The interaction between local administration and regional communities on the southwest periphery of the Later Han Empire

Although the Han Empire established between the 1st and 3rd centuries highly sophisticated, systemized and centralized institutions of governance, when examining their structure, both historical transformation and regional characteristics must be taken into consideration. This article focuses on Later Han period Sichuan, a region on China’s southwest periphery conquered by the pre-imperial Qin in the 3rd century BCE, based on a 4th century compilation of ancient chorography known as Huayang Guozhi 華陽国志 and on the newly excavated Dongyujie 東御街 stone inscriptions commemorating local governors（the monuments of a Gov. Li 李 and Gov. Pei 裴）erected in the mid-2nd century.<br> The Dongyujie inscriptions were found unearthed in the central area of present day Chengdu city, the old capital of the Shu Jun 蜀郡 commandery. The inscriptions reveal that governors Li and Pei promoted an official school of Confucianism (junxue 郡学) and administered their commandery with benevolence.<br> As previous research has indicated, powerful local clans enthusiastically embraced Confucian political ideas and practice during the 2nd century, transforming themselves into literati bureaucrats or local elites. They learned Confucian philosophy at nearby junxue, where they established patron-client or peer relationships. The founding of such a school in Sichuan has been attributed to a previous 2nd century BCE Shu commandery governor, Wen Weng 文翁. According to the narratives recorded in Han Shu 漢書 and Huayang Guozhi, Wen Weng’s educational policy marked the starting point from which Sichuan transformed itself into a “civilized region”, a term implying economic, cultural and political development under the governance of the Chinese empire.<br> On the other hand, a prosopographical analysis of the dedicators of the Dongyujie inscriptions reveals that most of them bearing family names recorded in Huayang Guozhi as members of powerful local clans either within the Shu commandery or on its periphery. The above facts imply that scions of powerful clans studied Confucianism to become literati officials, while those of commoner families were also inculcated in that ideology for centuries to form the rank and file of Han society. They also indicate that students and graduate intelligentsia were allowed to migrate and come into contact with counterparts across administrative boundaries.<br> The author concludes that people in peripheral regions of the empire spontaneously chose Confucianism, the official philosophy of the Han Dynasty, and voluntarily participated in the governmental system despite their regional identities and networks. As the prevalence of chorography from the 3rd century on amply demonstrates, the awareness of regional identity was sustained even in the post-dynastic period through interactions between local government and regional communities of the Later Han period.