Early Settlement

The first movement of people from China proper south into Yunnan took place in the 4th century B.C. at the height of the Warring States Period. The King of Chu inflicted a crushing defeat on his eastern neighbour Yue, whose largely Dai population fled southwestward to western Guizhou, northern Guangxi and eastern Yunnan. Flush with this victory, the King sent Zhuang Qiao to conquer central Yunnan. But meanwhile Qin destroyed the Sinicised Dai states of Ba and Shu in Sichuan. Refugees from these states also fled to Yunnan. Most of the immigrants settled In the relatively flat plateaux of eastern and central Yunnan. They became the majority inhabitants of the new Kingdom of Dian which Zhuang Oiao set up when cut off from his homeland by the Qin conquest of Sichuan.

Cangyuan Cliff Paintings

Not until Emperor Wu Di of the Former Han Dynasty did any Chinese ruler show any interest in Yunnan. Then Dian became the Yizhou Commandery of the Ilan Empire. When the Han Dynasty weakened in the 3rd century A.D. Yizhou shook off allegiance. It was to reestablish Han suzerainty that Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms Period campaigned against Yunnan, Half his forces had the easier task of taking control of the eastern and southern areas, while the Shu Prime Minister himself led the other half of his army into the tribal strongholds of the west.

Upon the victorious conclusion of both campaigns Zhuge Liang reorganised the province's administration.The eastern part of Yunnan became the Prefecture of Jianning, with the capital at Qujing. The central parts became the Prefecture of Yunnan (here the name was used for the first time), capital at Kunming, ex-Yizhou. The western portions were left in the control of native chieftains, who recognised Shu suzerainty and ruled on Shu's behalf. In Yunnan and Jianning Han officials ruled directly, for the population was already Siniciscd. In time these people dropped their earlier identities and considered themselves every bit as Han as the immigrants of the Ming era,

During the Nanzhao ascendancy, the cities of Yunnan and Jianning Prefectures were initially part of the Tang-administered territory. But in the subsequent wars between Nanzhao and Tang China these Han-dominated areas were lost to Nanzhao's expansion, Kunming became the second city of the Kingdom of Nanzhao and whatever Han immigration there was in the time before the conflict now halted. Not until after the end of the Yuan Dynasty, when Yunnan had already been a Chinese province for a century, did the immigration resume.