Taxation and Corvée in Ming and Qing Lishui

Three threads

The first juan of the Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer is not a treatise on taxation, but because it records taxation matters year by year in annalistic form it leaves a continuous thread behind. For this county the thread can be separated into three strands: the way the tax and service burden was assessed, from the registers of the Hongwu period to the single-whip method adopted in 1569; the surveying of the fields and the concealment of quotas, concentrated in the two surveys of 1571 and 1581; and the form in which the grain tax was collected, that is, the change from payment in kind to commutation in silver, argued from 1600 and granted in 1622, with reversals afterwards. The three are interlinked: the surveys supplied the basis for assessment, and one of the reasons for seeking commutation was precisely the loss of fields after the floods.

Before the single-whip method: the registers

Under the eighteenth year of the Hongwu era (1385) the gazetteer records:

十八年乙丑，四月，五色云见。造赋役册，定民户上中下三等，凡徭役取验。

Translated: In the eighteenth year, yichou, in the fourth month, a five-coloured cloud was seen. Registers of tax and service were made, fixing households in three grades, upper, middle and lower, and all corvée was levied by reference to them.

This is the earliest clear record of assessment in the county: registers were compiled, households were graded in three classes, and service was levied according to the registers. The five-coloured cloud at the head of the entry is the gazetteer's manner of recording portents and stands alongside the making of the registers in the same entry; the two must be read separately.

In the thirty-first year of the Jiajing era (1552) the gazetteer notes that Jiang Congzhou, the assistant magistrate, "applied to have the yellow registers cut as blocks, and those who falsified them disappeared". The yellow registers were the principal registers of population under the Ming and worked together with the tax registers. That falsification ceased is the gazetteer's account of the effect of the measure, and is the judgement of a contemporary; it is reproduced here without being extended.

The single-whip method, adopted in 1569

The gazetteer records:

三年庚午，奏行一条编法。革许家埠河泊所。

Translated: In the third year, gengwu, the single-whip method was memorialised and put into effect. The river and lake station at Xujiabu was abolished.

The four characters of the method's name are reproduced as they stand and are not modernised into the form the term later took. The entry stands beside the abolition of the river and lake station at Xujiabu in the same year, both of them reforms in the collection of the burden. Around the same years the gazetteer also records that in 1567 He Yigui, the magistrate, rebuilt the Bianmin New Granary, and that in 1568 the county tax office was abolished and three hundred and fifty horses of the military stud quota were removed. Tax offices, river and lake stations and stud horses were all obligations running alongside the land tax, and their abolition within a few years shows that this round of reform went beyond the land tax itself.

Survey and hidden quotas: 1571 and 1581

The entry for the fifth year of the Longqing era (1571) is the fullest record of a survey in the sources used here:

五年辛未，知县刘应雷丈量田亩甚明，并却飞粮四千余石，永除民害。民深德之，刘死，立祠祀焉。详《传》并《祠记》。

Translated: In the fifth year, xinwei, Liu Yinglei, the magistrate, surveyed the fields most exactly, and also rejected more than four thousand piculs of "flying quota" — tax that had been shifted onto other households — abolishing the people's grievance for good. The people were deeply grateful to him; when Liu died they set up a shrine and sacrificed to him. The matter is set out in the biography and in the record of the shrine.

"Flying quota" means an assessment that survives the fields to which it belonged and is shifted onto other households, a common abuse in Ming taxation. The gazetteer says the survey was exact, that more than four thousand piculs of such quota were cleared, and that a shrine was set up after Liu's death, noting that the matter is treated in the biography and the shrine record — an unusual instance in this gazetteer of the event and the judgement on it being kept apart.

Ten years later, the survey of the ninth year of the Wanli era (1581) produced the opposite result:

九年辛巳，知县陈子贞丈量田地，较原额亏折八万四千六百九十三亩有奇，皆缘湖水积渐冲没之故也。

Translated: In the ninth year, xinsi, Chen Zizhen, the magistrate, surveyed the fields, and against the original quota there was a shortfall of rather more than eighty-four thousand six hundred and ninety-three mu, all of it because the lake waters had gradually washed the land away.

The two surveys point in opposite directions and do not contradict each other: the first cleared quota that had no land behind it, the second established how much land had been lost, and the gazetteer attributes the loss to the gradual washing away by the lake. That explanation connects directly with the history of the polders and the Guangtong Dam, which is set out in "Polders and the Guangtong Dam in Lishui".

Commutation: from 1600 to 1622

The form in which the county's grain tax was collected is the strand with the widest consequences. Under the twenty-eighth year of the Wanli era (1600) the gazetteer records the complaint of the county's people:

二十八年庚子，邑民张晓、熊子成等，以广通镇筑坝，上游之水无所泄，荡没沿湖腴田八万余亩，每岁额粮加派，各乡民苦赔累，具疏叩阍，泣请漕粮改折如高淳例。

Translated: In the twenty-eighth year, gengzi, Zhang Xiao, Xiong Zicheng and other men of the county, because the dam at Guangtong gave the upstream waters no outlet and more than eighty thousand mu of rich fields along the lake had been washed away, while the annual quota was still apportioned and the villagers were burdened with making it good, submitted a memorial to the palace gate, weeping, asking that the grain tax be commuted as in the case of Gaochun.

