The Rights of Tenants in Mid-Qing Sichuan: A Study of Land-Related Lawsuits in the Baxian Archives
- 1 May 1986
- journal article
- Published by Duke University Press in Journal of Asian Studies
- Vol. 45 (3) , 499-526
- https://doi.org/10.2307/2056528
Abstract
This article, based on newly opened archives, explores the rights of tenants in the neighborhood of Chongqing during the late-eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Changes in tenancy arrangements are discussed within the context of Chongqing's role as the main transshipment center for rice and goods from Southwest China to the middle and lower Yangtze. By the 1820s there was a tendency toward the collection of fixed rents in kind. Rent deposits, a major source of liquid capital for landlords, became an almost universal feature of Baxian leases. High deposits encouraged subletting and multiple tenancy, but appear to have provided little security of tenure. The large collection of lawsuits in the Baxian Archives allows an examination of the treatment of tenants in the magistrates' court and of the rights of persons who had disposed of land by means of conditional sale (dianmai).Keywords
This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North ChinaPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1985
- New Data on Land Ownership Patterns in Ming-Ch'ing China—A Research NoteJournal of Asian Studies, 1981
- Lord and PeasantModern China, 1980
- Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South ChinaPublished by Harvard University Press ,1972
- The Last Thousand Years of Chinese HistoryModern Asian Studies, 1970
- A documentary Study of Chinese landlordism in late Ch'ing and early Republican KiangnanBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1966
- Traditional Property Concepts in ChinaThe Far Eastern Quarterly, 1956