Compiling the Record of Equalised Corvée, 1655

The record

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, a year of registration review, the magistrate Min Pailu administered the law with strict impartiality, welcomed the City God of the county into the county hall and conducted the affair together with him. He examined the wards in detail, apportioned the corvée duties, took from the many to add to the few, and made it his business that they should be equal. He brought the result together in one book called the Record of Equalised Corvée, had it cut in woodblocks and circulated through the whole county, so that powerful households could not evade corvée and cunning people had no way of altering it, and the common people were glad of it.

Background

1655, the twelfth year of the Shunzhi era, was a year of registration review. Such a review meant re-checking households and wards and apportioning corvée duties accordingly. The gazetteer does not record the year of the previous review or the state of the old registers.

Review and wards

The review was a periodic re-check of households and wards under the ward system, on which the apportionment of corvée rested. Under the early Qing the reviews continued to run, and wards were often merged or added — for instance, Xiuning County added five wards in the eighth year of Shunzhi (after Quan Renrong, Ward Organisation and the Addition of Tu in Early Qing Huizhou). That paper argues that such shifts in the number of wards reflect the instability of the ward system and at the same time show that it still served a real function in the early Qing. The Lishui review of 1655, and the gazetteer's account of examining the wards in detail, apportioning corvée and making the burden equal, fit that institutional background. The paper, however, treats the wards of Huizhou and elsewhere; it is used here only to say what a review was, and not to infer the number of wards or households in Lishui.

The compilation

The review was conducted by the magistrate Min Pailu. The gazetteer records what he did: he administered the law with strict impartiality and had the City God of the county brought into the county hall to preside over the affair with him; he examined the wards in detail, apportioned the corvée duties, took from the many to add to the few, and made the burden equal. The result was compiled into a book called the Record of Equalised Corvée, cut in woodblocks and circulated through the county.

Consequences

The gazetteer says that powerful households could not evade corvée, that cunning people had no way of altering the register, and that the common people were glad of it: the register fixed the apportionment of corvée, so that great households could not evade it and officials and people could not alter it privately. Three years later, when the commutation of the grain tribute was ordered in 1658, the gazetteer traces the matter back to the petition of Min Pailu and the local gentry and commoners (see the entry for that year).

Uncertainties

First, the provisions of the Record of Equalised Corvée and the detail of its apportionment have not been seen; this entry rests only on what the gazetteer records. Second, the bringing of the City God into the county hall to preside is a device of the old gazetteer's narrative, reflecting how the review was conducted ceremonially at the time; this entry repeats it without comment. Third, the number of households and the area of land examined in the review are not recorded.

Whether the Record of Equalised Corvée survives has not been traced: a search of public and private catalogues, of local literature and of scholarly work found no record of it. Nor has this site found evidence of how the name "equalised wards and levelled corvée" was used in contemporary writings, so it cannot say whether the book was a register drawn up for the one county as occasion arose, or an instance of a form of register then in common use.