Historical Geography Of The Capitals Of Ancient Northern Ethnic Regimes In The Farming-pastoral Ecotone In Northern China

In ancient China,the northern ethnic groups established many regimes.Some of them fell soon after establishment.Some settled in remote areas.Some confronted the southern dynasties.Some established a unified dynasty with a uniform measurement and writing system.In the historical period,these northern peoples were distributed in the north of the Han,bordering the northeast and the Korean peninsula in the east and eastern Qiang area of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the west Mongolian steppe in the west.Differing from people’s long-standing romantic imagination of nomads,northern nomads had broken the inherent tradition of “migrating to land with water and grass,without the building of cities,permanent residential places or farming” ever since the sixteen kingdoms and Qing dynasties.Instead,they competed for cities and buildings during the establishment of regimes,thus building their capital as the political center.Most of these capitals were characterized by the fusion of all peoples and minds and served as the hub for the exchange of goods between the south and north and for cross-border trade,playing an important role in the development of ancient Chinese capitals and cities.However,as often as not,the study of northern peoples’ capitals proceeds from a single regime or capital,lacking a systematic combination of their temporal and spatial changes from the overall perspective.Based on a large number of case studies of the capital cities of the northern ethnic regimes,this thesis examines the spatial and temporal evolution of the capital cities of the northern ethnic regimes from the 4th to the 17 th centuries,from the Sixteen Kingdoms period to the official establishment of Beijing as the capital during the Qing dynasty,in order to analyze the inner motives and spatial patterns in the emergence and development of the capitals of northern ethnic minorities and their spatial and temporal evolution.From a macro perspective,examining the capital cities of the northern ethnic regimes can further promote a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of establishing capitals-especially the mechanism of the origin of the nomadic peoples‘ establishing means.This thesis argues that the agricultural and pastoral interlacing zone in northern China was the spatial basis for the occurrence of the ancient northern ethnic capital phenomenon.The need for a relatively fixed living area for the social production of the northern peoples and the inevitable shift to urbanization in the process of changing productivity,social structure,and power patterns are the intrinsic motives for the occurrence of the phenomenon of the northern peoples’ capitals.The organization of the political centers of the northern ethnic regimes shifted from the "nomadic mode" to the "capital model" during the Sixteen Kingdoms period,starting the historical prelude to the era of the northern ethnic capitals.The Northern Ethnic Capitals Era refers to the period from the 4th century to the 17 th century,when Beijing was officially established as the capital of the Qing Dynasty,and the overall development of the Northern Ethnic Regimes’ capitals.The Northern Ethnic Capital Period is not only a major period in the history of the development of northern ethnic capitals but also an important period in the history of Chinese capitals in which multiple cultures intermingled.The history of the development of ancient Chinese capitals was no longer a historical stage exclusively occupied by the Han or the Central Plains dynasties but became a legendary historical phase with the Chinese culture as the core,dominated by various ethnic groups in turn,and performed by multiple ethnic groups together.The era of northern ethnic capitals can be initially divided into three periods: the first period from the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Northern Dynasties,a small interval in the pre-Sui-Tang period,and the second period from the Bohai Kingdom to the Yuan and Qing periods.Through the examination of the spatial and temporal evolution of the capitals of the northern ethnic regimes,it is known that there existed a concentrated distribution zone of the capitals of the northern ethnic regimes in history,and its spatial scope roughly coincides with that of the Farming-pastoral Ecotone in northern China.From the perspective of macro-geographic distribution and environmental adaptability,the distribution of the capitals of the northern ethnic regimes,which gathered in the spatial range of different geographic scales due to the spatial heterogeneity of the geographic environment,shows a common environmental orientation in terms of spatial orientation.The spatial distribution pattern of the capitals of the northern ethnic regimes is variable in historical periods,and its evolution pattern is characterized by stages,fluctuations,continuity,and environmental indications.In addition,its spatial and temporal evolutionary trends are both related to and distinctly unique from the spatial evolution of the capital cities of the Middle Kingdom.The concept of human-earth interaction,which is valued by historical geography in the study of ancient capitals,is conducive to promoting further understanding of the mechanisms of interaction between the capitals of northern ethnic regimes and their regional environments and social development.The establishment of the capitals of northern ethnic regimes was prone to great disturbance to the fragile natural environment and society of the northern agro-pastoralist belt.The population migration and agricultural development surrounding the construction of the capitals led to an extremely rapid deterioration of the natural environment and a more easily collapsed social environment in the areas where the capitals were located.However,with the transformation of the social structure of the northern peoples and the improvement of their experience in managing agricultural societies,the economic and cultural construction of the capital city as the core and the construction of cities and transportation led to unprecedented opportunities for the development of regional societies.Thus,from a long-term historical perspective,the short-term profit-grabbing of the northern ethnic regimes in the construction of the capital cities,although with specific adverse effects,played a crucial role in the development of regional cultural integration and played a crucial role in the historical process of regional political status enhancement and the evolution of Chinese ethnic diversity and integration.This thesis proposes the basic hypotheses that the phenomenon of northern ethnic capitals occurred under the joint influence of internal and external factors and that there was a geographical orthodoxy in the migration of northern ethnic capitals;and also proposes new concepts such as "the era of northern ethnic capitals" and "the centralized distribution zone of northern ethnic capitals," which may be useful for the discussion of related issues in the academic field.