In ancient China, as elsewhere, states did not simply occupy a given territory but actively engaged in the production of space by transforming landscapes, moving populations, and enacting territorial hierarchies, thus creating “state spaces,” to borrow a term coined by James C. Scott. In the case of the early Chinese empires of Qin (221–207 BCE) and Han (202 BCE–220 CE), state-induced migration and settlement were key instruments of military control, administrative incorporation, economic intensification, and other processes connected with spatial distribution of state power. This article combines insights from transmitted texts, excavated documents, and archaeological evidence to explore factors and effects of migration in early Chinese empires, discussing the interconnection between state-organized resettlement and private migration as well as their embeddedness in the local geography. As the situation varies according to location, the present article introduces the approach and tests it on a case study, the Guanzhong metropolitan region.

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The archive of the Qin County of Qianling, better known as the Liye documents, was discovered in 2002–5 during an archaeological excavation in Liye, a small town in present‐day Hunan province in China. Dated between 222 and 209 bce , the Liye documents are the only collection of Qin administrative records published up to the present date and the largest known find of the Qin manuscripts. Over 37,000 wooden tablets were excavated, of which more than 17,000 bear inscriptions. The content of the Liye archive reflects the work of the local government and its communications within the broader administrative network of the empire. It also sheds light on the organization of the Qin imperial administration at the newly conquered lands to the south of the Yangzi River during a crucial period of political, economic, and social transition.

Since the 1930s, Chinese archaeologists have discovered a number of inscribed wooden tablets from the early Han to the Western Jin, which were identified as “greeting tablets” of two types, ci 刺 and ye 謁. As attested in transmitted accounts, these tablets played an important role in the communicative etiquette of early imperial and early medieval officialdom; during a meeting ceremony, they were presented by the guest to the host. The present article offers a systematic survey of the available corpus of excavated greeting tablets and explores their wider socio-cultural implications. As a component of the communicative etiquette of the bureaucracy, greeting tablets were instrumental in the adaptation of elements of aristocratic culture to the needs of mass officialdom—a new social stratum that in terms of cultural background differed fundamentally from the hereditary aristocracy of the pre-imperial era but occupied a comparable position as a social and political elite.
Depuis les années 1930 les archéologues chinois ont découvert de nombreuses tablettes de bois inscrites datant du début des Han jusqu’aux Jin occidentaux, qui ont été identifiées comme étant des « tablettes de salutation ». Il en existe deux types, les ci 刺 et les ye 謁. Comme l’attestent les textes transmis, ces tablettes jouaient un rôle important dans l’étiquette régissant les communications entre fonctionnaires dans la période impériale ancienne et au début de l’époque médiévale: l’hôte les présentait à l’invité au cours du cérémonial marquant leur rencontre. Cet article propose un inventaire systématique du corpus des tablettes de salutation découvertes dans les fouilles et s’intéresse plus généralement à leurs implications socio-culturelles. Partie intégrante de l’étiquette des communications, ces tablettes ont joué leur rôle dans l’adaptation de certains éléments de la culture aristocratique aux besoins de la masse des fonctionnaires, autrement dit d’un groupe social nouveau dont le fonds culturel différait fondamentalement de celui de l’aristocratie héréditaire mais dont la position en tant qu’élite sociale et politique était comparable.

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