The Population of the Juyan Frontier Region during the Western Han Dynasty Based on Epigraphic Sources

The article presents a comprehensive study of the population structure in the Juyan frontier region (modern Inner Mongolia/Gansu) during the Western Han dynasty (2 nd – 1 st cent. BCE), based on data from epigraphic sources – Han wooden and bamboo slips hanjian discovered during excavations of military garrisons, frontier passes, and watchtowers along the Hexi Corridor. The aim of the work is to reconstruct the demographic and social landscape of this strategically vital northwestern region of the empire, which bordered the nomadic world. Primary attention is devoted to analyzing the various population categories documented in these records: military personnel and their families, migrants from agricultural regions, whose state-sponsored resettlement is documented, refugees, non-Han populations living on the frontier and serving the Han, convicts exiled to the frontier to serve their sentences, and other categories, including servants and slaves. Throughout the analysis of the slip texts, the author identifies some socio-economic mechanisms of frontier functioning: principles of garrison recruitment, systems of forced labour, state regulation  of migration, as well as degrees of social mobility. This approach makes it possible to delineate the social roles and everyday practices of the people who formed the demographic structure of the Han Empire’s frontiers at the turn  of the era.