Annotation:::: The paper focuses on the studies of ethnology as well as border history and geography, and discusses migration and its impact in Yunnan province during the Qing dynasty. The paper begins by briefly describing Yunnan’s geography as a remote mountainous province with less cultivated land, and also its migration history. The mountainous area accounts for over 90% of Yunnan’s total area. The population of Yunnan decreased to less than 2 million people in the 18th year of Shunzhi regime of the Qing dynasty as a result of several wars in the period between late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty. But by the 30th year of Daoguang regime of the Qing dynasty, or 1850 AD, the population of Yunnan had increased to 10 million people. Besides the policy of “recruiting civilians to open up waste land” by the central government for developing Yunnan and strengthening its rule over border areas, another factor that contributed to population increase was the spontaneous migration of numerous inland unemployed people into Yunnan. They entered dense forests in deep mountain areas and engaged in mineral extraction for a living. As a result, migrants related to the mining industry, commercial business, and agricultural development became the main composition of Yunnan’s mountain migrants.The paper uses the method of documental study to analyse this background, and finds that the migration of inland people initiated their integration with ethnic minorities, especially those living in primitive forests. Migration of inland people promoted socioeconomic development in Yunnan mountain areas as the long road network for transporting minerals mostly passed through inaccessible and remote border areas. Those miners, businesspeople, transport operators and craftspeople constituted Yunnan’s mountain migrants at that time. These migrants inevitably came into friendly contact and communication with ethnic minorities living in remote and thickly-forested mountains, and developed mutually beneficial relationships as a way to make up for what the other lacked. Through the process of these interactions, the migrants brought advanced production technology, production tools, better crop varieties, and Confucian culture of the inland to ethnic minorities in the mountain border areas. Thus, this process promoted economic and social development and great ethnic integration in the mountain areas of Yunnan.
