Increase Farmland to Pacify the People: The Government’s Efforts in Official Cultivation of Wasteland and Household Registration in the Kaiyuan Period of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang

Abstract

When Emperor Xuanzong of Tang ascended to his throne, he was faced with problems such as “no financial surplus” and “empty granaries.” While keeping reducing expenditures, he adopted traditional methods of increasing income such as increasing registered households and cultivating wasteland. After the household registration conducted by Yuwen Rong, there was another large-scale registration around the twenty-fourth year of Kaiyuan (736). By taking measures such as taking back farmland from officials, organizing the official cultivation of wasteland, and encouraging people to cultivate wasteland on their own, the government increased the available land resource and actually granted it to those who fled and came back and impoverished people in order to resettle them. Among the measures, official cultivation of wasteland is the major one. It mainly happened in the most densely populated areas such as the capital city and its environs, and areas south and north of the Yellow River, showing a trend of extension from the Central Plains Economic Zone to the Economic Zone of the South of the Yangtze River. Most of the cultivated wasteland was beside rivers and canals. These measures reflect the fact that the government tried its best to maintain the Farmland Equalization Decree during the Kaiyuan period.

Keywords

Kaiyuan period / official cultivation of wasteland / household registration / actual granting

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