Start and Termination of Land Rantal in Beng Shen Ba She

[[abstract]]This paper is a case study based on Beng Shan Ba She in the middle- north in Taiwan from Qing Dynasty to Japanese colonial period. In addition to the study on the history of rental situations in Pingpu Tribe, this paper tries to integrate the cadastre files in the beginning of Japanese colonial period all together via GIS so as to present the whole picture about Beng Shan Ba She and the private files of the rental situations. Further, in order to present the development process of Beng Shan Ba She’s rental situations, this paper tries to check and compare the related files about the land contracts between the aboriginal and Han people. This paper tries to point out the exact locations of the various groups and also shows the distribution and the rental sum of money. Meanwhile, till the beginning of Japanese colonial period, there were up to sixty percent of cultivated lands under the aboriginal’s rights. More than seventy percent of rental were still owned by the aboriginals. This discovery is different from Chih-ming Ka’s observation on the aboriginal’s land rights in Hsinchu but similar to John R. Shepherdi’s studies on the ones distributed among Shulin and ShanXie in Taipei. Different from Chih-ming Ka’s and John R. Shepherdi’s studies which are based on case studies and develop the theories like rational nation and politics of tribal group respectively, this purpose of this paper is to figure out the meaning of Beng Shan Ba She’s existence and their social autonomy. In order to understand the development process of Beng Shan Ba She, this paper divide the land rights of Beng Shan Ba She into different parts, namely mixed cultivated area between the aboriginal and Han, Han cultivated land and Ai Tun Areas so as to understand the development process of these three types of land rights. Among them, the mixed cultivated lands were mostly passed down from the aboriginal’s ancestors, granted by Qing government and group purchasing. And they teamed up to reserve the lands which are the precious and rare lands in Beng Shen Ba She nowadays. In Ai Tun Areas , the land rights were mainly based on Ai rental and Tun rental formed in Qianlong 25th year and end of Qianlong years. Ai Tun Areas were mainly cultivated under the ways of join stock but the lands were disappeared gradually since the tenants declined to pay the original landlords after the policy of land measurement by Liu Mingchuan in Guang Xu 13th year. Last, the land rights of Han cultivated lands were mainly affected by the policy of fixed aboriginal rental in Qianlong years. Among Han people, Cai Zhenfeng is the most powerful land right holders. He accumulated his properties by buying Ri Nan’s and Ri Bei’s lands and further carried out the rental business. To sum up, these three rental areas in Beng Shan Ba She completely reflected a variety of land rights. Basically, rental was treated as assets under the aboriginal rental policy in Beng Shen Ba She in the middle years of Qianlong and for aboriginal, organization staff , government staff and the capitalists of Han people, it carried different meanings for different positions. In fact, rental business not only proved crop for the aboriginal but also was the tax source for the local government. As for the organization staff like aboriginal heads and interpreters, involved in rental business management usually used rental as guarantee to borrow money from Han people. That is to say rental was treated as a medium to accumulate their fortunes and also working in the rental organization was the goal for people in and out of the aboriginal tribes. For the capitalists of Han, they could borrow money from the tribes and further practice the society duty and than embezzled the rental at last in the society even though they are not allowed to work in the organization by law. Therefore, the government , capitalists of Han, the aboriginal and the tribe staff as well competed with one another and further tried to seize the rental business. On the other hand, seeing from the rental sum of money recorded from Japanese colonial period, we can find that the reform of aboriginal affairs carried out by Liu Ming Chuan was a protection for the rental business which helped the tribes to maintain their social operation and their income. Last, this paper finds that both the private land rights and crops were mostly under the ones who had served as staff in the rental organization. When judging form the situation that most of the public rental lands spreaded near to the aboriginal tribes, we can infer that the situation may be affected by Da Jia event and reflected the management strategies among the various tribes. Last, even though Beng Shan Be She could get the compensation from Japanese government under the policy of rental right., land rental business had provided the aboriginal income and maintained the whole society’s operation for the past hundreds of years. Once the rental business is eliminated by the government, the economy of the aboriginal may face a great pressure and the social operation and organizations among the aboriginal tribes may be destroyed As a result, the aboriginal tribes were gradually assimilated by Han people.