During the eighteenth century, an unprecedented level of population growth in China caused a shift in the relative value of two key factors of production, land and labor, and provided incentives to define and enforce property right in land more strictly. These conditions exacerbated disputes over long-standing property right issues such as boundary and water rights and heightened tensions over issues which were more prevalent in the eighteenth century such as rent defaults, redemptions, and evictions. Efforts to forcefully assert or redefine rights created the potential for disputes, which sometimes became violent.; This dissertation examines change over time in the major issues, participants, official disposition, and geographic and temporal distribution of 385 homicides related to disputes over property rights in Guangdong province during the Qianlong reign (1736-1795). The thesis includes an examination of Guangdong's economy during the eighteenth century and the long term trends in the development of property rights in order to establish the broader significance of the disputes.; The primary resource materials for the study of disputes are reports of homicides that were forward to the central government in routine memorials to the Ministry of Justice. To illustrate the change over time I rely on a qualitative analysis of the major issues, claims made, and dispute types; initiators of claims, initiators of violence; county locations, date and duration of disputes, names, number, kinship, social and legal status of participants in disputes; evidence of prior efforts at mediation, reporters of disputes, investigating officials, laws invoked, sentencing, and dispositions of claims for 385 disputes. To delineate the broader social and economic environment of eighteenth century Guangdong I rely on contemporary descriptions of eighteenth century Guangdong's economy and society drawn from local histories, Ministry of Revenue documents, and secondary literature in addition to evidence obtained from the homicide reports.; The thesis finds that over time homicides related to property right disputes declined. Violence abated as innovations in property rights were incorporated into customary law and, in some cases, belatedly recognized in imperial edicts. The decline in deadly violence also coincided with a shift in economic power in favor of landlords which facilitated a refinement of property rights that benefited land owners and insulated them from disputes. As property rights were defined more clearly and violent disputes declined, the focus of the disputes also changed. Peasants were increasingly forced to compete amongst themselves for a limited supply of land and disputes between competing tenants accounted for a greater share of all violent disputes. Most, but not all of the temporal and geographic variation in the pattern of violent disputes was due to the uneven effects of commercialization and population growth.
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