Today The Seawall Of Cixi City Region During Ming And Qing Dynasties, Settlement And Immigration

Based on the settlement information provided by Cixi County Di Ming Zhi (Gazetteer of Cixi County) and various gazetteers of related counties and towns, the author attempted to reconstruct the distribution of settlements at Cixi County by GIS technology, with the aid of modern large scale maps of this area. The article threw light on the characteristics of temporal-spatial reformation of the settlements structure, and analyzed the impulse of these changes. The Ming and Qing Dynasties witnessed the rapid development of this area. Continuance of immigrations forced by the increasing settlements, especially in the Qing Dynasty. The migration of Cixi County in Ming and Qing Dynasties has three main backgrounds:First, The Defense System in the early Ming Dynasty. Second, the loss of Cixi area’s population caused by unrest. Third, the government’s immigration reclamation policy. The main source of immigrants from the surrounding areas, mostly migration from the southern mountains nearby, there are also immigrants from Jiangxi, Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, Shanxi and so on.