MONTAÑESES, MODERADOS Y DESARRAPADOS (Junio Julio de 1793)

landownership in these areas.

M Tien Bien. Vol.2, p.41. In its footnote it copied the rule of Phu Bien, which was the rule of the 18th century.

land tax:"Measure the cultivated land and set the land taxation rule."26 This was more than one century after Nguyen Hoang came to Thuan Hoa. It goes without saying th at before this date there must have existed some land taxation system in the Nguyen’s base area around Thuan Hoa. But it was only after 1669 that a the land taxation system became elaborated and formalised. An entry from 1687 in the Tien Bien supports this conclusion by recording that the government "excused people from paying the land tax which [had] increased in 1669". But as we saw, the entry of 1669 did not mention such an increase but a formalisation. It is logical to assume, therefore, th at the existing land tax was increased when the 1669 measurement of land had been completed.

It is possible that this may have marked a turning point, after which the Nguyen began to reduce the head tax gradually, as suggested by the foreign accounts cited previously. Nevertheless, it still apparently remained the most important part of state revenue, as the tables presented above suggest. They show that the key to the Trinh fiscal system in the north was the land tax, while under the Nguyen it was the head tax, at least until the reign of Vo Vuong (1738-1765). Yet this is slightly misleading. Land taxes became more important in the north only a century earlier than in the south. Almost at the same time that the Nguyen began to measure land and set the taxation rule of 1669, the Trinh in the north published an extremely thorough land taxation regulation. This 1672 regulation marked the completion of a shift from head tax to land tax in Dang Ngoai. This trend appears clearly in the 1803 taxation rules of the Nguyen dynasty. While rice taxes from Quang Binh to Dien Khanh remained the same as those of the 18th century, additional land taxes were levied at 1.8 quan per

m au of land. If a peasant had 2 mau of land, which could have been quite common in the south in the 19th century, he had to pay 3.6 quan in land tax. Meanwhile, the highest head tax for a taxpayer beween 20 and 55 of age was only 1.6 quan. 27 These figures illustrate well the reversal in the tax system

which saw a comparative decline in the head tax and rise in importance of the land tax.

A similar trend occurred in the taxation system in China over many centuries.

26 Ibid, Vol. 5,p.73.

27 Dai Nam Thuc Luc Chinh Bien De Nhat Ky (Chronicle of Greater Vietnam, Period of Gia Long, Part 1), The Oriental Institute, Keio University, Mita, Siba, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 1968, Vol.20, p.324.

Beginning with the Tang, a series of changes were made to the Chinese tax system. They all pointed towards making land taxes and taxes collected on the property of the individual taxpayer increasingly important, while taxes levied on the person or household became less significant. This policy reflected the development of big land ownership, and the reality of many peasants losing their own land. The tan ding ru mu policy of the Qing dynasty (collect taxes according to the amount and quantity of land a taxpayer owned) took the final step in this transformation.

Taxes collected from uplanders

Looking at the distribution of the revenue of the Nguyen in 1774, we find that by the early 1770s the tax on international trade represented a minor part of the total. Taxes collected from other sources had became more important, especially those collected from the uplanders. This section examines those taxes.

The Tien Bien says that in 1697 ‘evil barbarians’(ac man) robbed the taxpaying barbarians (thue man) in Phu Vang county, Thuan Hoa,M clearly indicating that some uplanders already paid taxes to the Nguyen in the late 1690s. Nevertheless, the numbers registered by the Nguyen as taxpayers probably remained quite limited at that time.29 Hickey’s view that tributary relations began between the rulers in Hue and the Kings of Fire and Water during the Vo Vuong reign (r.l 738-1765) seems correct.30 I suspect further that it happened in the later part of the reign, as it was also about that time (1761) that the Nguyen extended their authority into the highlands of present-day Savannakhet province in Laos.31 Certainly the 1750s and 1760s do seem to be the era when the Nguyen began to tighten their control over the uplanders. The Tien Bien contains repeated references to uplanders during these years. In 1774, for example, we find a list of secondary taxes collected by the Nguyen on fishing, local trade, uplanders, and

M Tien Bien. Vol.7, p.102.

” Tien Bien says in the entry 1711 that Nam Ban and Tra Lai, two tributaries in Phu Yen, reported to the Nguyen that because their people did not pay taxes to them it was hard for them to pay tribute to the Nguyen; they asked the Nguyen to send an army to intimidate the people into paying taxes. The Nguyen did so and set up a taxation rule in the hope of guaranteeing tribute from these areas. Nevertheless, these uplanders cannot be regarded as taxpayers to the Nguyen.

30 Gerald Cannon Hickey, Sons of the Mountains, New Haven and London, Yale University, 1982, pp.158-160.