Chapter 10 Section 5 Summary of this chapter

There have been few in-depth discussions on the hierarchical changes of administrative divisions in the past.There is no fixed designation for the administrative regions at all levels, and they are usually called the first-level administrative region, the second-level administrative region, the third-level administrative region, etc. according to the ordinal number.But such a title cannot reflect the characteristics of the administrative regions at all levels.Like a county-level administrative district, it was the first level in the Qin and Han Dynasties, but it was the second level in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.Moreover, as mentioned above, although the administrative districts in the Yuan Dynasty implemented a multi-level system, they can only be divided into three levels from the point of view of the relationship between administrative districts and counties at all levels.Looking at the process of administrative district level changes in 2000, it can also be summarized into three levels, namely county-level administrative districts, unified county administrative districts, and high-level administrative districts.

County-level administrative districts can also be called grassroots administrative districts.Local officials directly appointed by the emperor end at this level.A county is a first-level administrative region that directly manages the people, and has the least fluctuations in size, number, and name.Tongxian administrative districts can also be called county-level administrative districts, that is, administrative districts directly under the jurisdiction of counties, such as counties in Qin and Han Dynasties, prefectures in Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, Liao, and Jin Dynasties, roads, government offices, and states in Yuan Dynasty, government offices in Ming and Qing Dynasties, Zhili Prefecture, and Republic of China The Tao of the early years.High-level administrative districts refer to the areas that do not directly govern counties, that is, the upper-level administrative districts of Tongxian administrative districts. They were prefectures in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, roads and roads in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and provinces in the Yuan, Ming, Qing, and early Republic of China.According to the division of three levels, the changes of administrative divisions in the past dynasties can be included in the following table:

The names inside and outside the brackets in the table are mutual names or equivalent names.For example, during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, most of the time the administrative districts of counties were called prefectures, and they were renamed prefectures twice for a short period of time (the third to fourteenth years of Sui Daye, the first year of Tang Tianbao to the second year of Zhide, a total of 28 years), the nature of counties and prefectures The same, so called each other.In the late Tang Dynasty, the interview envoy and Jiedu envoy, Taoism and Fangzhen were integrated, so it is appropriate to call Tao or Fangzhen, which are equivalent names.The chief minister of the Ming Dynasty is the official name, but it is commonly known as the province, and the two are also called equally.Another example is that there are several types of Tongxian administrative districts in the three columns of Liao, Yuan, and Ming in the table, separated by a short line in the middle, indicating that in addition to the common characteristics of Tongxian, they can also have a subordinate relationship with each other, such as the government in the Ming Dynasty The counties can be directly unified, or the counties can be unified through the states.Those not separated by short lines are all different types of administrative districts at the same level. For example, the government, prefecture, army, and supervisor in the Song Dynasty were unified county administrative districts.

There are two main laws of level change, one is from high to lower, and then from virtual to real. from high to low With the progress of history, all high-level administrative districts have gradually shrunk in size, increased in number, and decreased in level and level, and finally disappeared.Nowhere is this more evident than in the states.At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were only 13 prefectures. As high-level administrative regions, the large ones were as large as two or three provinces today, and the small ones also had the size of half a province.By the beginning of the Sui Dynasty, the number of prefectures had reached more than 300, the size of which was only a few counties, and the level had been reduced to a unified county administrative district.By the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, most prefectures had been reduced to the same level as counties. In the Qing Dynasty, scattered prefectures were completely at the same level as counties. In the early years of the Republic of China, prefectures were abolished as counties, so prefectures disappeared from the administrative division system.After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was adopted as the name of the second-level ethnic local autonomous region.

In the early Tang Dynasty, Dao appeared as a supervisory area above the state level, and later combined with Fangzhen to become a high-level administrative area, but its size has been greatly reduced.The roads in the early Song Dynasty were later replaced by roads, and in the Yuan Dynasty they were used as supervision areas below the provinces. The Ming and Qing Dynasties followed the Yuan system and also set up roads between provinces and governments, but their size was also greatly reduced.In the early years of the Republic of China, the road was changed to a first-level administrative district between provinces and counties. After the road was abolished in the 1920s, the road disappeared.

The evolution of the road is also similar, but the use time is short.There were only more than 20 roads in the Northern Song Dynasty. As a high-level administrative region, its territory was roughly equivalent to half a province and one province today.In the Yuan Dynasty, it was reduced to a unified county administrative district, and its territory was reduced to the size of one or two districts today. In the Ming Dynasty, roads were abolished as government offices, and roads also disappeared. The size of the province gradually decreased from the Yuan Dynasty to the Republic of China, and after the 1920s it was reduced to a unified county administrative district.Up to now, it is still nominally the administrative district of the county, although there is still a virtual level between the provinces and counties, the district and the city that manages the county.

