The Southern Man People in Western Han China: Manuscript Evidence from Zoumalou and Hujia Caochang

Abstract The political importance of the Southern Man peoples (Nan Man 南蠻 ) and the process of their integration into the Sinitic empire are usually dated back to the Early Medieval period. However, the past thirty years have witnessed numerous excavations of sites containing manuscripts in the Middle Yangtze area, more specifically in Zhangjiashan, Zoumalou, and recently in Hujia caochang. These documents reveal a more complex picture of the Man and attest to their presence and importance as early as the Western Han, and most certainly earlier. The aim of this article is to identify the Man’s place in the sources, and to analyze the range of measures – administrative, fiscal, judicial, social – put in place to control them and/or negotiate their presence. Here, I propose to analyze the dual importance, of the Man, and of their control by the local administration. First, we will review what both medieval history and modern historiography have to say about the Man. We will then look at the potential but still limited contribution of material culture, by mentioning a few burials and insignia attributed to the Man. We will eventually analyze what the Zoumalou and Hujia caochang manuscripts tell us about the practices implemented by the regional administration to manage the problems, real or supposed, posed by the Man.