Immigrant population in "Huguang filling Sichuan"

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the war that lasted for decades caused the population of Sichuan to drop sharply. "Thousands of miles of battlements are smokeless, full of thorns, and the fox is fake." "Chengdu is a county, people are thousands of miles away, and there is no bone buried inside." At the same time, the plague prevailed.

By Shunzhi 18, the total population of Sichuan was only "about 500,000". The sharp drop in Sichuan's population not only caused the depression of Sichuan's economy and culture, restricted and delayed the development of science and technology, but also reduced the tax revenue of the central government. The collapse of Sichuan not only endangered the southwest region, but also caused adverse consequences to the rule of the Qing government. Therefore, the Qing government took a series of measures to increase population and resume production. Thus, a large-scale immigration into Sichuan initiated and organized by the Qing government began. The origin of immigrants is complex, because Huguang population is the largest among immigrants, so it is called Huguang filling Sichuan.

"Huguang filling Sichuan" began in the early Qing Dynasty and ended in Daoguang period, with an unprecedented scale of more than 100 years. The population "filling Sichuan" not only effectively relieved the population pressure in Huguang area and avoided social unrest, but also made the population distribution more reasonable, which had a great impetus to China society.