This paper discovers the names of five governors of the Qin dynasty Dongting commandery, and finds that there were four possible locations of the commandery capital. Having determined that the “Qianling yi you xing Dongting” bamboo manuscripts were envelopes delivered from Dongting commandery to Qianling county, and Dongting commandery controlled over at least fourteen counties, we can draw a map on this basis. Based on these findings, this paper argues that the counties interacted with each other through document delivery, transportation, logistics, judiciary, official disposal, migration, and prison labour. This paper then indicates that in the Dongting commandery, all of the soldiers and officials, even at the lowest level, came from places other than the Dongting area. Non-native officials, soldiers, civilians, and criminals together constituted an immigrant community. Considering that the locals seemed to have no legitimate military power, political power or living space within the city, the Dongting area could be regarded as a colonial society. The Dongting commandery is typical of the “strong government, weak society” phenomenon. For the Qin government, the commandery system was a powerful institution to monitor regional society. However, implementing such harsh rules upon the remote south also reflected the excessive state apparatus, which might explain the quick collapse of the Qin dynasty.