Mouths vs. Land: Research on Population Growth and Food Security in the Wanli Zhangzhou Chronicles
Do you know how much grain a Ming Dynasty farmer in Zhangzhou could get from one mu of land? 100 to 150 jin. After paying taxes, he kept less than 75%. But that’s not the most startling number. What really got me was this: a patch of land no bigger than the Jiulong River plain somehow supported far more people than the official records showed. I spent a long time digging through the Wanli Zhangzhou Fu Zhi: Tax and Corvee. What I found was a paradox. The census rolls compiled in 1381 were already seriously outdated by the 1570s. Too many people had evaded taxes and corvee labor, slipping into places the government couldn’t see. ...