Tang Landlord Families Studied

The Common landlords refer to the rich persons among the common people. They mainly live in the rural areas and live by managing the land. Compared with the upper landlord class, though have no political and economic privileges, they would become a part of the landlord class just because of their wealth. The common landlord families occupy a significant position in the whole society of the Tang Dynasty. As one of the larger social stratums, they have great influence on the development of the society. Firstly, they send fresh blood continuously to the upper class(the bureaucrats and nobles) through the channels of imperial examination, donation. At the same time, they are tolerant in admitting other stratums to the class. Their arising ways are so extensive that land-holding peasants, merchants, privileged landlords and soldiers with military merits are likely to transform themselves into the common landlords. Therefore, the study on the Common landlord families is of great significance in revealing the Common landlords' social status, functions and their relations with other social stratums so as to explore the law of the development of the society.The thesis starts from the arising ways of the Common landlord families and attempts to have a systematic understanding of the landlord families' living conditions, centering on the following aspects: the state of the family marriage, the family structure, the family receipts and expenditures, the family education and the property inheritance.The thesis is composed of four parts. The first part makes a brief introduction of the common landlord families in the Tang Dynasty. By defining the scope of the common landlords and the different arising ways of them, I try to explore the complicated arising ways of the families. Based on this, the thesis analyzes the social status of the landlord families in the economic, social and legal aspects.By analyzing the Tang Dynasty's marriage characteristics in the history ofmarriage in ancient China, the second part exemplifies the detailed marriage situations and features of the common landlord families in the Tang Dynasty.The third part, the main body of the thesis, is the detailed study of the common landlords' family situations. In the aspect of family structure, we maintain that the taxes and corvee system, the development of the land annexation, and birth policies are the major factors on the family structure. It is because of these factors that the families of three or four generations living together become the dominant family structure in the Tang Dynasty. In the aspect of receipts and expenditures, we find that, for one thing, the income of the families' mainly come from the management of the land while some landlords are engaged in handicraft and commerce which are seen as the supplementary sources of their family income. For the other different form the luxurious life the noble and the frugal life of the poor, the common landlords have their own features in the family expenditures. In the aspect of family education, an prominent feature of the education is the emphasis on passing on the landlords mainly depend their life on the management of the land. Another feature is the emergence of the entrance examination for the purpose of imperial examination because of the well-developed imperial examination. In family belief in the arising reasons and major ways of the property inheritance, according to the understanding of the inheritance laws of the Tang Dynasty and the historical datas, we explore the main ways of the property inheritance in the landlord families.The conclusion part mainly exemplifies the common landlord families' on the whole society. On the one hand, the common landlords are the possessors of the advanced technologies in the rural area, and have certain strength, accordingly, their economic behaviors promote the economic development in the rural areas objectively. On the other hand, the existing limitations of the landlords also accelerate the social degeneration of the Tang dynasty to some degree. Based on the above discussion, we point out that the common landlord family is an...