1. Introduction

During the Ming dynasty, Wei-suo tuntian land was state-owned, farmed by garrisoned soldiers, and strictly prohibited from being bought or sold. The Qing dynasty's policy of merging Wei-suo garrisons into prefectures and counties initiated a process of privatization of garrison lands, ultimately allowing for free transactions [1]. The recently published Collection of Datun Contract Documents compiles 534 contracts and 121 promissory notes, providing detailed primary sources for systematically studying this transformation [2]. This paper aims to utilize these precious contract documents, alongside local gazetteer records, to analyze the real form, operational mechanisms, and socio-economic implications of tuntian transactions in Datun Village, Puding County, following the dismantling of the Wei-suo system during the Qing dynasty.

2. Land tenure structure and the land tax system

Datun Village is located in present-day Yaopu Town, Xixiu District, Anshun City, Guizhou Province. The contract documents frequently record phrases such as "according to the field mu to 'Yong right nine' to pay a litre of field grain" [2: 392–393] and "according to the field mu to the right ten cross three bucket three sheng field grain" [2: 416–417], indicating that this area originally belonged to the Right Ninth and Right Tenth Hundred Households under the Puding Wei-suo garrison. The Annals of Anshun Prefecture compiled during the Xianfeng period also records: "Right Ninth Tun, that is, Datun Pass under the prefecture, also belongs to Ximen, located seventeen li southwest of the prefectural seat, east adjoining Fuqi Tun, south bordering Yanqi Tun, west adjoining Shangtouping, north adjoining Yangjiatang, four li from Yangjiaqiao… Right Tenth Tun, sharing the same village as Right Ninth Tun" [3: 91]. This further confirms that present-day Datun Village corresponds to the Right Ninth and Right Tenth Tun of the Ming and Qing periods.

However, the administrative affiliation of Datun exhibits clear multiplicity. According to the Annals of Anshun Prefecture, Datun Pass was not only a territory directly administered by Anshun Prefecture as a daofengzhi  village—"seventeen li southwest of the prefectural seat, east bordering Fuqi Tun of Puding, south adjoining Yanqi Tun, west bordering Shangtouping of Puding, north bordering Yangjiatang of Puding, four li from Yangjiaqiao, that is, Puding's Right Ninth and Right Tenth Tun" [3: 70]—but also classified under the upper section of the daofengzhi, which were lands previously designated as official military supply fields [3: 53]. Simultaneously, Datun Pass appears in the section on village jurisdictions under Puding County in the same gazetteer, listed under Yongfeng Li and Ximen Tun Fort: "Right Ninth Tun, that is, Datun Pass under the prefecture, also belongs to Ximen, located seventeen li southwest of the prefectural seat, east adjoining Fuqi Tun, south bordering Yanqi Tun, west adjoining Shangtouping, north adjoining Yangjiatang, four li from Yangjiaqiao… Right Tenth Tun, sharing the same village as Right Ninth Tun" [3: 91]. As a result, Datun formed a pattern of "three jurisdictions" in administration.It is not only the direct jurisdiction of Anshun Prefecture : Daofengzhi, but also belongs to Yongfengli and Ximentunpu in Puding County.

This multiplicity of jurisdiction is also directly reflected in the contract documents. For example, the Guangxu Eleventh Year Contract of Li Fangshi on Selling Daofengzhi Land and the Guangxu Twenty-Ninth Year Contract of Ding Shunxing on 'Ding' Official Land indicate thatduring the Ming Dynasty, Datun Village served as a settlement responsible for providing official salaries to the military administration. This demonstrates that Datun Village was a "three-jurisdiction" area underthe interlocking governance of multiple administrative units such as the prefecture, county, and military forts.