Unlike the high-level administrative districts, the county and the prefecture, which is the unified county administrative district, have gradually shrunk in size, but they have not been lowered in rank, but have directly disappeared.By the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the size of the county had been reduced to the scope of two or three counties, so it was abolished at the beginning of the Sui Dynasty.Although it recovered for a short period of time in the late Sui Dynasty and the middle Tang Dynasty, it still inevitably died out in the end.However, the title of the county system has been retained to represent an administrative system different from the feudal system. Therefore, all county-level administrative districts, states in the Sui, Tang and Song Dynasties, and government offices in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties can be called county-level administrative districts. In fact, The ancients have always regarded the state capital as a county, and the state governor and magistrate are often called county prefects.

Not only that, but in the Song Dynasty, in addition to the state name of each state, the county name was also attached.Many people read "Song History Geographical Chronicles" that have "Cangzhou, Shang, Jingcheng County", "Fuzhou, Dadu Governor's Mansion, Changle County" and other records, and think that the county name still existed in the Song Dynasty, but it is not.The county name here is just a number, just like the difference between a person's name and his real name.The county name Changle is the county name of Fuzhou in Tang Dynasty.Most of the prefectures in the Song Dynasty were renamed from counties, so most of the county titles were ready-made.Some newly established prefectures did not have county titles, but they were conferred by the emperor, such as Fengzhou on Hedong Road, which was named Ningfeng County.

In the Ming Dynasty, the prefecture became a common unified county administrative district, with a large area. For example, Shandong was only divided into six prefectures, which were even larger than today's area.In the Qing Dynasty, the territory of the government shrunk significantly. In the early years of the Republic of China, the government was abolished to save the Tao, and the government also disappeared. From fiction to reality The high-level political districts in the past dynasties evolved from non-administrative districts, that is, supervisory districts or military districts, and the chief executives of the political districts were also transformed from central officials. This is called the transition from fiction to reality.

In the Qin Dynasty, the supervisory area was consistent with the administrative area.Qin Shihuang divided the world into 36 counties, and the counties set up guards, lieutenants, and supervisors.Shou and Wei are the chief officers of the county, and the supervisor is the central official. Each county becomes a supervision area.In the Han Dynasty, the situation changed, the size of the county shrunk, and the number of counties increased, so prefectures were established above the counties as supervisory areas.Since the object of supervision is the administration of officials rather than civil affairs, the affairs are relatively simple, and there is no need to set up a supervision area for each county.However, since the prefecture was demarcated as a first-level area and separated from the counties, it constituted the geographical basis for later transformation into administrative divisions. After the power is granted, the state is naturally transformed into an administrative region.

The Tao (Fangzhen) in the late Tang Dynasty evolved from two lines.One is the governor's area of ​​the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.This is the military superintendent area with the governor as the military chief and governing several states.The governor is also an example and the governor of the state where he is stationed, which actually forms a quasi-administrative region above the state.The Tang Dynasty continued to use this system, and the governor was also called Jiedushi because of adding festivals.The other line is the road set up according to the "mountain and river shape" in the early Tang Dynasty, which later became a formal supervision area, and the chief of the road was an interview envoy.The combination of these two lines, with Jiedu envoy and interview envoy, makes Fangzhen and Dao overlap and become a first-level administrative region above the state. The provinces of the Yuan Dynasty were close to the system of the Jin Dynasty's Xingshangshu Province.When the Central Plains used troops, some government members led by the central government also set up Xingshangshu provinces in the local area. This was originally an agency of the central government, but over time the areas under its jurisdiction became administrative divisions. This is another kind of From the virtual to the real form.The Xingshangshusheng of the Jin Dynasty traced its origin to learn from the Xingtai Shangshusheng of the Six Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties.At that time, "province" was the name of the central government office. Xingtai Shangshu Province or a certain Xingtai Province were temporary action agencies sent from the central government to deal with local affairs. Turn it into a fixture.Later, Xingshangshusheng in the Yuan Dynasty was renamed Xingzhongshusheng following the change of the name of the central government agency to Zhongshusheng, referred to as Xingsheng. Of the four high-level administrative regions in Chinese history, prefectures, roads (Fangzhen), roads, and provinces, only the roads were completely created by the Song people, and the other three evolved from the supervisory area, military area, or temporary action agency.However, the emergence of Lu is not completely rootless. It is also formed by fixing the temporary position of the Tang Dynasty's transshipment and giving it a certain scope of governance. It is also formed from fiction.In addition, the governors and governors of the Ming Dynasty almost became a new first-level administrative region during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Later, after adjustments in the early 20 to 30 years of the Qing Dynasty, they returned to the framework of the chief minister (province). It's just that Du and Fu became the highest officials at the provincial and regional level above the chief envoy.