Post-Conquest Population Removal / 征服后人口迁出

Definition

Post-conquest population removal is a settlement strategy that seeks to prevent renewed resistance by transferring the conquered population away from its home terrain rather than relying only on leadership replacement, garrisoning, or local incorporation.

Current Synthesis

Hanji 356-2 supplies a severe 闽越-东越 case. Han pressure and local defections kill 余善 and produce surrender, but the episode does not end with the rewarded insiders. It says 汉武帝 orders the regional population moved to the Yangtze-Huai area because the terrain is difficult and the people are judged repeatedly resistant.

The mechanism therefore separates elite incorporation from population policy. Select insiders can receive titles while the wider population loses its territorial base. The policy may reduce local remobilization capacity from the conqueror’s perspective, but it imposes displacement, breaks place-based networks, and makes an “empty” frontier a coercive political outcome rather than evidence of peaceful integration.

Key Claims

• Military victory and elite surrender do not determine the full post-conquest settlement.
• A conqueror can reward selected insiders while coercively moving the wider population.
• Removal targets the relationship among people, terrain, and renewed resistance.
• Claims of an emptied region should be read as political outcomes with human costs, not neutral administrative tidiness.

Evidence

• From surrender to removal: Hanji 356-2 places the transfer order after Yu Shan’s death and the reward of defectors.
• Security rationale: Hanji 356-2 attributes the move to difficult terrain and repeated resistance.
• Territorial result: Hanji 356-2 says the old region is left empty after movement to the Yangtze-Huai area.

Counterevidence & Qualifications

The current concept rests on one short source note and should remain source-scoped. The episode does not quantify the population, document implementation, measure mortality or resettlement conditions, or prove literal total depopulation. Its claim that the population was inherently unreliable repeats an imperial security rationale and should not be adopted as a neutral collective trait. Population removal may suppress one local base while creating harm or instability elsewhere.

What Changed

• Created a bounded concept separating rewarded elite surrender from coercive treatment of the wider conquered population.

Related Concepts

• 豪杰迁徙控制 - narrower analogue focused on uprooting powerful households and networks.
• 关中豪强迁徙 - comparison case that moves elites toward the imperial core rather than clearing a conquered frontier population.
• 占领区怀柔治理 - contrasting post-conquest approach centered on reassurance and continuity.
• 招降示范级联 - preceding mechanism through which rewards can split a resisting coalition before population policy begins.