Agricultural Development in the Han River Highlands

-63AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE HAN RIVER HIGHLANDS Evelyn S. Rawski University of Pittsburgh In several significant respects the highlands were an atypical area in the eighteenth century. Unlike most parts of China, which had been tilled for centuries, the Han River highlands were largely virgin forest in the late seventeenth century. The eighteenth century brought extensive migration and expansion of settlement, which culminated in the White Lotus Rebellion (1795-1805). Most scholarly attention has focused on the rebellion, yet the highlands also provide an interesting example of Chinese agricultural development, encompassing phases which occurred in most of China at a much earlier date. The Han River highlands are located in the transitional zone dividing north from south China, in the mountainous region which is part of the Tapa Shan complex, the border area where three provinces, Szechwan, Hupei, and Shensi meet. It is an area dominated by high mountains, much of the land rising 1,500 to 3,000 meters above sea level. In the alluvial plains along the Han River and its tributaries flowing southeast, and along the streams running into central Szechwan, soil fertility was high. The highlands received more rainfall than most parts of north China, from 600 -1100 mm. a year. Moreover, the rains came at the peak of the growing season, with 40-50% of the rain concentrated in the summer months. The growing season, ranging from 230 - 250 days a year, was also relatively long. Conditions did not uniformly favor agriculture. Much of the land was too mountainous to till, and only a very small percentage of the land area consisted of alluvial plain. All of the gazetteers note the discrepancy in temperature and soil between the fertile "moist" warm plains and the rocky, cold, mountain -64uplands . In the lowlands, "the summer is without terrible humidity, the winter without severe cold," while in the mountains, many residents sat out the bitter winter behind closed doors with several months' stores of fuel and grain. These were the uplands where summer hailstorms and late-melting snow hindered . ¦> 2 agriculture. Under the preceding Ming dynasty, settlers had begun moving into the highlands but many of these settlements were devastated by the rebellions of the mid-century. By the 1680' s , the highlands were largely a densely wooded region, populated primarily by wild animals, with occasional Chinese hunters, herb gatherers, loggers, and workers in paper-making factories. Government policies encouraging settlement in the area came towards the end of a general effort by the Ch'ing during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to rehabilitate agricultural regions depopulated by rebellion and 3 civil war, especially in Hunan and the Chengtu basin. By the 1730's, as richer lands in Hunan and Szechwan were filled, the highlands received a steadily increasing flow of farmers, with central and provincial government encouragement. In some regions, officials gave seed and oxen to new settlers. In the highlands, if the south Shensi area of Shang-chou is a typical example, there were fiscal inducements. New settlers were exempted from taxation for ten years, and thereafter obtained favorable rates of conversion of cultivated fields to fiscal acreage at the rate of three, four or five mou to one fiscal mou. Land holdings in other highland regions totalling less than five mou were declared 4 permanently exempt from taxes. The local gazetteers of the highlands describe the steady influx of Chinese settlers of all kinds in the eighteenth century. Hsin-ning county, Szechwan, more than doubled its population in the two decades 1733-1753. In Hupei, land entering the tax registers of Ch'ang-lo county between 1752-1776 amounted to -65almost half the original 1644 total. The agricultural system which developed during the eighteenth century reflected the diverse agricultural practices brought by new migrants, who came from both north and south. They brought with them the dryfield cultivation practices of the north, with its emphasis on millet, kaoliang, and wheat, as well as the skills of wet-rice agriculture. Both were reproduced on the new frontier. The grassy banks of streams and the alluvial plains, first settled, were converted to rice paddy, most probably by migrants from south China. In southern Shensi, farmers...