228 Boundaries and Beyond
last resort. Since they could not take care of their own livelihood, any
additional consumers would only bring more hardship on the family. This
tragedy happened even in well-to-do families when the concubines gave
birth to baby girls because they feared that the new-born baby might
interrupt the work in the βields and also that they might not be able to
afford its dowry in the future.^95 This sinful practice was said to be most
common in Zhangpu.^96
All these evils naturally damaged social stability. They created an
untenable relationship between the landlord and the tenant. Furthermore,
the absence of essential incentives suffocated agricultural productivity.
The landlord oppression was the immediate reason for the outbreak of
tenant uprisings and subsequent social turmoil.
A tenant’s life was worst among the agriculturists.^97 They were subject
to the payment of all taxes (other than the land tax) and labor services.
The contract between the two parties tied the tenant to the land,^98 and
served the landlord as a strong guarantee of maintaining sufβicient
man-power. The landlord was in a position to dominate the will of the
tenant who was often obliged to ask for loans from his landlord to cover
the costs of cultivation, household expenses and the purchase of cattle.
The maintenance of the irrigation works also fell upon his shoulders.
As a landlord tended to squeeze as much out of his tenant as possible,
the latter became ever more entangled in the web of indebtedness. A
harvest could never satisfy his βinancial needs.^99 The landlord frequently
kept an eye on his tenant and supervised all his production activities.
Instructions such as the following were issued from time to time to direct
the tenant’s work:
It is now cultivation season,... the elders should instruct and advise
their juniors to begin sowing seeds....- Xiamen zhi 厦门志 [Gazetteer of Amoy) (1839 ed.; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen,
1967), 15: 13. - Fujian tongzhi (1871 ed.), 56: 37b.
- Absentee landlords from other subprefectures in Nanjing controlled almost
70 to 80 per cent of local cultivated land. Consequently, “most of the native
agriculturists became tenants”. See Gu Yanwu, Tianxia junguo libing shu, Vol. 26,
p. 122a. In Pinghe, the tenants suffered greatly because they were obliged to
supply rents to the other three “landlords”. See ibid., Vol. 26, p. 123b. - Sources like Gu Yanwu, TXJGLBS, Vol. 26, p. 86a; and Zhangzhou fuzhi (1573 ed.)
(5: 8) mention the existence of such contracts. - The tenants’ frequent failure to pay rent and the landlords’ heavy-handed
tactics resulted in an ofβicial notice advising both parties to adopt a cordial
relationship. Quoted in ibid., 10: 26b.
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