The Operation Of Landlord Bursaries System At The Sothern Jiangsu Province In The Period Of The Republic Of China

During the course of the modern China social transformation, there are many landlords'rents-collecting intermediary institutions with socializational functions at the Sothern Jiangsu Province. The reproduction, existence, and development of Landlord bursaries reflects the new operation of Landlord rent system in the late feudal society because of the changes of the land relations and social structure. This paper mainly based on some of the Songjiang and Suzhou Landlord bursaries in the period of the Republic of China to discuss the transformation of Landlord bursaries system and the social relations through the analyzation of Landlord bursaries institutions and its operations.This paper can be divided into five chapters.The first chapter is introduction, which mainly introduces the origin and scope of the research, the academic movement of Landlord bursaries researches, and the concern, contents, information and relevant terms.The second chapter analyses the historical background of the origin of Landlord bursaries in the Sothern Jiangsu Province, examining the evolution, distributed region, major types and organizations constitutions of Landlord bursaries. Along with the acceleration shape of commodity economy, the Sothern Jiangsu society began the transformation of modern society, and the landlord had transformed into modern industrialists and businessmen, and the peasants had changed into "migrant worker"; In the land system the landownership tended to disperse and the "bottom land" and the "surface land" tended to divided, "a farmland with two masters" became increasingly common phenomenon, and the rent almost difficultly can be collected, which also lead to the emergence of landlord bursaries with socializational function. In the existence and development process of the Landlord bursaries its social function had became gradually strengthen. The organization had continued to expand and gradually evolved into different types of Landlord bursaries. For example, for the charge subject the Landlord bursaries can be divided into the gentry landlord's family bursaries, the common landlord's private bursaries, the government-supervised and landlord-managed bursaries, the government-managed bursaries, and the allied bursaries which came from several united bursaries.The Landlord bursaries usually were composed of as follows a few personnel:firstly, the bursaries director which is in charge of the power over personnel and the power over making important decision; secondly, the accountant which was ordered by the bursaries director and was in charge of specific transaction; thirdly, the rent-collectors hired by bursaries which were in charge of pressing for the rent; thirdly, the runners from lower ranking officials was in charge of catching tenant farmers in debt; During the collecting and pressing-rent staffs, the rent-collectors directly delt with the peasants.The third chapter analyzes the relations between the peasents and landlords. Firstly, the birth of landlord bursaries had changed the original landlord-peasant relationship, and the traditional complex landlord-peasant relationship had evoluted into a kind of purely economic relation. Secondly, the operation of the bursaries needed some of the cost, and the collecting-rent staffs tried to feather their nest. As a result of these, the cost of collecting-rents and the burden beared by the peasants had increased, which had incresingly made the relationship tense between the landlords and the peasnts. Thirdly, facing with increasingly tense relationship, the united peasants refused to hand in the rents. So many of resisting-rent events had increasingly rised. The allied landlords built regional united organizations against the resisting-rent. Conversely, the Landlords'Association only paid attention to regional unity, but paid less attention to the variation of different places. So this gave the peasants the reason of resisting-rent, and provided a number of the peasants the chance and condition of get-togethering. All of these lead to many of the disputes between the peasant and the landlord, and had become a social problem.The forth chapter focusing on the conflict makes a careful examination on the rent problem. Firstly, this chapter according to the records of collecting-rents successively discusses the rent-pattern, the rent-quota, the rent-ratio, all of these changes in the period of the Republic of China, and the changes of the net rent income. The "discounting quota-rent" system prevailed in the Sothern Jiangsu Province, and there were less "no-discounting quota-rent". Most of the "no-discounting quota-rent lands were bad land. The rent pattern mainly can be divided into real object rent and exchanging rent. The ratio of "discounting quota-rent" was about 1 dan per mu. In fact the rent-collected before the Anti-Japanese War was about 70% of "discount-rent". and at the end of the period of the republic of China the rent-collected was about from 70% to 60% of "discount-rent". Even so, the Landlord bursaries can not often get full rents. During the end of the Qing period and the Republic of China,the rent ratio had a general trend of decreasing except the period of Beijing government because of these disasters from nature or people. Secondly, this paper discuss the landlord rent income and the changes of land prices, and finds the landlord's economic base was Constantly weakened.The fifth chapter mainly discuss the relationship between nation and landlord below the Landlord bursaries system. From the local government and central government the writer try to examine how to interfere with the tenancy for the nation and how to lose the right of collecting-rent for the landlord. With the modernization beginning the power of nation had begun to permeates toward the village, which is quite obvious in the aspect of the tenancy relation. In the Republic of China period the resistance of the peasants had made the landlord difficult to get the rent of land, so the landlord had refused to pay the rent to the nation for the reason of "land tax from rent". As a result of these, the government completely interfered with the aspect of collecting-rents, which think it is duties to support or even to replace the landlord to collect or press for rents. In the form the government and landlord had formed the relationship of taking advantage of each other. But the peasants had interfered with the tenancy for the advantage of feudal land tax. The landlord which tried to get the help from the nation paid the cost of economy and politics. At last The landlord Authoritative organization--the Landlords'Association had become the organization of doing enforced and unpaid work for the government. Through the example of Wuxian, Changshu and Taicang,this paper realizes that with the nation strengthening to interfere with the tenancy the lynch right of the landlord from Wuxian was quite restricted; the consulting-rent right of the landlord from Taicang was weakened; the collecting-rent right of the landlord from Changshu also was harmed. After the Anti-Japanese war, Nanjing National government carried out "the policies of 25% off the land rent", which was the important aspect of government interfering with the tenancy. This paper think that "the policies of 25% off the land rent" were reasonably carried out in the Sothern Jiangsu Province and received an obvious result. However, the result of "the policies of 25% off the land rent" was paid off by "levying rent and tax all at once" and "compelling tenants to pay tax for the landlords".At last, The conclusion section summarizes the main argument.the birth of the modern landlords'bursaries in the Sothern Jiangsu Province was an obvious Phenomenon in history. The landlord bursaries on the one hand had made the tenancy system go on lasting, on the other hand had made the tenancy system hasten to die. This paper think that there are at least several aspects which embody the declination of the tenancy system: firstly, the landlord entrust the landlord bursaries to collect the rents which made the peasants often resist the rent; secondly, several kinds of factors, such as wars, revolutions, reforms, natural disasters and the worldwide economic crisis, had made the income of the peasant and landlord decline; thirdly, with the strengthen of the nation interfering with the tenancy relation, not only the landlord economic interest and political authority were beaten, but also the price of land had declined sharply. With the sharp transformation of modern society, the tenancy system with 2,000 years in the history at last had began its declination in the Sothern Jiangsu Province.