Agricultural Technology and Agrarian Change in Han China

Abstract

This article considers the Interaction between technological development in agriculture and social change. In the early Han, a period of comparatively strong and centralized rule, the government encouraged and subsidized a particular type of agricultural development designed to benefit independent small-holders, thus discouraging the formation of large estates and maximizing the state's Income from taxes. Later as the power of the landed gentry grew, large ‘manorial’ estates superseded Independent small-holdings as the dominant mode of production despite government efforts to reverse this trend. The change in tenurial pattern was accompanied by marked changes in agricultural technology and production which became far more ‘rational’ and market oriented than had been possible in a small-holder economy.