Coerced Migration and Resettlement in the Qin Imperial Expansion. Issue 2 (July 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Barbieri-Low, Anthony J.
• Editors: Barbieri-Low, Anthony J.
• Is Part Of: Journal of Chinese history. Volume 5:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 181
• Page End: 202
• Publication Date: 2021-07
• Subjects: Qin -- First Emperor -- Empire -- Migration -- Colonization; China -- History -- Periodicals; 951.005
• DOI: 10.1017/jch.2019.1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2059-1632

Abstract

Abstract: During the century of massive expansion of the Qin state in China (ca. 316–222 BCE), and the subsequent fifteen years of the empire (221–207 BCE), it is recorded that millions of persons were forcibly relocated and resettled throughout the empire and along its frontiers. For example, the historian Sima Qian (ca. 145–86 BCE) states that in just the years between 213 and 210 BCE, the First Emperor relocated more than a million people from interior counties of the empire to settle newly-conquered lands on the northern and southern frontiers. Yet this was only one type of forced resettlement carried out by the Qin. The Qin state also relocated thousands of aristocratic households from conquered states to the Qin capital of Xianyang, captured large numbers of non-Chinese peoples and assigned them to localities as slaves to open up agricultural land, exiled wealthy iron industrialists from the interior to the periphery, intentionally expelled the entire populations of conquered cities to replace them with amnestied criminals, and pooled and redirected the labor of convicts gathered from throughout the empire to labor on huge projects such as the First Emperor's tomb. This article seeks to analyze and categorize these various Qin forced resettlements to uncover the ideological and policy motivations behind them and the role they played in the larger project of Qin imperial expansion and colonization.