¹ Radner, Karen, “Mass Deportation: The Assyrian Resettlement Policy,” Assyrian Empire Builders, University College London, 2012Google Scholar, www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/essentials/governors/massdeportation/; Oded, Bustenay, Mass Deportation and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1979)Google Scholar.

² Rowe, John Howland, “Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest,” in Handbook of the South American Indians, edited by Steward, Julian H. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1946), 2:269–70Google Scholar. Rowe shares the view with Radner (on Assyria) and Chun-shu Chang (on Qin China) that the long-term effect of these internal relocations in the empires was to homogenize the population, welding a new national consciousness as imperial subjects.

³ See Feng, Li, Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BCE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 269–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ For the Qin considering themselves to be the inheritors and upholders of Zhou traditions, see Pines, Yuri, von Falkenhausen, Lothar, Shelach, Gideon, and Yates, Robin D.S., “General Introduction” and “Introduction: Archaeological Perspectives on the Qin ‘Unification’ of China,” in Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited, edited by Pines, Yuri, von Falkenhausen, Lothar, Shelach, Gideon, and Yates, Robin D.S. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 14–18, 37–49Google Scholar.

⁵ Shaughnessy, Edward L., “Western Zhou History,” in Cambridge History of Ancient China, edited by Shaughnessy, Edward L. and Loewe, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 310–11Google Scholar.

⁶ Creel, Herrlee, The Origins of Statecraft in China: Volume 1, The Western Chou Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 85–92Google Scholar.

⁷ Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu 春秋左傳注, Annotated by Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), 1006; Translated in Durrant, Stephen W., Li, Wai-yee, and Schaberg, David, trans., Zuo Tradition 左傳 Zuozhuan: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals” (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016), 2:1009Google Scholar (with slight modifications).

⁸ Shi ji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 5.212; Translated in Nienhauser, William H., et al. trans., The Grand Scribe's Records (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 1:117Google Scholar (with modification).

⁹ Shi ji 6.56; Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, 1:149.

¹⁰ See Loewe, Michael, “The Tombs Built for Han Chengdi and the Migrations of the Population” in Chang'an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China, edited by Nylan, Michael, Vankeerberghen, Griet, and Loewe, Michael (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 201–17Google Scholar.

¹¹ For the Direct Road, see Sanft, Charles, “Debating the Route of the Qin Direct Road (Zhidao): Text and Excavation.” Frontiers of Chinese History 6.3 (2011), 323–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanft, Charles, Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China: Publicizing the Qin Dynasty (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), 107–21Google Scholar.

¹² While the verb qiān is seen in other early imperial texts with a more neutral connotation of “to change location,” or even a positive sense of an official being “promoted” to another position, its use in legal texts and the records of deportation almost always carries the more negative connotations.

¹³ Shi ji 5.213; compare the translation in Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, 1:118.

¹⁴ For this model, see Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 睡虎地秦墓竹簡整理小組, eds., Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian 睡虎地秦墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1990), 155–56Google Scholar; Hulsewé, Anthony, Remnants of Ch'in Law: An Annotated Translation of the Ch'in Legal and Administrative Rules of the 3rd Century B.C. Discovered in Yün-meng Prefecture, Hu-pei Province, in 1975 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), 195–96 E17Google Scholar; McLeod, Katrina C.D. and Yates, Robin D.S., “Forms of Ch'in Law: An Annotated Translation of the Feng-chen shih.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41.1 (1981), 148–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Qin's expansion into Shu, see Sage, Steven F., Ancient Sichuan and the Unification of China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu, Shuihudi, 82, 87 “Qin lü zachao,” slip nos. 10–11, 32–33; Hulsewé, Remnants, 107–8 C7, 115 C20.

¹⁶ See Shi ji 30.1425.

¹⁷ Oded, Mass Deportations, 6–8, 18–22.

¹⁸ See Hsing I-tien, “Qin-Han Census and Tax and Corvée Administration: Notes on Newly Discovered Materials,” in Birth of an Empire, ed. Pines, von Falkenhausen, Shelach, and Yates, 155–86.

¹⁹ Bodde, Derk, “Appendix 3: Statistics in the Shih-chi and Elsewhere,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, edited by Twitchett, Denis and Loewe, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 98–102Google Scholar.

²⁰ Maurice, F., “The Size of the Army of Xerxes in the Invasion of Greece 480 B.C.,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 50, no. 2 (1930): 210–235CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Size of Xerxes’ Expeditionary Force,” Appendix R in The Landmark Herodotus, edited by Robert B. Strassler (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), 819–23.

²¹ It is still debated among scholars where the Qin group originally came from. One school of thought places their origins in the east of China during the Shang period, while others maintain that they originated either in the Tianshui area of present-day Gansu Province or the Baoji area in present-day western Shaanxi Province. See Yuri Pines, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Gideon Shelach, and Robin D.S. Yates, “General Introduction: Qin History Revisited,” in Birth of an Empire, ed. Pines, von Falkenhausen, Shelach, and Yates, 11–13.

