and Han sites along the Middle Yangzi and its tributaries.
Beyond Transit and Trade: Embedded Commodity Movement in the Hexi Corridor during the Han Period
Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies, vol. 3, 2023
The so-called 'Hexi corridor' (Hexi zoulang 河西走 , lit. 'corridor west of the [Yellow] River') is a long and narrow strip of land squeezed between the Qilian mountains to its south and the western Gobi Desert plateau to its north, running lengthwise between the Tarim Basin to its west and the upper course of the Yellow River to its (south)east. It broadly covers the narrow northern part of today's Gansu province, from Dunhuang 敦煌 down to Lanzhou 蘭 , and is therefore alternatively called the 'Gansu corridor.' Historical and archaeological studies alike typically refer to the region as a "passageway" or a "key section of the ancient Silk Road connecting China and Central Asia." 1 As I have mentioned in vol. 2 of this Handbook, the description of the region as a 'corridor' already implies a certain bias toward its interpretation as a transit zone between east and west, between the Tarim Basin and Central Asia on the one hand, and the centers of the ancient Qin and Han Empires in what is now central China on the other. 2 There certainly can be no doubt that during early imperial as well as later times, the 'corridor' was important as a transit zone for the longdistance movement of goods. Its reduction to this role, however, seems to be deeply intertwined with Silk Road narratives, and as such has certainly provoked one-sided, if not downright misleading, interpretations of the region's economic role in history. In 1877, the man commonly known as the 'inventor' of the Silk Road paradigm, Ferdinand von Richthofen, used the designation 'Yü-mönn-Passage' (Yumen passageway or Jade Gate passageway) for this strip of land. 3 Just like 'corridor,' the term 'Passage' implies a primary function of lengthwise transit movement. Von Richthofen, who never visited this part of China himself and therefore had to rely on transmitted
b4148 Chinese History and Civilisation: An Urban Perspective 9"x6" 2nd Reading
Chinese History and Civilization, 2022
The previous 12 chapters have traced the evolution of the Chinese city, taking it as the container as well as a critical factor in the development of civilisation in the country. As early agricultural cultures emerged in Neolithic times, permanent human settlements gradually appeared. In the early Longshan city-state period, China entered the legendary epoch of sage kings as represented by Yao and Shun. By 2500 BC, in the riverine of the mid Huanghe reach-Zhongyuan (中原), the regional culture advanced into the Huaxia civilisation leading to the founding of the early dynasties of Sandai (i.e. Xia, Shang, and Zhou). These were much more powerful empires of centralised rule than the former loose confederation of tribal states. It was a period of Chinese "feudalism". Then, "Di" (帝), the emperor appeared and was later referred to as the Son-of-Heaven in the Zhou Dynasty. Yet the territory directly administered by the Son-of-Heaven was still small compared to the vast expanse of China today. Most of the "rest of China" were directly ruled by semi-independent feudal lords. It was not until the Qin Dynasty that China became a genuine empire of centralised control, as the former feudal states were replaced by provinces (fu) and counties (xian) with their administrators assigned by the emperor. Thus, from Qin Dynasty until the present, with few exceptional periods such as the North South Dynasties, China has been a huge territorial state under centralised rule. Over the immense space of China, the multi-culture complex that started in the mid-Neolithic era had evolved, about 4,500 years ago,
The Construction of Territories in the Qin Empire
T'oung Pao, 2021
After its epochal unification of the Huaxia ecumene in 221bce, the First Emperor of Qin embarked on a series of political and social reforms. One of the most influential measures was the universal implementation of a centralized and unitary provincial administrative system, conventionally called the "commandery-county system" (junxian zhi 郡縣制). Beneath this uniform picture, however, the Qin ruler instituted schemes to structure its empire into three concentric zones with asymmetrical political relations. In this essay, I shall detail how the Qin used various border control measures to demark their empire's internal territories, and how these territories were designed to function. The commandery-county system has been regarded as the highest achievement of the short-lived Qin empire. The mid-Tang statesman Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773-819), in his "On the Enfeoffment and Establishment of Regional Kingdoms" (Fengjian lun 封 建 論), singled out this system as the most vital means to exert strong territorial control and avert the chaos and wars that the Zhou multistate system had engendered.1 Liu's opinions were shared by later generations of literati who often recognized the advantages of the Qin provincial administrative system even as they despised the brutality of its governing policies.2
The physical mobility, or the ability of humans to move around their environment, may be considered as one of the key determinants of social life, and the capacity to grant, restrict, or otherwise control this ability was, in all historical societies, congruent with, and principal for social, political, and economic power. This paper analyses the aspects of physical mobility of the officials – the only social group in early imperial China that left over a variety of first-hand written sources reflecting their everyday experiences, practices, and concerns. I consider the controversial nature and miscellaneous manifestations of the state’s involvement in the issues of physical mobility of its subjects during the late Warring States and early imperial period. I argue that this controversy provides a background for understanding the aspects of physical mobility of the officials as reflected in the Qin and Han documents. After a brief discussion of the sources of this study – archaeologically recovered manuscripts on bamboo slips and wooden tablets – the structures of physical mobility are identified and analyzed, such as the economy and logistics of officials’ travels that included financial arrangements and regulations for sponsoring travels; means of transportation; accommodation and medical care provided to the traveling officials; and the institution of efficiency control designed to ensure that officials complied with requirements for the speed of traveling.