RAS-1978 — Page 150

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C. MARTIN WILBUR

ization upon an earlier, and in some ways disparate form, as it is due to sectionalism and isolation. For the whole range between absolute familism, as found in some sections of South China, and the civism which exists in an arrested state in North China is possible by this process of development.

I

The causes for the continuation of clan life as the dominant form in South and Southwest China, and for the replacement of this type of organization by civism in the North are of interest, and indicate something of the nature of the latter form. In the first place, it should not be supposed that the “Chinese" peoples inhabited all or even a large part of modern China during their whole history, nor even that the Chinese type of civilization covered the territory during much of it. Li Chi has archaeologically and anthropologically established the fact, already known by historians, that Southern China was only slowly populated and sinicized by the Chinese through a long period of infiltration and migration.1

These migrations to the South seem to have been frequently of the clan sort, or at least to have occurred during periods when clan life was more extensive in the North than at present. The new situation was one calculated to further clan life amongst the Chinese settlers. They found themselves among hostile but culturally inferior peoples, circumstances which strongly reinforced the "we-group" attitude and resulted in a self-imposed segregation, and a continuation of clan life, at least in rural districts. At the same time clan life was also the system amongst the earlier "natives" of South China, and this continued among them, perhaps in modified form, while they were assuming distinctly Chinese cultural traits.

In North China the situation is not the same. Aside from the fact that this section has much longer been the home of the Chinese, which seems to correlate with the slow breakdown of clan life, at

1 He shows that a Southeastward movement was the dominant current of migration up to the end of the Sung dynasty (1280) and especially strong between Chin and Sui (265-618) inclusive, and again from the beginning of the Five Dynasties to the end of the Sung (906-1280). The Southwestward movement was the dominant one during the Yüan and Ming dynasties (1280-1644). Li Chi; The Formation of the Chinese People, passim, specifically, p. 165.

2 Phenix village is exactly this sort of a community. Kulp, Daniel H.; Phenix Village, Chap. III passim.

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