Forests in Tax Data

There have been a number of important studies of Ming dynasty tax data, most notably Ping-ti Ho’s Studies on the Population of China, Ray Huang’s Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China, and the career work of Liang Fangzhong. These studies have shown the highly unreliable nature of land registration data as a direct index of actual acreage under cultivation. Instead, it is clear that these data are at best indexes of fiscal acreage—that is, the number and the size of tax accounts. Yet while these figures are not especially useful to account for absolute territorial shifts, they are nonetheless quite useful as rough indicators of the number of fields and forests brought under state accounting and oversight. Furthermore, while the summary accounts given in high-level sources like the Ming shi and Da Ming huidian sum together figures of widely varying provenance, the use of local and regional data from gazetteers makes it possible to develop a higher-degree spatial and temporal specificity. Sometimes it is even possible to parse land and populations by category—including the subdivisions of acreage into paddy (tian), dry fields (di), forests (shan), and ponds (tang).

The compilation of landholding figures was itself a historically contingent process. The physical landscapes represented by acreage figures changed markedly in 1149, and in smaller ways in 1315, 1391, and 1581 (to choose four major points of divergence). Nonetheless, these figures are useful to roughly gauge the degree of land registration, especially if we compare data within a given jurisdiction across time to minimize the difficulties presented by locally variant units of measurement. Furthermore, while provincial and empire-wide units of account changed markedly, the jurisdictions governed by prefectures and counties were relatively stable—especially in the southern interior. This appendix presents some of the specific data used in the preceding chapters to index the spread of forest registration, starting with Huizhou Prefecture, the single-best longitudinal data set, and proceeding to more scattered data from Jiangxi and a single prefecture in Fujian.

CHANGES IN FOREST ACREAGE IN HUIZHOU PREFECTURE

Huizhou Prefecture offers the best single time-series cadastral data for Song, Yuan, and Ming South China, broken down by county and (after 1315) by landholding type (table A.1). While these data are peculiar to Huizhou, a prefecture at the epicenter of the shifts in forest registration practices, they nonetheless allow the most consistent source base for tracking change over the longue durée. On top of the anecdotal accounts cited in chapter 2, these data provide the clearest evidence of changes in land registration following the 1149 surveys. Except in Wuyuan, acreages jumped by at least 60 percent in every other county and tripled in three of the more peripheral ones. These three counties—Qimen, Yi, and Jixi—were also the three counties with the highest proportions of forest acreage in 1315 (boldfaced in table A.1). This suggests that the substantial increase in registered acreage in 1149 can largely be attributed to the addition of forests to the tax books.

Registered acreage increased far more modestly in the long thirteenth century, and principally in two other counties, Xiuning and Wuyuan, that had shown the most modest increases in the twelfth century. It is unclear whether this was the result of gradual accretion of self-reporting or a sudden burst during the Yanyou Reorganization. Then between 1315 and 1391, recorded acreage actually fell, driven largely by the disappearance of forests from the books in Wuyuan and Qimen (italicized in table A.1). This was due to tax breaks granted by a short-lived regional regime in the 1350s (not, as Joseph McDermott has suggested, by Zhu Yuanzhang). Modest increases in recorded acreage were seen through the rest of the Ming, driven largely by the gradual reporting of forests in these two counties, although forest acreage in Wuyuan and Qimen never again reached the level reported for 1315. It is also worth noting that gradual self-reporting during the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries was at least as successful in accounting for new acreage as were the more strident attempts to expand registration under Hongwu (1368–91) and Zhang Juzheng (1581). Overall acreage for the prefecture increased 15 percent through self-reporting in the late Song and early Yuan; remained flat in the late Yuan and early Ming (setting aside the disappearance of forest acreage in Qimen and Wuyuan); increased 26 percent in the fifteenth century, with similar increases in both forest and non-forest acreage; and showed only a modest increase in the long sixteenth century.

CHANGES IN ACREAGE ELSEWHERE IN THE SOUTH

No other single prefecture boasts a data series comparable to Huizhou, but for several regions in Jiangxi and Fujian, scattered figures allow us to trace some changes in forest registration in the Ming (table A.2). In areas near Huizhou, patterns of land registration probably looked quite similar. Raozhou, just south of Huizhou, presents the closest comparable case. There registered farmland acreage increased by about 10 percent in the early sixteenth century, while forest acreage increased by little more than a rounding error. In 1581, Zhang Juzheng’s surveys added nearly a quarter more farmland, much of it coming at the expense of forest, which decreased by more than 13 percent. This probably reflected Zhang’s surveys reregistering forests that had been converted to farmland into the proper tax brackets. While no comparable longitudinal data are available for these areas, it is likely that the entire belt of prefectures from Lake Poyang to Hangzhou Bay looked relatively similar to Huizhou and Raozhou, with a huge spike in forest registration in the twelfth century followed by relatively gradual increases thereafter.