The Tongzhi thirteenth year Xu Tiancheng land partition contract further reveals the tax structure under Datun Village's multi-affiliation land background. The contract records: "paying silver for Yongyou Nine Tun grain, 2 dou 8 sheng; Xiyou Nine Ke grain, 2 dou 5 he" and "carrying grain, 5 sheng" [2:673]. Here, the "tun grain" levied through Yongfengli's Right Nine Tun corresponds to tuntian, the "ke grain" levied through Ximen's Right Nine Ke corresponds to ketian, while the "one share of long field at the foot of the southern mountain, carrying 5 sheng of grain" [2:673], paid in its original grain rather than silver, corresponds to qiutian. Therefore, "Yongyou Nine" corresponds to tuntian, and "Xiyou Nine" corresponds to ketian.

Moreover, contracts such as the Daoguang Twenty-Ninth Year Contract of Ding Guoshun on 'Ding' Temple Land, the Guangxu Twenty-Ninth Year Contract of Ding Shunxing on 'Ding' Official Land, and the Republican Era Contract of Li Fangshi on Selling Daofengzhi Land record transactions involving temple land, official land, and daofengzhi land. This indicates that land transactions in Datun Village were not constrained by the formal classification of tuntian, ketian, autumn fields, official land, or temple land. Differences between land types were mainly reflected in tax amounts, payment channels, and whether remittance was made in silver; these distinctions did not impede the free circulation of land in practice.

In summary, from the Qing dynasty to the Republican period, Datun Village exhibited a complex governance pattern of "one village, multiple jurisdictions". Administratively, the land simultaneously belonged to the Anshun Prefecture's directly administered territory, Puding County, and the Wei-suo garrison system, forming a tripartite governance structure. This feature is recorded in local gazetteers and corroborated by the tax structures and land transaction practices revealed in the contract documents. Despite the diversity of land types and the complexity of the tax system, various lands were able to circulate relatively freely in practice, demonstrating the adaptability and flexibility of local society within the institutional framework, and providing an important case for understanding the governance logic and land relations of traditional Chinese rural society.

3. Evolution and nature of land transactions

Based on the compilation of Datun contract documents, transactions explicitly identified as tuntian frequently took the form of ding contracts. Guozhen Yang, in A Study of Land Contract Documents in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, points out that the ding as a transaction method emerged in the context of the collapse of the Tang equal-field system, the rise of the private landlord class, and the increasing frequency of land sales, leading to the "emergence of perpetual tenant rights (yongdianquan) separated from the landlord's land ownership." By the mid-Ming dynasty, these perpetual tenant rights further evolved into a "one field, two masters" relationship, dividing land ownership into base rights (tiandi quan) and surface rights (tianmian quan); by the Qing dynasty, this practice had become a local customary rule in many areas [4: 113-122]. In the tuntian system, garrisoned soldiers typically controlled surface rights and could act as "secondary landlords," leasing land to military households or conducting dingdian transactions, that is, transferring surface rights [1]. In the Qing dynasty, such transactions were referred to by various terms, including ding, tui, liu, ji, and lan, while the Datun contracts predominantly retained the term ding.

For example, the Guangxu Ninth Year Contract of Xu Tianqi, Xu Tianxing, and Xu Beiyuan on Top Grain Fields records: "According to the field mu to 'Yong right nine' to pay a litre of field grain" [2: 392–393]. Terms such as "tuntian grain" and "Right Ninth" clearly indicate that the land originated from the Right Ninth Hundred Household of the Puding Wei-suo garrison, belonging to Yongfengli tuntian. The contract not only includes the phrase "perpetual management" (yongyuan guanye), indicating an irrevocable sale, but also bears the local government's official seal, confirming that this type of ding contract had received formal recognition. This shows that the ding in Datun had evolved beyond the Ming practice of transferring only surface rights (dingdian), becoming a complete, irrevocable sale with base and surface rights unified, reflecting the substantive progress of tuntian privatization and liberalization of transactions.

