Northern Shanxi Province In The Qing Dynasty, The Land Use And Driving Factors Research

Land use is the most direct and important representation of global change and it is an ideal perspective to study the process of physical and human evolution. According to the program of Land Use and Land Cover Change (LUCC), land Use Change became the forefront and hot spot of global change research. And the research which focuses on the ecological fragile districts plays an important role both in theoretical and practical significance. The northern Shanxi province located in the northeast of Loess Plateau of China and belongs to the northern agro-pastoral transitional zone with complex landscape and fragile ecological environment. This dissertation mainly recovers the process and change of land use in Northern Shanxi Provence during Qing Dynasty, and analyzes in depth of the driving forces of land use change from multiple aspects and perspectives.In order to better research the theme, this dissertation expatiates the process and change of regional land use based on the fully discussion of related problems, such as the physical and social-economical attributes of land, and regional land registration system. Then it indicates the specific state of land use from the aspect of planting and distribution of crops, and analyses the regional differences according to the livelihood diversity. Finally, the driving forces of regional land use change is discussed in depth.The physical attribute of land are closely related to land use. From the perspective of the normality of natural environment and the instability of natural disasters, it holds the general characters of regional environment, and primarily analyses the restrictive effect of environment on regional land use, particularly in agricultural production. The discussion of natural disasters mainly focuses on the statistical analysis of drought, it indicates that drought frequency showed a stable trend as a whole with slightly decrease, while the drought level slightly raised. The result showed coherence in comparing the drought sequence with the rainy sequence, which better described the character and change of climate in Northern Shanxi Province during the Qing Dynasty.It's necessary to pay more attention to the regional agrarian relations, since it is an important background of regional land use. The research indicates many views. The changes, after the taking shape of official and people's land patterns, included the transform of official land to people's land, such as land of military control administration, land of supporting for the army, grass field, school land, etc. And this would impact the data of land tax in historical documents. The phenomenon of land sale frequently emerged in different regions for different reasons in the end of Qing Dynasty. Pawning land was popular in Northern Shanxi Province, and the frequency of land sale both reflected the restriction of regional environment on agricultural production and impacted the way and process of land use. It indicates that there had existed permanent tenancy in land use in Northern Shanxi during Qing Dynasty, which distributed regionally. There also existed incomplete permanent tenancy and regional permanent tenancy. Permanent tenancy impacted the increase of producing positivity of renter and land use mode. It also suggests that there were regional differences in land allocation and tenancy, which was a complex issue that related to regional environment and productivity, and couldn't explain the formation of tenancy relationship in a single factor. The management of land sale and tenancy by government mainly shows on the assessing upon deed tax. The management of country lever needed to be combined with the local fact, and would be restricted by regional environment.On the discussion of the land registration system and the content of land tax, it mainly relates to the issues of evolution of the land measurement and registration system, the determination of land tax and its regional self-determination in Shanxi Province during Ming and Qing Dynasty. According to the discussion of the above, I propose a number of observations, including the understand of land measurement in Shanxi in Wanli Period of Ming Dynasty and the land registration system in Ming and Qing Dynasty, and the evaluation of land tax data in historical books. The main idea is that the discount acres widespread in Shanxi during Ming Dynasty and continued in Qing Dynasty. It gradually led to the differential taxation.Then, the spatial and temporal distribution of land use in Northern Shanxi Province during the Qing Dynasty is interpreted; it includes the entire inspection of land tax data and the regional survey of part of the county-level data revision. The overall discussion of the data and distribution of county-level land tax data shows little change in land use in Northern Shanxi Province during the Qing Dynasty, and land reclamation reached its peak in Qianlong Period and slightly decreased afterword with an overall stability. On the analysis of the relevant feasibility, arable land data of part counties are revised, which finally results that the revised data of Ming and Qing was accord with the1953data, and the trend of county data was basically the same, with higher reliability than land tax acres according to the other periods. Based on the analysis of land reclamation rate under time series and per capita arable land, it proved the authenticity of this revision. In some extent, the revision reflects the character of regional land use, with some regional representation rather than comprehensive one.The regional geographical environment had significant effect on crops planting, so the types of crops were few, and the planting structure was simple in Northern Shanxi during Qing Dynasty. Traditional crops, such as broomcorn millet, millet, grain, sorghum, etc. were widely grown, while wheat crops were in small proportion and winter wheat was few. Naked oats, buckwheat and benne were the characteristic crops and had extensive planting. Rice was only slightly planted along the Yellow River, Hutuo River and Sanggan River. With the introduction of American crops such as potatoes, corn, crop planting structure in northern Shanxi had changed, particularly in the introduction and development of the potatoes. The extensive planting of the opium poppy in Northern Shanxi Province in late Qing Dynasty was another outstanding evidence of crop planting structure change. Cultivation of opium poppy was eliminated after repeating forbiddance, and the important factor of crop planting structure change was interests and anthropic factors. The summary in the end of the text is a cropping system in North Shanxi Province during Qing Dynasty.From the perspective of livelihood diversity of people, it analyses the regional differences of land use patterns in Northern Shanxi Province during Qing Dynasty. Regional differences of land use were fully demonstrated on agriculture, and the villagers developed agricultural production in a way of adapting to local conditions. Woodland mainly distributed in the mountainous areas of Northwest in Northern Shanxi Province during the Qing Dynasty, such as Guanqin, Luya, and Wutai. The transformation of forestry into agriculture was significance in mountainous areas in Northwest and mountainous villagers had realized the serious effect of deforestation and land reclamation, and they had taken some measures to protect forest. Animal husbandry was popular in Dashuo of Northern Shanxi, Ningwu, Baode and Wutai Mountain area of Northwest Shanxi, because of widely distributed grassland resources. And people mostly lived by herding animals. Thus it fully reflected the geographical character of regional agro-pastoral transitional zone. The coal resources were rich in of Northern Shanxi Province in the Qing Dynasty with a wide distribution in Yanbei, Northwest Shanxi, Wutai Mountain and other places, which was closely related to the living of villagers and was one of the important livelihoods in Northern Shanxi Province during Qing Dynasty. Alkaline salt distributed in the Datong Basin and the basin of Northern Shanxi. Its production and sales were relevant with regional land use. The choice of the gathering industry and other livelihood reflected the adjustment of human activities adapting on the environment. The population outflow under the ambient pressure and the export behavior to earn a living were also reflections of regional land utilization.Finally, this dissertation explores for the driving factors of land use from the two major perspectives of natural and human factors in Northern Shanxi during the Qing Dynasty. The discussion on natural factors is discussed from the perspective of the normality of natural environment and the instability of natural disasters. The human factors is analyzed from the aspects of land resettlement policy, military control administration, land tax system, population, war, ethnic, religious, and custom. And tow issues are mainly focused during the discussion. Firstly, whether the driving force of the considering factors was really effective? Secondly, how did the factors drive and in what extent? The study suggests that the various human factors must be settled above the natural factors and interact with each other, finally impact land use, which fully displays the role of natural factors in Northern Shanxi Province. This belongs to the first level. The second level concerns about the system-policy driver, the local land use revealed the sensitivity on the implementation of these policies in Northern Shanxi Province. The third level come from the aspects of population, war, and others, while the fourth level is the driving factor of socio-cultural aspects, such as ethnicity, religion, customs, and etc. The driving factors of land use change was complex and diverse in historical periods, this complexity not only came from the variety of driving factors, but also the complex mechanism of action. And it wasn't just one single driving factor in effecting land use.