30
EDGAR WICK BERG
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claims were not settled by the British administration until 1908. Despite the wide prevalence of revenue-claiming practices and institutions, the British recognized only those revenue rights that could be documented. Thus, the raw power and somewhat less raw influence of the Tangs of Kam Tin which underlay their revenue claims, and which the Pat Heung region, at least, had but recently thrown off by force, was not recognized. Only in the fifth circumstances and sometimes the fourth where a perpetual lease document, or perhaps a satisfactory sale document could be produced, were such rights recognized. It is of interest to note that despite the wide prevalence of multiple "ownership" noted by early British land officers, only the claims of about 40 "taxlords" were sufficiently documented to be recognized, and the land involved amounted to only about 200 acres, in a total New Territories cultivated acreage estimated at 40,000 acres. Those whose claims were so recognized were awarded lands as full owners elsewhere in the New Territories, and the multiple-"ownership" system was thus retired.
It is interesting to note the similarities and differences between the New Territories and Taiwan on these points. In 1900, north Taiwan was 100 to 150 years past the frontier age which had shaped its multi-tiered land system. But by 1900, fewer than 50 percent of the cultivated lands in the north had such arrangements, and when the Japanese put an end to the system in 1905, they were actually following through on an attempt that had been made in the 1880s, under Chinese rule, by Governor Liu Ming-ch'üan to end the multiple "ownership” system. This is not the place for extensive comparisons, but we may observe in passing that the much greater prevalence of the multi-tiered system in the New Territories in 1900 as compared to Taiwan at the same time may be a result of the much greater importance of clans here than there.
II. The rate of tenancy.
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Here we are speaking, properly, in terms of a multi-tiered system, of subtenancy: not the taxlord-"owner" relationship, to use the early British terms, but the relationship between the "owner" and the tenant under him - the man who actually cultivated the land. Much less has been written about tenancy at this level than at the upper-level of taxlord to "owner". Understandably, the British interest in 1900 was primarily in determining a single owner who would be responsible for paying the tax. Owners were asked the names of their