Study On Reclamation In Northern Song Dynasty

Ancient China was an era of small-scale peasant economy,and land was the most important means of production.As the beginning of a new dynasty,in the early Northern Song Dynasty,there were a large number of uncultivated wasteland after the war.The reclamation of wasteland became an important means of distributing wealth in the new dynasty and played a vital role in the social and economic development of the Northern Song Dynasty.When the reclamation of wasteland is basically completed,it means that the engine driving the economic development of the Northern Song Dynasty will stop,which will also have an important impact on the social economy of the Northern Song Dynasty.Therefore,the study of wasteland can become an important window to study the society in the Northern Song Dynasty.Land is also an important issue concerned by the rulers of the Northern Song Dynasty.It is the most stable tax source of the Northern Song government,leaving a lot of reference materials.This paper intends to make a textual research on the existence and reclamation of wasteland in the Northern Song Dynasty and the formulation of government policies in the Northern Song Dynasty.The general structure of the paper is as follows:The first part,through the distinction of various statistical caliber in historical materials,distinguishes the two statistical caliber of reclaimed land area and tax paid land area,and further calculates the century reclaimed land area of the Northern Song Dynasty according to the hidden land rate in the Northern Song Dynasty,so as to confirm the existence of a large number of wasteland in the early Northern Song Dynasty.The second part mainly analyzes the reasons for a large number of wasteland in the early Northern Song Dynasty,including objective reasons,such as climate change,and more importantly,political and economic reasons.Based on the analysis of the reasons,this paper summarizes the various measures of the Northern Song government in the historical materials and summarizes the measures of the Northern Song government to promote reclamation.The third part mainly analyzes the main process of wasteland distribution and the evolution process of the government’s policy in wasteland distribution in the Northern Song Dynasty.The distribution of wasteland in the early Northern Song Dynasty is the most important distribution of future social wealth increment,and its policy formulation is very strict.At the level of policy writing and expression,it creates various thresholds for officials to obtain land,so as to restrain the large-scale concentration of land as much as possible.