Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.11, 2014

 

The Constraints on the Expansion of the Qin and Han Empires and the Breakthrough Point

(Abstract)

 

Hu Hong

 

The boundary of the Huaxia Qin and Han Empires expanded greatly at one point, but by the middle of Western Han the advance ran out of steam and the empire was forced to yield territory. Many border commanderies were set up only to be abandoned; they marked the outermost borders of the empire. There were three constraints on expansion. One that many scholars have previously overlooked is the political forms of the indigenous inhabitants. The small-scale Huaxia-style high-level polities had been quite easy to absorb, but scattered mountain populations without stable political forms were hard to govern. Mid-sized polities midway between the two could be absorbed into the imperial system and could end up becoming formal counties or commanderies. The politically divided mountainous areas to the south were caught in the net, surrounded as they were by the Huaxia networks of the plains. Politically, they were fragmented and could only form mid-sized polities; also, the fact that the mountain economies were not self-sufficient meant that they depended on trade with the Huaxia network of the plains and could not live isolated from the empire. Hence the mountainous areas of the south were the breakthrough point for the Huaxia empire’s long-term expansion.