Jianning, Fujian; Ruizhou; and Nan’an, a militarized post in southern Jiangxi, show a range of other possibilities. In Nan’an, registered acreage decreased markedly in both farmland and the very small amount of forest (less than 0.5 percent of registered acreage) in the sixteenth century, probably due to tax flight. In Jianning, acreage remained fairly stable, showing a small decrease in non-forest acreage and a small increase in forest. In Ruizhou, another prosperous prefecture in central Jiangxi, we know only that non-forest acreage increased modestly following the 1581 surveys, probably through the reclamation of wetlands. While these data are from just a handful of locations, they give a sense of the range of developments.

A final bit of evidence of landscape change, albeit indirect, comes from the comprehensive acreage figures available for parts of Jiangxi before and after 1581 (table A.3). The 1581 surveys conducted under Zhang Juzheng have generally been considered failures. However, if we look at the prefectural-level data, this picture changes somewhat—in some regions the surveys were markedly successful at increasing taxable acreage, some of which probably came from registering new forests. Looking at nine prefectures that have extant land registration figures from both before and after the surveys, the picture varies substantially. I propose that we are seeing at least four somewhat different trends.

TABLE A.3. Changes in total acreage following the 1581 surveys

Sources: Zhengde Raozhou fuzhi; Jiajing Guangxin fuzhi; Jiajing Jiujiang fuzhi; Wanli xinxiu Nanchang fuzhi; Longqing Linjiang fuzhi; Zhengde Ruizhou fuzhi; Zhengde Jianchang fuzhi; Zhengde Yuanzhou fuzhi; Tianqi Ganzhou fuzhi; Jiangxi sheng dazhi.

Northeastern Jiangxi—Guangxin and Raozhou—was the most developed part of the province, with very high rates of forest registration dating from the Song, when they were part of East Jiangnan alongside nearby Huizhou. Here the amount of registered acreage changed only modestly. Yet as noted above, this probably hides a relatively significant transfer of taxable acreage from forest to non-forest, at least in Raozhou. As in neighboring Huizhou, much of the original forest acreage in this region was gradually being converted into farmland.

In most of the rest of the province, registered acreage increased by 20–40 percent. I suggest that this was actually two distinct processes—wetland reclamation near Poyang Lake and forest registration in the mountainous Jiangxi borderlands. In the three prefectures nearest Poyang Lake—Nanchang, Jiujiang, and Linjiang—acreage uniformly increased by 24–40 percent. In nearby Ruizhou, it increased more modestly. This almost certainly reflected the belated registration of land reclaimed from the lakeshore over the course of the previous century.

In mountainous Yuanzhou in the west and Jianchang in the east, acreage increased by a similar amount, but probably for a different reason. Neither of these prefectures had much wetland to reclaim, but both probably had substantial unclaimed woodlands. Yuanzhou in particular had a well-developed forest sector in the mid-Ming, with forests accounting for more than 30 percent of taxable acreage prior to the 1581 surveys. Detailed figures for Jianchang are missing from most of my data series, but by the mid-Qing it also had an active forest industry. I suggest that these regions may have undergone a wave of forest enclosure in 1581, perhaps comparable to the developments seen further east in 1149, but probably of lesser significance.

Finally, in southern Jiangxi, Ganzhou tripled its recorded acreage during the 1581 surveys. Ganzhou was an unruly frontier in the early 1500s, but boasted a maturing timber business by the early 1600s. This massive wave of land registration during the 1581 surveys reflected the multivalent process of incorporating Ganzhou more fully into state authority. As part of the broader Hakka heartland, the registration of Ganzhou land was part of the trend by which they emerged as a taxpaying population. Given the importance of forest products to both the Ganzhou region and the Hakka population, some of the newly taxable acreage was almost certainly forest.

While incomplete, these data suggest a range of scenarios. At one end of the spectrum, places like Raozhou—and indeed the entire belt of prefectures from Poyang Lake to Hangzhou Bay—probably saw only modest change in taxable forest acreage after 1149. If anything, much of this region probably saw forests transformed into farmland, with the registration category changed during the 1581 surveys. At the other extreme, places like Ganzhou and Nan’an had difficulty maintaining tax records until the late Ming. But once they developed commercial forestry, they saw a huge boom in land registration after 1581. In between these poles, many prefectures in central Jiangxi (and similar regions) simply did not have large forest economies. But those that did—like Yuanzhou and perhaps Jianchang—went through a wave of forest registration and development in the mid-Ming.