This entry ties flood, fields and taxation together: after the dam was built the upstream waters had no outlet, more than eighty thousand mu of rich lakeside fields were drowned, the quota remained though the fields were gone, and it was apportioned among the villages; the people therefore petitioned for commutation after the precedent of Gaochun. Gaochun was the county created out of Lishui's south-western territory, and the appeal to its precedent shows that commutation already had a neighbouring example to cite.

For the next twenty years collection was relaxed and tightened by turns. The gazetteer records that in 1618, "as military needs were urgent, Lishui and other counties collected half the grain tax again in kind", and that in 1620 "the grain tax at Lishui was collected in full again" — "again" being relative to commutation, that is, a return to payment in kind. Not until the second year of the Tianqi era (1622) was there a result:

二年壬戌，应天府尹徐必达据知县张锡命详文，移抚院王象恒、按院易应昌会题，准溧水漕米永远改折，［阖］邑戴之。事载《改折全书》。

Translated: In the second year, renxu, Xu Bida, prefect of Yingtian, on the strength of a detailed report by Zhang Ximing, the magistrate, forwarded it to Wang Xiangheng, the grand coordinator, and Yi Yingchang, the regional inspector, who jointly memorialised, and the commutation of the grain tax at Lishui was approved for ever; the whole county was grateful. The matter is recorded in the Complete Book of the Commutation.

The entry sets out the stages of the paperwork clearly: the magistrate's report, the prefect's forwarding of it, the joint memorial of the civil and censorial authorities, and the approval, with a note that the matter is recorded in the Complete Book of the Commutation. "For ever" is the outcome of the effort.

Reversals after the commutation

"For ever" did not last. Under the fifth year of the Tianqi era (1625) the gazetteer records:

五年乙丑，二月十九日，地震。五月十七日，大风雨，昼如晦。秋旱。十一月二十五夜，地震有声。是年京储告匮，天下改折地方暂借漕米一年。溧水自是不复改折。相沿。

Translated: In the fifth year, yichou, on the nineteenth day of the second month, an earthquake. On the seventeenth day of the fifth month, great wind and rain, and the day as dark as night. Drought in autumn. On the night of the twenty-fifth day of the eleventh month, an earthquake with sound. In that year the capital's stores ran short, and one year's grain tax was borrowed back from the places where commutation had been granted. From that time Lishui was no longer commuted, and so it continued.

The entry sets down earthquakes, storm and drought first, then the borrowing of one year's grain from the commuted districts because the capital granary was short, after which Lishui ceased to be commuted. The gazetteer closes with "and so it continued", meaning that payment in kind remained in use long afterwards. In the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen era (1644) it records that "Yang Gonghan, Zhao Tiyuan and other retired officials of Lishui submitted a memorial asking that the commutation be restored. Before long the dynasty changed, and collection continued as before" — the attempt had no result before the Ming fell, and the method of collection was unchanged.

The early Qing: equalising corvée, and commutation by decree

After the change of dynasty the reform began with the organisation of the tax units. In 1648 the fields of Lishui were surveyed, and in the twelfth year of the Shunzhi era (1655):

十二年乙未，时值审编，知县闵派鲁执法矢公，迎邑城隍神于县堂，与共莅厥事。详核里甲，分拨差徭，裒多益寡，务使相均。勒成一书曰《均甲平徭册》，锓板传布通邑，豪户不得避役，奸民无由变更，百姓乐之。

Translated: In the twelfth year, yiwei, at the time of the review and compilation, Min Pailu, the magistrate, applied the law impartially and brought the city god of the county into the county hall to preside over the matter with him. He examined the tax units in detail and apportioned the corvée, taking from the many to add to the few so that all should be equal. He had a book drawn up, the Record of Equalised Corvée, cut on blocks and circulated throughout the county, so that powerful households could not evade service and dishonest men had no means of altering it; the people were glad of it.

Bringing the city god into the county hall to preside is the ceremony of the review as the gazetteer records it, reproduced without alteration. The Record of Equalised Corvée was cut on blocks and circulated through the whole county, its purpose being that powerful households should not evade service and that no one should be able to alter the assessment. Three years later, in the third month of 1658, "commutation of the grain tax was ordered by decree" — the commutation lost in 1625 was thus restored by imperial order.

Uncertainties

First, the single-whip method appears in the gazetteer only once, and its extent, its detailed assessment rules and how long it lasted are not recorded.

Second, the "more than eighty thousand mu of rich fields along the lake" reported in 1600 and the "shortfall of rather more than eighty-four thousand six hundred and ninety-three mu" in the survey of 1581 are close figures; no source says whether they refer to the same fields, and this site does not combine them.

Third, after commutation was granted "for ever" in 1622, the actual method of collection during the Chongzhen reign is not recorded beyond the petition of 1644, and the practice of the intervening years remains to be established.