Study On The Urban Geography Of Guizhou In The Ming And Qing Dynasties(1368-1850)

Taking Guizhou cities and towns as the research object,this paper mainly investigates the process of the emergence,development and change of cities and towns in the context of Guizhou’s regional geographical environment and the strengthening of the governance of minority areas in the southwest border areas during the Ming and Qing Dynasties,and discusses the basic historical and geographical issues of the emergence and development of cities and towns,regional spatial distribution,functional evolution,city construction and scale,site selection and external morphology,as well as the internal space of cities and towns,Combined with the frontier governance strategies of the central dynasties of the Ming and Qing dynasties in southwest China,such as the system of garrisons,land reform and returning to the mainstream,this paper analyzes the natural environment,frontier,ethnic and other geographical characteristics of Guizhou’s cities and towns,and reveals the tortuous historical process of Guizhou’s ethnic minority areas from transforming the outer border to gradually belonging to the interior in the development of Guizhou’s cities and towns under the trend of border inland integration.The full text is divided into three parts: introduction,body and conclusion.The body is the main body,which is divided into six chapters.In the introduction of this paper,the academic review was carried out,and the related concepts of towns and cities,as well as the problems of Guizhou region and its zoning were explained,and the objectives to be achieved in this paper were put forward from the academic value and practical significance.In the main body,six chapters are used to make a long-term and comprehensive investigation of the historical geography of Guizhou cities and towns in the Ming and Qing Dynasties,focusing on the basic issues of historical geography such as the origin,development,distribution,construction,functions,and internal space of Guizhou cities and towns in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.In the writing of each chapter,there are different emphases,such as the origin of cities and towns in the Ming Dynasty and the development of cities and towns in the Qing Dynasty,which focus on political,economic,and institutional factors;The distribution of cities and towns is analyzed from three levels: spatial,regional and geographical distribution.The spatial distribution focuses on the discussion of longitude and latitude distribution laws,the geographical distribution focuses on the analysis of physical geographical factors,and the regional distribution focuses on the study of comprehensive human geographical factors such as population,migration,transportation and economy;The urban construction and external form are mainly based on the city wall and the site selection environment;The function of town focuses on political and military functions,and analyzes its evolution process and characteristics;The urban space focuses on the spiritual and cultural space such as belief,culture and education,and discusses the central dynasty’s enlightenment of ethnic minorities and the strategy of border area governance.The research contents are as follows:The first chapter describes the general situation of Guizhou’s regional historical and geographical background.Throughout the ages,people have often described its natural environment as "the sky is not sunny in three days,and the land is not flat in three feet".Due to the backward regional economy,there is also the proverb "people are not silver in three thirds",so Guizhou is called the "three no" place.For a long time,it belonged to the administrative jurisdiction that was separated from the central dynasty,and was regarded as the frontier by the scholars in the Central Plains.Until the early Ming Dynasty,it was still the extreme frontier under the jurisdiction of the three provinces of Sichuan,Yunnan and Lake.This chapter highlights the particularity of Guizhou’s natural and human geography,such as karst landforms,border areas and ethnic groups,and conducts a thematic study on Guizhou’s special ecological and natural disasters,taking the tiger infestation and malaria as examples.The second chapter is about the historical formation of Guizhou towns in the Ming Dynasty.This paper expounds the political background and economic conditions for the formation of Guizhou cities and towns in the Ming Dynasty,emphasizing that the origin of Guizhou cities and towns was not a natural product of economic and social development to a certain extent,but originated from the main background of the political and military expansion of the southwest frontier of the Central Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty.Therefore,on the one hand,this paper mainly discusses the political ecology of the southwest ethnic regions in the early Ming Dynasty from the perspective of the chieftain system in Guizhou,and analyzes the "simultaneous rule of soil flow" Under the multiple administrative system of "separation of military and government",the Ming Dynasty established a military and government control framework through post roads,guard stations and prefectures and counties by establishing the system of guard stations and implementing the reform of land and returning to the local government.On the other hand,it also highlights that the emergence of cities and towns depends on the substantial basic conditions such as the economic volume and population of a considerable scale and the large-scale construction of the cities and towns of the garrisons,and the solid garrison system is the key factor in the transformation of "from garrisons to cities and towns" in Guizhou.Therefore,the third section of this chapter makes an in-depth thematic analysis of the emergence and formation process of Guizhou cities and towns in the Ming Dynasty with the solid garrison system as the core.The third chapter focuses on the development and distribution of Guizhou towns in the Qing Dynasty.The development and distribution of cities and towns depend on the level of regional economic development and the changes of internal conditions such as population and administration,as well as the external geographical environment.First of all,the paper discusses the development of Guizhou cities and towns in the early and middle period of the Qing Dynasty;The reform and adjustment of the Kangyong period,such as the reduction of garrison and the merging of counties,the delimitation of provincial boundaries,and the transformation of land into rural areas,basically