关键词: 移民地理学, 拉文斯坦法则, 政治影响, 人口承载力, 文化区域特征

Abstract:

Exploration and summarization of the laws of migration is one of the important topics in the historical migration study. Long history and complexity of migrating movements which happened in ancient China provides abundant sources for our research. Chinese scholars paid more attention to case studies of migration and have published a lot of papers and works (e.g. Chinese History of Migration, 1997), but little progress has been made on presentation of migration theories. As an tentative work, using the foreign scholars' successful experience (e. g. Ravenstein's laws of migration) for reference, basing on many other Chinese scholars' achievement in this field, the author of this paper deduces five categories of migration laws from Chinese history: 1. Political dominance . Political factors usually play the most important role in many mass migrations. It is easily found that in many dynasties forced migration and free migration made the capital the most populous region. Chaos in transition of dynasties produced a large numbers of refugees and forced them leave their homeland to find shelters. Forced current inevitably produced a compensating countercurrent. 2. Density of population and carrying capacity . Carrying capacity is the key factor for the quantity of population who lived in a certain place. People tend to move to those regions of low population density. On the other hand, overcrowding would force some inhabitants to move to other places. 3. Impelling of disaster and famine .Chinese people were subject to repeated natural disasters in long history. Fierce disaster would damage agriculture badly and lack of food often threatened peoples' lives. Fleeing to other places to seek food gave people a way of saving their lives. The more fierce famine emerged, the more residents left their hometown. 4. Migration of ethnic groups . The basic distribution pattern of ethnic groups in ancient China was formed from pre-Qin period. The Han people gathered in the Central Plain and other ethnic groups scattered the frontiers and border regions. As a moving trend, people of other ethnic groups tried to move into the Central Plain, while the Han people escaped to border regions to avoid heavy taxation and corvee. 5. Migrant and regional characteristics of culture . Migrants are the most important carrier of culture and customs. The cultural characteristics of migrant region were determined by the selection of migrants. Most migrants liked to accept the elegant culture achievement of the Han people while they kept their original customs and dialects.

Key words: geography of immigration/emigration, Ravenstein's laws of migration, political impact, carrying capacity for population, regional characteristics of culture