Grain Tax Commuted by Imperial Order, 1658

The order

十五年戊戌，三月，奉旨改折漕粮。

Translated: In the fifteenth year, wuxu, in the third month, an imperial order was received commuting the grain tribute.

In the third month of 1658, the fifteenth year of the Shunzhi era, an imperial order commuted the grain tribute. The gazetteer gives neither the rate of commutation nor the year from which it was to run, nor the area it covered.

The origin of the matter

The gazetteer then traces the matter back:

先是，知县闵派鲁于十二年，因合邑绅衿里民李蔚、萧秉乾、胡文美等，条陈复折，

Translated: Previously, in the twelfth year, the magistrate Min Pailu, on the petition of the gentry and commoners of the whole county, Li Wei, Xiao Bingqian, Hu Wenmei and others, who set out the case for restoring the commutation,

The text of the Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer, juan 1, "Annals of the County", as consulted here, breaks off after this sentence. The deliberations on the petition, the terms of the order and its outcome are all missing, which is why this entry is set at medium confidence.

Relation to earlier commutations

This was not the first commutation of Lishui's grain tribute. In 1622, the second year of the Tianqi era, it had been approved "in perpetuity", and in 1625, with the capital's stores short, the county "no longer commuted it" (see the entry for that year). The "restoring the commutation" petitioned for in 1655 presumably means a request to bring the commutation back; whether it renewed the earlier arrangement of the Tianqi period cannot be judged, the text consulted here being incomplete. The compilation of the Record of Equalised Corvée by the same magistrate Min Pailu in 1655 is recorded in the entry for that year; both matters fall within his term of office.

Uncertainties

First, the text is incomplete: the entry for 1658 breaks off after the account of the petition, so the terms of the commutation and its outcome are not known. Second, the gazetteer does not record the wording of the 1655 petition or how it was deliberated. Third, the sources consulted here give neither the rate of commutation nor the method of collection.