set the foundation for the establishment of cities and towns;Since Qianlong and Jiaqing,the agricultural recovery and development and the regional population have increased dramatically.With the increasingly obvious contradiction between people and land,the population has moved to cities and towns,and the development of commodity production,the transportation has extended to remote hinterland,making the urban and rural commercial market prosperous.Secondly,it discusses the distribution of towns in Guizhou in the Qing Dynasty.First,regional distribution.Cities and towns are the core of regional economic and social development.The level of urbanization has a positive correlation with regional economic and social development.Regional population scale evolution,historical establishment and economic pattern are closely related to the number and hierarchical distribution pattern of towns.Second,the spatial distribution is uneven,and its meridional distribution shows an obvious pattern of less in the west and more in the east;The latitudinal distribution shows that the central area is dense,followed by the south,and the north is the most sparse,showing a sharp decline trend towards the north.The towns in the south are slightly more than those in the north;Overall,it presents a circle structure.The third is geographical distribution,which is mainly affected by the geographical environment.Its distribution is characterized by obvious distribution trend along the river and prominent traffic directivity.The fourth chapter studies the cities of Guizhou in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Mainly taking the city wall as a reference,this paper conducts a comparative study on the construction and scale of the city in the Ming and Qing Dynasties,and discusses the differences in the space-time evolution of the city construction and its relationship with the geographical environment and social background of Guizhou.The city scale of Guizhou in the Ming and Qing Dynasties was not only affected by the city level,but also by the landscape situation,economic level,traffic location and other factors.Guizhou has a variety of external forms,with less regular square cities and more round and irregular cities.The shape of the city is closely related to the city level,landscape situation and other geographical environmental factors.Chapter Ⅴ The function of Guizhou cities and towns in the Ming and Qing Dynasties is the key and difficult point.This paper mainly discusses the evolution of urban functions in Guizhou during the Ming and Qing dynasties,mainly focusing on military and administrative functions.Based on the analysis of the functions of towns in Guizhou in the Ming Dynasty,it is believed that the towns in Guizhou in the Ming Dynasty were mainly political and had prominent traffic and military functions.In contrast,the administrative functions of Guizhou cities and towns in the Qing Dynasty were strengthened,which was reflected in the following aspects: first,the administrative setup of cities and towns was strengthened,such as the establishment of administrative offices,administrative institutions,and official systems were more perfect.The second is to strengthen the urban and rural grass-roots social management system,attach importance to grass-roots social autonomy such as squire and clan governance,strengthen grass-roots systems such as Bao Jia and Tang Xun,and promote village autonomy organizations,so as to make the urban and rural grass-roots control more rigorous.In terms of the evolution of the urban military functions,according to the comparison of the military system,the prevention and control system and the deployment of military forces in the Ming and Qing Dynasties,it is believed that the urban military functions in Guizhou have not only lasted for a long time since the Ming and Qing Dynasties,but also had a significant trend of strengthening.The towns in Guizhou in the middle and early Qing Dynasty showed a trend of "double strengthening" of military and economic functions.The analysis also points out that the long-term continuation and continuous enhancement of Guizhou’s military functions are mainly caused by the particularity of Guizhou’s location at the border,traffic location,geographical environment and ethnic situation.In the early Qing Dynasty,the garrison level and troop deployment of Guizhou Green Battalion changed with the current situation,such as the pacification of the southwest,the diversion of water to the west,the rebellion of Wu Sangui,and the opening up of the Miao area.The military functions of cities and towns in different regions of Guizhou also showed a spatio-temporal evolution characteristic of "changing according to the situation" at different stages.The sixth chapter is the difficult content of Guizhou urban space in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.It mainly discusses the internal spatial structure of cities and towns based on belief and Confucian space.The specific research contents are as follows:First,discuss the urban belief space through the number,distribution and orientation layout of belief buildings in cities and towns in the Ming and Qing Dynasties;Second,through the establishment and development of the Confucian system in Guizhou during the Ming and Qing dynasties,the temporal and spatial distribution of the number of urban Confucian resources,and the orientation distribution of official schools,academies of classical learning,social studies,righteousness schools and other Confucian schools in cities and towns,with temple schools as the core,the urban Confucian space is studied from the internal space of Guizhou temple schools,the spatial relationship between Guizhou temples and schools during the Ming and Qing dynasties,the orientation distribution characteristics of Guizhou temple schools,and the spatial relationship between temple schools and relevant institutions.Through the above research,combined with the natural background conditions such as karst landform,and the historical and geographical environment such as the social background of the frontier ethnic areas in the Ming and Qing dynasties,the historical and geographical evolution track of Guizhou cities and towns in the Ming and Qing dynasties is outlined as a whole.The conclusion part analyzes the southwest frontier governance strategy of the Ming and Qing dynasties,the interaction process between the central and local governments in Guizhou,and the nationalization and inland process of the southwest ethnic regions in the process of Guizhou’s urbanization under the trend of border and inland integration.