Yi-ke Mao's research on contract documents in Fujian further indicates that this phenomenon was not isolated [1]. In counties such as Min and Dehua, tuntian transactions retained forms like dui (exchange), but in substance closely resembled sales of private land, becoming irrevocable "absolute exchanges" (jue dui). This suggests that terms such as ding and dui were more a continuation of traditional linguistic conventions rather than evidence that the land remained state-owned or that transactions were restricted.

The Datun contracts repeatedly feature markers such as "tun grain", "Right Nine", and "Right Ten." For example, the Guangxu 24th year Xu Anguo grain land ding contract records "according to the field acres to 'Yong right nine' pay 2 dou 7 sheng of grain" [2: 222–223]; the Republican Year 14 Wan Yingyuan ding Yongyou Nine grain land contract refers to "Yongyou Nine grain land" [2: 423–433]; and the Tongzhi 10th year Ding Liu, Ding Guixing, and Ding Laoyi ding Right Ten grain land contract notes: "Now must pay 1 dou 4 sheng of grain,silver, horses, grass with grain together to deal with." [2: 610–611]. All of these indicate that the lands involved originally belonged to the Puding Wei tuntian system. Moreover, expressions in the contracts such as "hereby assigned to the Xu family for farming…permanent management" [2: 610–611] and "after this ding, assigned to the seller's paternal uncle's descendants for permanent management, and the seller has no right to reclaim" [2: 274–275] further demonstrate that tuntian transactions no longer distinguished between land usage rights and land ownership rights and were irrevocable. This represents a fundamental departure from the Ming dynasty practice of dingdian (transfer of usage rights only), with ding in this context signifying an absolute sale.

In contrast, ketian transactions typically used the term "sale" (mai). For instance, the Daoguang Eleventh Year Contract of Qi Maode and Others on Ketian clearly records: "establishing a clear ketian sale contract" and stipulates "delivered in person and sold to Li Fan's management… after the sale, perpetual management by Li" [2: 458–459]. This shows that although tuntian and ketian used different terminology—ding versus sale—both represented irrevocable transactions, with no substantive difference in the transfer of property rights.

In summary, from the Qing dynasty to the Republican period, although Datun's tuntian transactions continued to employ the traditional term ding, the nature of property rights had fundamentally changed. Phrases such as "perpetual management" (yongyuan guanye) and "cannot be reclaimed"(bude guishu) together with official seals and tax records, indicate that tuntian had completed the unification of base and surface rights and had become an irrevocable sale. This marks the realization of tuntian privatization and transaction liberalization, while also reflecting the path-dependent use of institutional terminology in local practice. Despite the linguistic difference between ding for tuntian and sale for ketian, both types of transactions were identical in terms of property transfer, jointly illustrating the actual dynamics of land tenure circulation in central Guizhou.

4. Transaction prices and their determinants

Land price serves as an important indicator reflecting the relationship between land property rights and taxation, and its variation is influenced by multiple factors. In the Datun contract documents, only a portion of the ding grain field contracts can be clearly identified as relating to tuntian, and most do not record the transaction area. Coupled with the limited number of surviving documents, this study can only provide a preliminary analysis of tuntian prices based on the available material.

4.1. Trends in tuntian transaction prices during the Qing Dynasty

According to the Xianfeng edition of the Annals of Anshun Prefecture,After Pudingwei was incorporated into the state and county, Tuntian paid 21.8 litres of tax rice per mu, while Ketian paid only 5.3 litres per mu.[3: 335–337]. In order to estimate theprice of unit area, this paper adopts the following methods : divide the amount of tax paid ontuntian by the standard of tax per mu (21.8sheng / mu), calculate the transaction area, and then divide the area by the selling price to obtain the price per mu. Conversion standards are: 1 dou = 10 sheng, 1 sheng = 10 he; 1 liang = 10 qian, 1 qian = 10 fen.According to the above methods, sorting out the Datun contract documents, the transaction prices of Tuntian in each period of the Qing Dynasty are as shown in Table 1:

Source: Yanping Lü, Collection of Datun Contract Documents, Guiyang: Kongxuetang Publishing, 2020.

