Immigrants Clans And Local Society

In the late Ming and early Qing, Sichuan suffered a variety of disasters, such as war, plague, tiger suffering and so on, which made a dramatic reduction in population. When Sichuan became one part of the empire, the central government proceeded to the restoration and development of Sichuan. In this process, immigrants was the most important fator. The Sichuan in Qing Dynasty was a kind of local society, in which the main people were immigrants and their descendants. One of the purposes of this paper is to explore the development process of the Sichuan local society in Qing and its salient features.The clans is one of the most important social organization in Chinese local society in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Through the formation process and characteristics of the clans, we can understand more about the process of the local society and its characteristics. Therefore, the paper will analyse the Liao clan case, discuss the process of constructing their clan, people activities, and compare the clan with other social organizations, and with the clans in other regions, showing the morphological features and the developing process of the clans in Sichuan in Qing Dynasty, as well as the characteristics of the local society.Immigrants, clans, local society, are the three important research topics in social history. Therefore, this paper uses the perspective and methods of social history, historical anthropology as a research orientation, the main research datas are the official records, local records, and field work of the genealogies, inscriptions, and oral historical folk literature. The research methods are combination of case studies and macro analysis, statistics and comparison. This paper focuses on the recovery of the Sichuan in early Qing, immigrants’immigration, immigrants’entrepreneurs and settlement, population reproduction and social stratification, the local elites class, rural settlements and the market town, the morphological characteristics of the clans, and the course of development of the local society. The paper combeds the process of development of the Sichuan local society in Qing, reveals the role of government and other social organizations or social networks played in the process of development ofthe local society, shows the similarities and differences of the Sichuan local societyand other regions, and helps to understand the Sichuan local society and the causes ofits characteristics.The main content of each chapter:Chapter Ⅰ Introduction This chapter describes the research questions of thispaper, academic history on immigration history, the clans, the Sichuan immigrants andclans in Qing, and the introduction of historical sources, research methods, values ofthis paper, and the innovation points.Chapter Ⅱ The restoration of Chengdu region in early Qing and theimmigration of migrants This chapter pointed out that, in early Qing, the localgovernments and officials played a very important role in the recovery process ofSichuan, as well as the time characteristics, causes and entrepreneurs to settle ofimmigrants to Sichuan. This chapter also introduce the ancesters of Liao, the reasonsof their migration, and their homeland.Chapter III Population reproduction and social development In this chapter,the author counts the population of the Liao, in order to show the characteristics ofchanges in population size, and on this basis to investigate the changes of the localsociety, including social stratification and the formation of local elites class, as well asthe contribution to the development of their local society. This chapter also discussesthe patterns of rural settlements named “Linpan”, which is closely related to thedistribution of land property rights of immigrants and population increases, theseparation of family and property. This chapter also study the characteristics andestablishenment of the market towns, the local elites played an important role in theprocess of the development of the town, and the market towns also played animportant role in local society.Chapter Ⅳ The clans：establishment and social significance This chapterexplores the establishment, effect and fate of the ancestral temples, the operatingcharacteristics of the clans property, and its contact with the clans function and the"State" and "local society", the time characteristics codification of the genealogy and its conscious structure. This chapter compares the clans with the clan associations(会馆) and other social organizations in Sichuan, which point out the reasons of theclans’ weakness.It also compare the Sichuan clans with the clans in other regions,such as Guangdong Pearl River Delta, Huizhou, and Taiwan, which reveals theelements of affecting development of clans, and the characteristics of Sichuan clansand local society in Qing. Finally, the author also have theoretical thinking on thesignificance of the clan and social organizations in the local society.Chapter V Conclusions This chapter is the summary of the paper. It combsthe process of the development of the Liao clan and the Sichuan local society in QingDynasty, and shows their characteristics.