Portions of this article were first presented at the Oxford China Seminar, All Souls College (1975), and at the Peasants Seminar, University of London (1976). The author thanks the Foreign Area Fellowship Program, S.S.R.C. (U.S.A.), and the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley, for supporting the field research upon which this study is based.

¹ Hsiao-t'ung, Fei and Chih-i, Chang, Earthbound China (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948)Google ScholarHan-seng, Chen, Landlord and Peasant in China (New York: International Publishers, 1936);Google ScholarTawney, R. H., Land and Labor in China (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932);Google Scholar and see also essays in Agrarian China, edited by the Institute of Pacific Relations (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1939).Google Scholar

² Potter, Jack M., Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant: Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 174–203;Google Scholar and Elvin, Mark, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), pp. 251 ff.Google Scholar

³ Myers, Ramon, The Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung, 1890–1949 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 234, 288–9.Google Scholar See also Elvin, Mark, ‘Early Communist Land Reform and the Kiangsi Rural Economy,’ Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (04 1970), p. 166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Baker, Hugh D. R., A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui (London: Cass, 1968); Potter, Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant;Google ScholarWatson, James L., Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: The Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).Google Scholar

⁵ These ‘wars’ are best described as periodic hostilities and confrontations between rival lineages. But, as noted later in this paper, people were killed on occasion. See also Maurice, Freedman, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: Athlone, 1958), p. 107.Google Scholar

⁶ Myron, Cohen, ‘The Hakka or “Guest People”: Dialect as a Sociocultural Variable in Southeastern China,’ Ethnohistory, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1968), p. 254;Google Scholar and Potter, , Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, p. 100.Google Scholar

⁷ The term ‘satellite village’ is borrowed from Freedman, Maurice, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London: Athlone, 1966), p. 9. Potter calls them ‘tenant villages’;Google Scholar see his ‘Land and Lineage in Traditional China’, in Freedman, Maurice (ed.), Family and Kinship in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), p. 130.Google Scholar

⁸ Potter, , Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, p. 118.Google Scholar

⁹ Hsiao-t'ung, Fei, Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939), p. 177;Google ScholarFukutake, Tadashi, ‘Village Life in Central China,’ in his Asian Rural Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), p. 83;Google ScholarElvin, , Pattern of the Chinese Past, pp. 253–4.Google Scholar For a Taiwanese variation see Wickberg, Edgar B., ‘Late Nineteenth Century Land Tenure in North Taiwan,’ in Gordon, Leonard (ed.), Taiwan: Studies in Chinese Local History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 80–1.Google Scholar On the legal complications arising from corporate ownership see Schurmann, H. F., ‘Traditional Property Concepts in China,’ Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4 (08 1956), pp. 501–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Chen, , Landlord and Peasant, p. 52.Google Scholar

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¹² Yeh-chien, Wang, Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750–1911 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 27.Google Scholar

¹³ Lockhart, Stewart, ‘Extracts from a Report by Mr. S. Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong,’ in The Hong Kong Government Gazette, Vol. 45 (1899). Speaking of the annexed territory, he observes (p. 540): ‘The [Imperial Chinese] land registers of the district [Hsin An]… are worse than useless, as they contain not more than half of the land under cultivation.’Google Scholar

¹⁴ G. N. Orme, ‘Report on the New Territories, 1899–1912,’ in Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1909–1912, p. 46. The best study on this subject is by Howard G. H. Nelson, ‘British Land Administration in the New Territories of Hong Kong and its Effèct on Chinese Social Organisation,’ London-Cornell Project Report (June 1969), unpublished mimeo.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Lockhart, Stewart, ‘Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong, 1900; Appendix III, Memorandum on Land,’ in Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1900, p. 19.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Watson, , Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, Ch. 6, ‘The Mans in Britain.’Google Scholar

¹⁷ See e.g., Potter, , Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, pp. 110–12.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Based on survey of land records (1905) for the San Tin area held at the Yuen Long District Office, New Territories.

¹⁹ See Chen, Landlord and Peasant, p. 31. Baker (Sheung Shui, p. 17) and Potter (Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, p. 96) cite estate ownership figures of 52 and 93 percent respectively for two other lineage villages in the New Territories. See also Freedman, Lineage Organization, pp. 11ff.Google Scholar

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²¹ Potter, , Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, p. 96.Google Scholar

²² Sahlins, Marshall, ‘The Domestic Mode of Production,’ Chs 2 and 3 in his Stone Age Economics (London: Tavistock, 1972). According to Sahlins (p. 76), ‘The household is to the tribal [and peasant] economy as the manor to the medieval economy or the corporation to modern capitalism: each is the dominant production-institution of its time.’Google Scholar

