The Tax and Corvée Registers of 1385

Background

The Hongwu entries in the gazetteer's annals are mostly remissions: rent remitted in 1370, the autumn grain in 1372, both taxes in 1376, half the autumn grain on official land and all of it on private land in 1381, and school fields granted in 1382. Beyond remission, the collection of tax and corvée required registers that could be checked. Among the Hongwu entries, only the eighteenth year records the making of such registers.

What was done

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。 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之一·邑纪·十八年乙丑

Translated: In the fourth month of the eighteenth year, five-coloured clouds appeared. Tax and corvée registers were made, households were fixed in three grades, upper, middle and lower, and all corvée was verified against them.

The method recorded is that registers were compiled, households entered in three grades, and every levy of corvée checked against the register. The appearance of five-coloured clouds is the gazetteer's own way of noting an anomaly; this entry reproduces it without reading it as a sign of institutional change.

The Taizu Veritable Records, juan 170, also records the matter, under the jimao day of the first month of 1385: "The officials of all prefectures, sub-prefectures and counties were ordered to grade their households as upper, middle and lower and make tax and corvée registers, to be kept in the hall of business. Whenever corvée was levied, the register was produced and its weight checked, so that the register was used accordingly, in order to put an end to the malpractices of the clerks." The veritable record shows the measure to be a general order to all prefectures and counties, and supplies two things the gazetteer omits: that the registers were kept "in the hall of business", and that the purpose was "to put an end to the malpractices of the clerks". It also gives the day, which the gazetteer does not.

Consequences

The immediate result was the grading of households and the verification of corvée against the register. The registers were remade repeatedly afterwards: the single-whip method was memorialised in 1569; in 1571 the magistrate Liu Yinglei measured the fields and removed more than four thousand shi of "flying" grain; and in 1581 the magistrate Chen Zizhen measured the fields again and found a shortfall of more than 84,693 mu against the original quota, which the gazetteer attributes to land gradually washed away by the lake.

Uncertainties

First, the gazetteer does not relate these registers to the Ming yellow registers or fish-scale maps, and gives neither the method of compilation, nor the number of volumes, nor where they were kept.

Second, the criteria for the three grades — persons, land, or both — are not stated.

Third, it is not clear whether the shortfall found in 1581 is measured against the quota fixed in 1385 or against the measurement of 1571; the gazetteer says only "the original quota".

Fourth, the measure recorded in the Taizu Veritable Records is a general order to all prefectures and counties, a matter of national institution; how Lishui itself compiled them, and by whom, is recorded neither by the veritable record nor by the gazetteer, and remains peculiar to the county gazetteer. No inference is drawn here.

Fifth, on the seven layers of sources searched: the official websites layer, the published documents and lists layer, the academic layer (which yields only general studies of the Ming yellow registers, not usable for asserting local facts), the media layer and the maps and fieldwork layer yielded nothing directly on the registers of Lishui; the classical-text layer yielded only the one item from the Taizu Veritable Records. The core fact rests on two independent sources, the gazetteer and the veritable records; the confidence remains medium, since the method of compilation and the criteria of the three grades remain peculiar to the county gazetteer.