The transaction prices of tuntian during the Qing dynasty provide an important indicator of regional economic changes. Based on the statistical data presented above, from the Qianlong to the Guangxu periods, tuntian prices in the Datun area exhibited a clear upward trend with fluctuations, with an overall average price of approximately 41.372 liang of silver per mu. This trend was influenced not only by the macroeconomic circulation of silver and changes in agricultural structure, but also closely linked to local social unrest and policy adjustments.

From a temporal perspective, in the Qianlong period, serving as the initial data point, the average price of tuntian was 32.189 liang per mu, reflecting relatively low land prices under the abundant inflow of silver and relatively ample money supply in the early Qing period. During the Jiaqing period, prices rose slightly, with an average of 32.79 liang per mu, and fluctuations were limited, likely reflecting the relatively stable development of the agricultural economy. By the Daoguang period, prices rose to a peak of 48.472 liang per mu. Individual transactions, such as the Daoguang 21st Year Contract of Zhao Zhongshun and Zhao Zhongyuan on Ding Grain Fields, reached 87.582 liang per mu, while the Daoguang 27th Year Contract of Wang Bingxing on Ding Grain Fields was as low as 13.631 liang per mu, indicating significant internal variation. This upward trend was directly linked to the expansion of opium cultivation. According to the Xianfeng edition of the Annals of Anshun Prefecture, since the Daoguang period, much arable land in Anshun was diverted to opium cultivation: "on usable land, mixed grains were planted only sporadically, and most land was planted with opium, becoming increasingly widespread, leaving almost no land for staple grains" [3: 17]. The profitability of cash crops thus drove land prices upward.

Concurrently, social unrest also impacted land prices. During the Tongzhi period, average prices fell to 30.684 liang per mu; for example, the Tongzhi 5th Year Contract of Ding Qichang and Ding Xiaoyuan on Right Ninth Grain Fields recorded a unit price of only 1.147 liang per mu, reflecting a depressed land market due to warfare. In the early Guangxu period, prices gradually recovered, averaging 33.479 liang per mu, and rose further in the mid- to late Guangxu period, with averages between the 11th and 31st years reaching 49.792 liang per mu, approaching the Daoguang peak.Among them, the unit price of Guangxu 31st Year Contract of Ding Ruhuan on Ding Grain Fields was as high as 88.081 liang / mu, while that of while the Guangxu 2nd Year Contract of Shao Tinglan on Ding Grain Fieldswas as low as 5.384 liang / mu, indicating that the market recovery was uneven. The recovery of this stage was mainly due to the resurgence of opium cultivation and post-war economic reconstruction.

The determinants of price fluctuations were complex and multi-faceted. First, the circulation of silver in the early Qing period suppressed land prices, while the late Qing silver shortage may have exacerbated volatility. Second, opium cultivation altered expected land yields, directly pushing up land prices but also increasing price disparities, reflecting the latent effects of soil fertility and location. For example, in the same Guangxu period, the unit price of Yong right Ninth Grain Fields ranged from 4.035 to 69.902 liang per mu, indicating that individual plots' fertility, irrigation, or transportation access had critical effects on pricing. Furthermore, military conflicts in the Xianfeng-Tongzhi periods (e.g., the Miao Rebellion in Guizhou) disrupted agricultural production, causing sharp price declines, whereas ethnic reconciliation and policy adjustments during the Guangxu period aided market recovery. At the macro level, natural disasters, tax burdens, and nationwide economic shifts collectively influenced tuntian transactions, making them a window into rural economic evolution during the Qing dynasty.

Overall, although tuntian prices in Datun were temporarily suppressed by social unrest, they exhibited a long-term upward trajectory driven by economic incentives and structural transformation. This process not only reflects the deepening commercialization of agriculture but also reveals how the traditional economy adapted and transformed under internal and external pressures.

