A geographic research on the immigrating clans of Xiangyin county during A.D.121-1735
湘阴县氏族移民地理研究（1211735年）

Historically migrating of population over time is the most original force to drive the evolution of regional human-environmental relationship.This paper,mainly based on the clan data recorded in the book Xiang-Yin-Xian-Tu-Zhi(Records of Xiangyin County) published in 1880 by Guo Songtao,a famous scholar as well as diplomat,and limited in the district of Xiangyin County in the Qing Dynasty,analyzes at the township level the migrating process and spatial distribution of the immigrating clans settled in Xiangyin County from A.D.121 through 1735 and the following conclusions are drawn. 1)184 of 226 existing clans in Xiangyin County are immigrants.Their immigrating types included straightforward immigrating from ancestral home,circuitous immigrating from ancestral home through one or more transfer settlement places, and return immigrating of previously out-migrating clans from Xiangyin County.Under the migrant cohesive force and migrant inertial force,the affinity on geography and cohesiveness on kin resulted in the contiguousness of out-migrating places and the aggregation of in-migrating places.At the provincial level, 67.2% of immigrating clans were from Jiangxi,15.5% from Hunan and Hubei,7.3% from Jiangsu and Anhui,the rest from Fujian,Zhejiang,Henan,Shandong,Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. 2)According to the Records of Xiangyin County,the earliest clan immigration occurred in A.D.121-125,but mostly took place after the 10th century.Among all the immigrating clans,69.6% migrated in Xiangyin during the Ming(1368-1644),10.3% during the Yuan(1297-1368),7.6% during the early Qing(1644-1735),6.5% during the Song(960-1279),4.9% during the Later Tang(923-925),and 1.1% during the East Han(121-125) dynasties.The three immigrating climax periods(923-925,1341-1398 and 1621-1722) separately accounted for 4.9%,45.1% and 13.6%. 3)The settled places of immigrating clans within the Xiangyin County had a shifted tendency from southeastern foothills toward northwestern wetland.In the Later Tang dynasty,immigrating clans largely settled in the southeastern crisscross of foothills and plains;in the Song and Yuan dynasties,mainly in the central plain along Xiangjiang River valley;in the Ming and Qing dynasties,mostly in the wetland adjacent to the Dongting Lake.The spatial evolution of settled places of immigrating clans reflected in the Dongting Lake drainage basin there was a regional developing trend from foothills to plains and in turn from plains to wetlands. 4)The migration process in agricultural society was largely a process of labor investment,so the comparative advantage of land cost usually was a decisive factor for immigrating clans to select their settled places.Because of the varied reasons and goals of clan migration,the settled places of immigrating clans showed some difference in the spatial distribution: Jiangxi clans spread over the townships of Xiangyin County,the composition of immigrating clans in county town and in the southeastern townships were m