New Data on Land Ownership Patterns in Ming-Ch'ing China—A Research Note

Abstract

The author analyzes some of the empirical data contained in the local archives of farmland in three provinces from Ming-Ch'ing times: these data have heretofore not been used by scholars. The new data show the wide dispersion of land ownership, the absence of big landlords, the high degree of land fragmentation, the slow speed of land accumulation in land-owning families, the low turnover rate of land transactions, the substantial bargaining power of tenants, the high frequency of rental defaults by tenants, the remarkable stability of land value between 1500 and 1760, and the steadily rising trend of land value thereafter. All these findings appear to be inconsistent with the traditional views based on nonempirical historical materials. In view of the new evidence, the land problems in Chinese history will have to be reexamined.