²² For the relationship between the Zhou, the Qin, and the Rong in the Bronze Age, see Ling, Li 李零, “Zhou Qin Rong guanxi de zai renshi—wei Qin yu Rong: Qin wenhua yu Xirong wenhua shi nian kaogu chengguozhan er zuo” 周秦戎關係的再認識—為《秦與戎：秦文化與西戎文化十年考古成果展》而作, in Women de Zhongguo 我們的中國, Volume 1, Mangmang yuji: Zhongguo de liangci dayitong 茫茫禹跡：中國的兩次大一統 (Beijing: Sanlian, 2016), 223–39Google Scholar.

²³ The Bei Rong 北戎 apparently lived in the uplands near the state of Jin. The Shan Rong 山戎 were near the states of Yan and Qi. The Quan Rong 犬戎 were in the west and were the ones who expelled the Western Zhou king from his domain. Other named groups include the Luhun Rong 陸渾戎, the Li Rong 驪戎, and the Yiluo Rong 伊洛戎, and many others. See Hsu, Cho-yun, “The Spring and Autumn Period,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, edited by Shaughnessy, Edward L. and Loewe, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 549Google Scholar.

²⁴ Zhao Huacheng 趙化成, “New Explorations of Early Qin Culture,” in Birth of an Empire, ed. Pines, von Falkenhausen, Shelach, and Yates, 67–68.

²⁵ For the cemetery at Majiayuan, supposedly belonging to the Western Rong chieftains, see Gansu sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 甘肅省文物考古研究所 and Zhangjiachuan Huizu zizhixian bowuguan 張家川回族自治縣博物館, “2006 niandu Gansu Zhangjiachuan Huizu zizhixian Majiayuan Zhanguo mudi fajue jianbao” 2006 年度甘肅張家川回族自治縣馬家塬戰國墓地發掘簡報, Wenwu 2008.9: 4–28; Gansu sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 甘肅省文物考古研究所, Xirong yizhen 西戎遺珍 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2014)Google Scholar.

²⁶ These battles are all recorded in Shi ji chapter 5, “The Basic Annals of Qin.”

²⁷ Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 394; translated in Durrant, Li, and Schaberg, trans., Zuo Tradition, 1:353 (with modifications).

²⁸ This is translated in Hulsewé, Remnants, 211–15.

²⁹ Qu, Chang 常璩, Huayang guozhi jiaobu tuzhu 華陽國志校補圖注, annotated by Ren Naiqiang 任乃强 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), 3:128Google Scholar; translation by author.

³⁰ Jiegang, Gu 顧頡剛, Qin Shihuangdi 秦始皇帝 (Chongqing: Shengli chubanshe, 1944), 19–22Google Scholar.

³¹ Shi ji 5.212; translated in Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, 1:117 (with modification).

³² For example, in the eight year of King Huiwen (331 BCE), there is a record of a Qin attack on the Wei territory of Quwo that mentions “expelling all its people and taking its walled towns,” but does not mention how Qin refilled those now empty towns. See Shi ji 71.2308.

³³ See transcription and notes in Wei, Chen 陳偉, ed., Qin Jiandu Heji 秦簡牘合集 (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue, 2014), 637–39Google Scholar; translation by author. For an alternate translation of this letter and the other letter from the same tomb, see Giele, Enno, “Private Letter Manuscripts from Early Imperial China,” in Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China, edited by Richter, Antje (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), 456–64Google Scholar.

³⁴ See Wei, Chen 陳偉, ed., Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi (diyi juan) 里耶秦簡牘校釋(第一卷) (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue, 2012), 72–76Google Scholar board no. 8–135 (134); translation by author. For an introduction to this board and the other Liye finds, see Yates, Robin D.S., “The Qin Slips and Boards From Well No. 1, Liye, Hunan: A Brief Introduction to the Qin Qianling County Archives,” Early China 35 (2013), 291–329Google Scholar.

³⁵ These rough estimates rely on the references to coerced migration compiled by my graduate student research assistant Ben Ma (currently, Assistant Professor of Chinese History, University of Macau), as well as on those cited in Feibai, Ma 馬非百, Qin jishi 秦集史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), 916–29Google Scholar, and in Chang, Chun-shu, The Rise of the Chinese Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), vol. 1Google Scholar. As proposed above, in the sub-section, “Debating the Numbers,” these figures are taken as “historical facts,” though their magnitude was probably manipulated for ritual or ideological purposes. The 10 percent number is based upon just the relocations mentioned in Sima Qian. The larger estimate of 25 percent is speculative, based upon references to more extensive relocations in other Han texts such as the Han shu.