²³ An interesting, but highly aberrant, exception might have been the famous Cheng commune as described by Dardess, John W., ‘The Cheng Communal Family: Social Organization and Nco-Confucianism in Yuan and Early Ming China,’ Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 34 (1974). This ‘communal family’ was an historical curiosity; it was not representative of Chinese kinship organizations.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ These major segments struggled to control the community. However, at the first sign of an external threat, intralineage rivalries were temporarily set aside and the people of San Tin reacted in unison. This pattern of organization, known as segmentary opposition, was characteristic of all powerful lineages in China and it was an important key to their success. See Freedman, Lineage Organization and Watson, J. L., ‘Agnates and Outsiders: Adoption in a Chinese Lineage,’ Man (n.s.), Vol. 10, No. 3 (1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ See e.g., Foster, George M., ‘The Dyadic Contract in Tzintzuntzan (Mexico), II; Patron-Client Relationship,’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 65, No. 6 (12 1963), pp. 1280–94;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Silverman, Sydel F., ‘Patronage and Community: National Relationships in Central Italy,’ Ethnology, Vol. 4 (1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ A similar argument is made by Melvyn, C. Goldstein, ‘Serfdom and Mobility: An Examination of the Institution of “Human Lease” in Traditional Tibetan Society,’ Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (05 1971), p. 522.Google Scholar

²⁷ ‘San Tin Rural Committee,’ P. S. 3/415/48 (1955), files held at the Yuen Long District Office, New Territories.Google Scholar

²⁸ Wakeman, Frederic Jr, Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorders in South China, 1839–1861 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 112;Google Scholar and Kuhn, Philip A., Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

²⁹ Hu Hsien-chin also mentions an itinerant of this type in The Common Descent Group in China and its Functions (New York: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 10, 1948), p. 116.Google Scholar

³⁰ Kung-chuan, Hsiao, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), pp. 430–1.Google Scholar

³¹ CfThaxton, Ralph ‘Tenants in Revolution: The Tenacity of Traditional Morality,’ Modern China, Vol. I, No. 3 (1975).Google Scholar

³² Watson, Rubie S., ‘Marriage Patterns in a Chinese Lineage: Genealogical Evidence,’ unpublished paper.Google Scholar

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³⁴ Watson, James L., ‘Chattel Slavery in Chinese Peasant Society: A Comparative Analysis,’ Ethnology, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Data on this form of servitude will be presented in a subsequent paper.Google Scholar

³⁶ Kuhn, , Rebellion and its Enemies, p. 79.Google Scholar See also Maurice Freedman's appreciation of Kuhn's, book, ‘The Politics of an Old State: A View from the Chinese Lineage,’ in Davis, John H. R. (ed.), Choice and Change: Essays in Honour of Lucy Mair (London: Athlone, 1974), pp. 84–8.Google Scholar

³⁷ Elvin, , Pattern of the Chinese Past, pp. 71–2, 238;Google Scholar and his ‘The Last Thousand Years of Chinese History: Changing Patterns in Land Tenure,’ Modern Asian Studies, Vol 4, No. 2 (04 1970), pp. 97–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Chinese serfdom, see also Twitchett, Denis, Land Tenure and the Social Order in T'ang and Sung China (Inaugural Lecture, S.O.A.S., University of London, 1962), pp. 27–9;Google Scholar and Balazs, Etienne, ‘Landownership in China from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century,’ in his Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, trans. Wright, H. M. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

³⁸ Elvin, , Pattern of the Chinese Past, p. 235.Google Scholar

³⁹ Watson, , Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Baker, , Sheung Shui, p. 29;Google Scholar see also his ‘The Five Great Clans of the New Territories,’ Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar Kam Tin, the most powerful lineage village in Hong Kong, has an origin myth similar to the one discussed by Baker; see Sung Hok-p'ang, ‘Legends and Stories of the New Territories, Kam Tin,’ reprinted in ibid., Vol. 13 (1973), pp. 160–85, first appearing in Hong Kong Naturalist (– 1935).

⁴¹ Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society, p. 6. Several New Territories genealogies, collected by Hugh Baker, are on file at the British Library in London.Google Scholar

⁴² There are two basic approaches to the anthropological study of myth. The first, characterized by the early work of Edmund Leach in Burma, sees myth as a social charter that can be manipulated according to present needs. The second, represented by Lévi-Strauss and the later writings of Leach, attempts to analyze myth as a form of communication at a ‘deeper’, structural level. I have not attempted a structural analysis of these Chinese origin myths.Google Scholar

⁴³ Man genealogy referred to earlier.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Pasternak, Burton, ‘The Role of the Frontier in Chinese Lineage Development,’ Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (05 1969), p. 561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also his Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 155–7.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Chen, , Landlord and Peasant, p. 58;Google Scholar and Yuen-fong, Woon, ‘Social Organization of South China: The Case of the Kwaan Lineage of Hoi-p'ing,’ unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of British Columbia, 1975), p. 116.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Hu, , The Common Descent Group, pp. 91–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Hayes, James W., ‘Peng Chau between 1798–1899,’ Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 4 (1964), pp. 71–96,Google Scholar and ‘Cheung Chau, 1850–1898,’ ibid., Vol. 3 (1963), pp. 88–106. For another interesting variation of absentee corporate-landlordism see Muramatsu, Yuji, ‘A Documentary Study of Chinese Landlordism in Late Ch'ing and Early Republican Kiangnan,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 29 (1966), pp. 570–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Peasant Life in China, p. 177.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ American anthropologists are currently engaged in a debate concerning the nature of exploitation in peasant societies. See e.g., Dalton, George, ‘How Exactly Are Peasants “Exploited”?,’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 76, No. 3 (09 1974), pp. 553–61;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and William Roseberry, ‘Rent, Differentiation, and the Development of Capitalism among Peasants,’ ibid., Vol. 78, No. 1 (March 1976), pp. 45–58.