25
THE FIVE GREAT CLANS OF THE
NEW TERRITORIES
Based on a Lecture Delivered on 1st March, 1965
HUGH D. R. BAKER
I
Southeastern China, and the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in particular, is an area which, to quote Freedman, "has specialised... in large-scale unilineal organization". The New Territories falls within this area and is true-to-type in its widespread settlement by patrilineal groups. I have to deal with two kinds of such groups and shall use the terms lineage and clan to distinguish them. By lineage I mean a group of agnatically related males together with their unmarried female agnates and the wives of the men, all living together in one settlement (village or village-cluster), holding property in common, and politically a unit under one leadership. By clan I mean the aggregate of all such groups in the area bearing a common surname and recognising a recent, traceable common origin, but yet not necessarily owning property in common and not united as one leadership unit. These definitions are not entirely satisfactory, but will perhaps suffice in this context, since there is a lack of precise terminology with regard to such units of the Chinese kinship system. In this paper I am going to describe in outline the history and development of the five largest clans and lineages of the New Territories, to try to tie in historical and land-type factors with wealth and growth, and to trace out some of the consequences of wealth in the lineage system. Finally I shall try to show briefly how these clans and lineages were engaged in a network of alliances and antagonisms, and how they reacted to external stimuli. The term Five Great Clans is an attempt at translation of the Chinese, by which name I have heard these people refer to themselves.
The author is a graduate student at the University of London who conducted research in the New Territories in 1963-65.
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25
THE FIVE GREAT CLANS OF THE
NEW TERRITORIES
Based on a Lecture Delivered on 1st March, 1965
HUGH D. R. BAKER
I
Southeastern China, and the provinces of Fukien and Kwang- tung in particular, is an area which, to quote Freedman, "has specialised... in large-scale unilineal organization". The New Territories falls within this area and is true-to-type in its wide- spread settlement by patrilineal groups. I have to deal with two kinds of such groups and shall use the terms lineage and clan to distinguish them. By lineage I mean a group of agnatically related males together with their unmarried female agnates and the wives of the men, all living together in one settlement (village or village-cluster), holding property in common, and politically a unit under one leadership. By clan I mean the aggregate of all such groups in the area bearing a common surname and recog- nising a recent, traceable common origin, but yet not necessarily owning property in common and not united as one leadership unit. These definitions are not entirely satisfactory, but will perhaps suffice in this context, since there is a lack of precise terminology with regard to such units of the Chinese kinship system. In this paper I am going to describe in outline the history and development of the five largest clans and lineages of the New Territories, to try to tie in historical and land-type factors with wealth and growth, and to trace out some of the consequences of wealth in the lineage system. Finally I shall try to show briefly how these clans and lineages were engaged in a network of alliances and antagonisms, and how they reacted to external stimuli. The term Five Great Clans is an attempt at translation of the Chinese, by which name I have heard these people refer to themselves.
The author is a graduate student at the University of London who con- ducted research in the New Territories in 1963-65.
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