³⁶ The text reads: 徙天下豪富於咸陽十二萬戶。(Shi ji 6.239); “He moved the extraordinarily wealthy households of the world, 120,000 in all, to Xianyang.” Compare the translation in Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, 1:138. The movement is described with the verb xǐ 徙 “relocation” in Shi ji chapter 6, though in some other texts it is referred to as qiān 遷 “banishment.”

³⁷ Texts that post-date the Shi ji suggest that the deportations of the nobles of the six states to reside in Xianyang did not necessarily take place only after 221 BCE, but probably occurred as Qin annexed and consolidated each rival state. For example, the Guangyun 廣韻 and Xin Tangshu 新唐書 texts state that Qin brought some of the noble families of Zhao to Xianyang shortly after the conquest of Zhao between 228 and 222 BCE, and made one of their members a key administrator in the capital area (Governor of the Capital Area of the Right). Part of this favoritism may have had to do with the Qin closeness (and possibly blood relation) to the Zhao royal family, despite their rivalry. See the citations and argument in Ma Feibai, Qin jishi, 916–29.

³⁸ Derk Bodde, “The State and Empire of Ch'in,” in The Cambridge History of China, 1:55.

³⁹ Bodde, “Appendix 3: Statistics in the Shih-chi and Elsewhere,” 101. In addition to suspecting the number 120,000 for its round nature, Bodde also points out that it is a multiple of six, which was the patron number of Qin, so it might have had mystical significance. He suggests, however, that the real number of deportees might have been even higher, since aristocratic families often had a very large entourage of servants, slaves, etc.

⁴⁰ Shi ji 129.3277; translation based on Donald Wagner, Iron and Steel in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 251 (with modifications).

⁴¹ Shi ji 129.3278; translation based on Wagner, Iron and Steel, 251 (with modifications).

⁴² Shi ji 129.3278; translation based on Wagner, Iron and Steel, 251 (with modifications).

⁴³ For the early Han laws taxing iron production, which were likely copied directly from Qin law, see Barbieri-Low, Anthony J. and Yates, Robin D.S., Law, State and Society in Early Imperial China: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb no. 247 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 2:916–19, 926–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ Wagner, Iron and Steel, 256.

⁴⁵ Ma Feibai, Qin jishi, 916.

⁴⁶ For this idealized system of land allocation, seen in the early Han laws from Zhangjiashan, likely inherited from the Qin, see Barbieri-Low and Yates, Law, State, and Society, 2:790–93.

⁴⁷ See Shi ji 100.2866. Chun-shu Chang, Rise of the Chinese Empire, 1:58, arrives at the figure of approximately 320,000 people for this colonization of the Ordos by multiplying the number of counties, by the average number of households said to occupy a chūxiàn 初縣 “new county” in the Han shu. That entry is related to Emperor Wu's colonization of the far south after the defeat of Nanyue (Vietnam). The text in the Shi ji only mentions the relocations of those punished with “garrisoning the frontier” (zhéshù 謫戍) to fill up the forty-four counties.

⁴⁸ See Shi ji 6.259; Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, 1:150–51. According to Sima Qian, this population movement was stimulated by a divination conducted by the First Emperor, which told him that “traveling” and “relocating” (xǐ 徙) was auspicious, so he then relocated the 30,000 households. Each was given an increase of one step of rank, so this was a compensated relocation, and not a forcible resettlement of convicts.

⁴⁹ See Shi ji 6.253; Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, 1:145; Chun-shu Chang, Rise of the Chinese Empire, 1:52–53.

⁵⁰ The large number of 500,000 people is from the commentary of Xu Guang 徐廣 on the passage in Shi ji 6.253.

⁵¹ The reference is from the Yuejue shu 越絕書 text (juan 6.6b), cited in Ma Feibai, Qin jishi, 929. See also the other references to these colonizations in Chang Chun-shu, Rise of the Chinese Empire, 1:342n95.

⁵² The locus classicus for this term is in “The Account of Dayuan” in Shi ji 123.3176. The commentator Zhang Yan explains what the seven groups are. The assumption is that the Qin also considered these same groups in their mobilizations, and that the Han were continuing Qin policy.

⁵³ See Chen Wei, Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi [diyi juan], 217 slip nos. 8–755, 8–756, 8–757, 8–758, 8–759, 8–1523.

⁵⁴ Ma Feibai, Qin jishi, 916–29.

⁵⁵ Ying-shih, Yü, Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Chun-shu Chang, Rise of the Chinese Empire, 1:56–60.

⁵⁷ For the evidence of household registration during the Qin from site of Liye, and how it made the people legible to the state, see Sanft, Charles, “Population Records from Liye: Ideology in Practice,” in Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China, edited by Pines, Yuri, Goldin, Paul Rakita, and Kern, Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 249–72Google Scholar; For the seminal work on states and legibility, see Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.