The Ba-Yu Immigrant Society In The Early And Middle Qing Dynasty

Late Ming and early Qing dynasties,the "Huguang fill in Sichuan" immigration activities have been growing vigorously.As the east door of Sichuan,as well as the adjacent region of Sichuan,Huguang,Shanxi,and Guizhou,the Ba·Yu region was the first foothold of immigrants into Sichuan,thus have formed a big multiple society composed of people from different native provinces in here,and it was the immigrants who taking the leading role.The long duration,the large number of immigrants,and the complexity of the immigrants’ native places of the Ba-Yu region immigration activities were rare at that time,so the formed immigrant society was full of contradictions as well,such as the conflict between the irmigrants and the natives,between the new and the old immigrants,between immigrants of different native places.Then,how have the immigrants found their new position in the complex social relations?That is,what changes have taken place in the identities of the immigrants,and what influences have these changes brought to the local society?This thesis aims to re-examine the integration process of the immigrant society from the perspective of identity change,through searching,sorting the local historical data such as the local Chronicles of the Ba-Yu region,by means of mathematical statistics and comparative research to analyze the data,so as to solve three problems:"where to come from","who am I" and "where to go",and to further explore the interaction between the immigrants and the regional social changes in the Ba-Yu region.This thesis is divided into four parts.The first part analyzes the immigration situation of the Ba-Yu region in the early and middle period of Qing dynasty,including the number of the immigrants and the composition of their native places,to solve the problem of "where to come from".The second and third parts are from the thought of the immigrant groups about the problem of "who am I",through the transformation and differentiation of the immigrant groups,to respectively investigate the localization process of which the mainstream and non-mainstream parts of the iumigrant groups in the irmigrant society have completed.The main content is to reflect the process of realizing settlement,integrating into local society in different ways of the immigrant groups,and to expound the formation and development of the immigrant society under the change of the immigrants’ identities,so as to solve the problem of "who am I".The second part expounds the mainstream of the immigrant groups,namely ordinary immigrants.Through building.villages where the residents have the same native place or the same family name,to establish a family organization and guild Guild Hall organization,they have achieved the wish of settle down,completed the transformation to "Sichuan People".At the sane time,it have promoted the formation and development of the immigrant society,and completed the changes of the mainstrean immigrant society in a stable and peaceful way.The third part is on the basis of the second part,analyses the contradictions that have existed in the immigrant society,and explore further to reach a conclusion that the differentiation of the immigrant groups was the root cause of the development of the non-mainstream part in the immigrant society.Therefore the contradictions among the immigrant groups was the root cause of the regional social changes,which have resulted in the Guolu problem and the white lotus menace.Having suppressed the white lotus menace,a large number of the non-mainstream part of the immigrant groups were enrolled into the villages and acquired lands,have achieved the wish of settle down by the way of revolt,and the non-mainstream imnigrant society have completed localization by the way of pacifying revolt and rebellion.The fourth part elaborates the performance of the finality of the immigrant society,that is the localization of the immigrants.Having immigrated to the Ba-Yu region was only the form of "where to go",only to found spiritual sustenance and completed the psychological metamorphosis,ehanged from "I am a birthplace people" to "I am a Sichuan people" could really solve the problem of "where to go".The main content is to analyze the cultural identity of the people in the mainstream of the immigrant society through the blend of the immigrant culture and the Ba-Yu culture;and through the appearance of new contradictions and conflicts in the Ba-Yu society,to analyze the formation reason of the new contradictions in the non-mainstream immigrant society,so as to prove that the Ba-Yu society was different from the immigrant society,the inmigrant society of Ba-Yu has already completed the localization.The Ba-Yu immigrant society is a microcosm of the Sichuan immigrant society,and on this basis,it is the purpose of this thesis to further explore the relationship between the Sichuan immigrants and social changes from the perspective of identity transformationn,So as to enrich the study of social history of immigrants in Sichuan.