[
    {
        "id": 209141,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1981",
        "page_number": 44,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "30\n\nEDGAR WICK BERG\n\n-\n\nclaims 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.\n\nIt 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.\n\nII. The rate of tenancy.\n\n-\n\nHere 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",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209143,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1981",
        "page_number": 46,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "32\n\nEDGAR WICK BERG\n\nover 3 acres per owner. Lands located over one mile from the owner's residence were a minor part of the total. It is possible that I have over-estimated the amount of \"large owner\" (that is, over 3 acres) land. But, for reasons I can explain during the question period, I believe that this figure is approximately accurate and that the total of slightly over 50 percent is also about right.\n\nTenancy rates are usually expressed in two ways: by the percentage of land that is tenant-cultivated and by the proportion of families that are tenants. In the absence of suitable household records, I cannot do the latter with any precision, but I see some strong indications that in this region of the New Territories, at least, we cannot make a firm classification of owners on the one hand and tenants on the other. Indeed, I am prepared to argue, though tentatively at present, that in the villages of this region 90 percent or more of the households were both owners and tenants. That is, typically, every household owned at least a small amount of land, usually not enough to support the family. To make up the difference, it rented land, most often from a clan, but sometimes from a large owner.\n\nThe resulting total might still be insufficient for family support, in which case some members of the family might work as short-term farm labourers. The hiring of such labour, my interviews have thus far indicated, was quite common in the Pat Heung area. A large number of families required short-term assistance at planting and harvesting times, and so hired members of other families. But hiring oneself to others for this purpose was also very common, even among families which were themselves employers of such labour. In addition, certain villages and surnames had developed a practice of supplying adult males as seamen (or, rather, cooks and stokers, usually) to foreign-owned steamship lines. How common this practice may have been is not clear, but it certainly was not limited, in the New Territories, to the Pat Heung region, as is evident from other sources. There may also have been members of several families who emigrated overseas or to urban Hong Kong or Canton. Parenthetically, and in passing, I would say that these last activities for New Territories residents, as a pre-World War II phenomenon, have been little studied, and may turn out, on investigation, to be of some importance.\n\nIn any case, the picture I have of Pat Heung villages is one in which families pieced together their income from several sources: farming their own lands, farming rented lands, hiring out as farm labour, doing odd jobs in the colony, serving as seamen, and perhaps",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209147,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1981",
        "page_number": 50,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "36\n\nEDGAR WICK BERG\n\nBritish administrators, believing that the landlords wished to retain grain rent (an impression nourished by the receipt of landlord petitions to that effect) and that tenants did not, attempted to outlaw any but monetary payments of future contracts, but the practice of grain rent continued.\n\nTypically, the level of rent was an amount of grain that approximated one-half of the year's yield of rice, paid in two installments at the time of each harvest. Thus, if one tou-chung of land (Cantonese tau-chung, a common measure in the New Territories, approximating one Chinese mou) produced, say, 200 catties of grain, the rent would probably be about 100 catties. As in other parts of China, there was an understanding between most landlords and tenants that in the case of a poor harvest due to bad weather or other circumstances beyond the tenant's control, the landlord might grant a reduction. I have no information about how regularly this ideal was actually observed in the New Territories.\n\nIt would be interesting to compare tenant rent to grain price and land price, and if we can get together enough material on these subjects, it should be possible. If so, we can then make some observation on landlordism as an enterprise, on some aspects of tenant economy compared to that of an owner-farmer, and on the possibility of a tenant's buying any part of the land he rented.\n\nIn several regions of south China in late imperial time the practice of requiring a tenant to pay a cash deposit, most often called ya-tsu, was prevalent. Such a deposit, often quite large, guaranteed tenant performance of the contract; it also provided the owner with a lump sum in cash which he could invest as he wished without having to pay interest. So far as I have been able to determine, this practice did not exist in the New Territories ca. 1900. Its absence may indicate many things: harmonious landlord-tenant relations; absence of competition for land; or lack of landlord interest in, or need for (from this source, at least) interest-free cash. It may be that the prevalence of clan ownership of tenanted lands in the New Territories is the explanation, if we argue that clan leasing practices did not, or probably would not, include practices of that kind.\n\nIV. Lineage\n\nWe come now to the \"lineage\" part of this paper, in accordance with the title of my talk. I will continue to refer to the lineage as the clan, however, despite the problems in using either name—or both",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m",
        "rank": 0
    }
]