4.2. Comparison of tuntian and ketian prices

Differences in land type directly affected tax obligations, which in turn decisively influenced transaction prices. The Daoguang edition of the Annals of Anping County clearly recorded: "the Tuntian must pay heavy taxes, while the ketian tax is light. Families who sell land seek higher prices, converting tuntian to ketian in the past century." [5: 66]. This phenomenon demonstrates that because tuntian bore much heavier taxation than ketian, its market price was generally lower. The data of contract documents retained in the Datun area are mutually corroborated with such literature records.

For instance, in the late Guangxu period, two temporally proximate contracts illustrate this price discrepancy. The Guangxu 26th Year Contract of Ding Zhaozhong on Ding Grain Fields recorded a tuntian price of approximately 15.6 liang per mu (see Table 1), whereas the Guangxu 25th Year Contract of Ding Zuolin on Ketian recorded a price of approximately 134.2 liang per mu (calculated based on the ketian yield of 5.3 sheng per mu). This indicates that ketian prices were roughly eight to nine times higher than tuntian, and far exceeded the overall Qing-era tuntian average of 41 liang per mu. The stark contrast clearly illustrates the land pricing principle of "heavier tax, lower price; lighter tax, higher price", revealing the direct shaping effect of the tax system on the land market.

It is also noteworthy that different types of land taxes corresponded to different administrative collection systems: "tuntian grain" corresponded to "Yong  right Ninth," "ketian grain" to "West Ninth", and "autumn grain" was under the daofengzhi. This tax division aligns with Datun Village's complex "three-affiliation" structure. It not only reflects the multi-layered administrative affiliation of the land but also institutionally demonstrates that the formation of the "three-affiliation" pattern at the local level was based on differences in land tax type. This represents a direct interaction between the evolution of grassroots taxation in the Ming-Qing period and local practice.

5. Conclusion

A systematic review of the Datun contract documents from Puding County during the Qing dynasty provides an in-depth exploration of the actual practices of tuntian transactions following the incorporation of military agricultural lands into county jurisdiction. These contracts, as primary records of local land transfers, reveal multiple dimensions of the evolution of property rights in tuntian—from the implementation of state policies at the local level to grassroots perceptions of land ownership—offering a solid empirical foundation for research in this field.

Although Datun Village in the Qing dynasty coexisted with various land typessuch as Tuntian, Ketian and Guantian, and each of them assumed different tax obligations, the transaction itself was not limited by the system of land attributes. This diversified land structure with tax differences as the core has led to the formation of a "three-affiliation" pattern in the administrative management of Datun Village-at the same time, it is subordinate to multiple jurisdictions such as Anshun Prefecture, Yongfengli and Ximen Tunpu in Puding County. This multiple affiliation is not a simple administrative superposition, but a direct manifestation of the taxation system rooted in the differences in land tax forms in grassroots space management.

In terms of transaction form, tuntian in Datun continued to use the term ding  derived from the period when tuntian remained state-owned. However, this terminology functioned merely as a linguistic convention and did not affect the substantive privatization of tuntian. tuntian had not only consolidated land ownership rights and usage rights into a single property right but had also entered a freely tradable market system. Nevertheless, the development of tuntian remained relatively lagging, and transaction prices were highly sensitive to natural disasters, wars, and domestic and international political-economic conditions, exhibiting significant fluctuations and overall instability from the Qing dynasty through the Republican period.

From the perspective of price mechanisms, tuntian and ketian displayed a marked "heavier tax, lower price" pattern. The heavy tax burden directly suppressed tuntian market prices and constrained the normal development of its transactions. In sum, although tuntian in Datun formally achieved free trade, its actual transaction practices were deeply influenced by the underlying tax system. In the Puding County case, and more broadly in central Guizhou, the correspondence between local administrative structures and property rights as reflected in land taxes demonstrates a clear institutional linkage. This finding offers a new perspective for understanding the property structure and governance logic of grassroots society from the Qing dynasty onward.