From the simple materials unearthed, it can be seen that many aspects of the civil society of the Western Han Dynasty were regulated by legal forms such as laws and Han decrees.
In order to clarify the legal provisions on land sales in the Western Han Dynasty, it is first necessary to study the relevant legal matters of the civil subjects of land sales in the Western Han Dynasty, that is, who can become the civil subjects of land sales and what provisions the law has formulated on them.
1. The scope of civil subjects of land sales in the Western Han Dynasty
According to relevant records, the comprehensive establishment and consolidation of feudal private land ownership in the Western Han Dynasty made land buying and selling a common social and economic activity.
The subjects involved in the flood of land sales also became widespread, from aristocratic bureaucrats to ordinary people, who held different positions and roles in the transaction of land sales.
The feudal landlord's land ownership system does not theoretically depend on the amount of land possessed, but is determined by the position of the landowner in production and the form of distribution of products.
A landowner is classified as a feudal landlord class as long as he rents or hires people to cultivate the land and exploits the surplus products of labor as his main source of subsistence.
In order for the exploitation of surplus products to meet the living and consumption needs of the landlord and his family members, the landlord must occupy a minimum amount of land.
And this land tenure should generally be greater than the average land tenure of a homesteader.
That is, in the early Western Han Dynasty, the average land occupation of homesteaders in a family of five was about 100 mu, and the income of 100 mu could not be more than 100 stones, and it was already very difficult to maintain the family's life.
From the perspective of land rent exploitation, feudal landlords must own several times more land than ordinary homesteaders in order to maintain the living needs of their families and ensure the reproduction of the land economy.
Therefore, the legalization of land sales in the Western Han Dynasty just met their demand for land.
During the Western Han Dynasty, the feudal landlord class could be divided into three main classes: aristocratic bureaucratic landlords, powerful landlords, and merchant landlords, whose dominant position in land purchase and sale transactions will be discussed below.
Although the taxes of the Western Han aristocracy and the bureaucracy's servants were part of the surplus labor products of the peasants.
But this is not an economic form in which land ownership is realized. Politically, both the aristocracy and the bureaucracy were part of the feudal ruling class; But from an economic point of view, landless aristocrats and bureaucrats cannot be called landowners.
If the aristocracy and bureaucracy are lost for political reasons, the aristocracy and bureaucracy who occupy land and have land rent income can still rely on the land rent income to continue to live as a landowner.
On the contrary, the aristocracy and bureaucracy who did not have income from land and rent, once they lost their income from the knighthood, meant that they were cut off from their sources of exploitation.
It was precisely because of this precariousness of the economic income of the aristocratic bureaucracy that most of them were not satisfied with the taxes and money they ate, but hoped to make themselves large landowners by various means.
In addition to the emperor's rewards, another important channel for their land wealth was the purchase and sale of land and the annexation of people's land.
Instances of them relying on their power to buy land at low prices and even usurping people's land for free were common in Western Han society.
For example, "Shiji Xiao Xiangguo Family" records that when Liu Bang went to fight Chen Yan, Xiao He stayed in Guanzhong and "bought tens of millions of people's land houses."
When Zhang Yu was prime minister, he "bought more land to 400 hectares, and irrigated them all to the top. From the above discussion, it can be seen that the privileged class of aristocratic bureaucratic landlords in Western Han society was the primary purchaser and leading force in land sales.
Military meritorious landowners acquire a large amount of land based on the size of military merit and the level of knighthood. Their descendants rely on the large amount of land obtained by their fathers and grandfathers through military merits, and live a hereditary, semi-hereditary parasitic life without food and clothing, and are most likely to degenerate and decay on the road to bankruptcy.
Therefore, Emperor Xiaoxuan was stunned, but opened the temple, read the old books, and ordered Yousi to ask his descendants, salted out of the Yongbao, and be restored, or added gold, with the virtue of Zhang Zhongxing. Qian Daxin also believed that the descendants of landlords with military merit in the early Han Dynasty "although they had high lords, they were still in the middle of the miscellaneous protection."
Yongbao means a person who is employed to perform handymanship. The descendants of military landlords have fallen into the ranks of the Yongbao.
This is enough to prove that they sold out a large amount of land acquired by their parents and grandparents for military merits, and their land was forced into the process of land sale and acquisition, and they also became the land supplier of land purchase and sale transactions.
2. Legal provisions concerning aristocratic bureaucrats
Through a re-analysis of the "Second Year Decree" in the Later Lü period, it can be seen that officials and eunuchs enjoyed privileges in purchasing houses (homesteads), and they broke through the restrictions of "comparison" and purchased land more freely and conveniently.
They can only fill the shortfall by acquiring land if there is a shortage of existing land, but the amount of land they occupy must meet the criteria of status rank.
In the fifth year of Yuan Feng (106 BC), Emperor Wudi of Han abolished the history of the prime minister of the county state, and divided it into thirteen prefectures, each of which assigned a person to the history of assassination, and the history of assassination was mainly composed of six questions.
The first of the six questions: The strong clan overtook the land house, bullied the weak with the strong, and used the many to be violent and widows, which shows that the government at that time adopted this method to suppress the strong clan and the wealthy family to buy a large amount of land.
Solve the problem of over-the-top land ownership, so that the amount of land they own is consistent with the limit set by the status level.
In view of the situation that nobles, bureaucrats, and rich people occupy land and the large number of slaves, Shi Dan, the minister of the Han Dynasty, put forward the suggestion that "it is advisable to limit it slightly". Emperor Moi accepted this advice and issued an edict soliciting specific measures to limit land and slaves.
Shi Dan, Kong Guang, He Wu and others jointly formulated a specific method for limiting fields and slaves according to the content of the edict of the mourning emperor.
It stipulates that "the land occupied by the kings and princes in their fiefdoms, the land owned by the princes in Chang'an, and the land occupied by the princess in the county road."
After this method was announced, although it was not specifically implemented, it still had a great impact on society.
However, this plan to limit land was not strict, there were big loopholes, and the strong opposition of the big bureaucrat Dong Xian, foreign Qi Ding Ming, Fu Xi and other powerful figures did not implement it after all.
The object of land purchase and sale in the Western Han Dynasty There are three forms of land ownership in the Western Han Dynasty: the small land ownership system of yeomanry, the land ownership system of feudal landlords, and the land ownership system of feudal state.
If it is divided according to the social nature of land, that is, land ownership, it can be divided into two categories: state-owned land and private land. Analyzing their changes, we can know which lands could be bought and sold during the Western Han Dynasty, that is, the types of objects of land sales.
State-owned land, as the name implies, the state has its ownership and can exercise the right to occupy, dispose of, and benefit. Under the Han Dynasty and the Qin system, the state-owned land of the Western Han Dynasty mainly came from the following sources:
Inheritance of the communal lands of previous generations. After the establishment of the Western Han Dynasty, all the land originally occupied by the Qin government was inherited by the Western Han government and became the state-owned land of the Western Han Dynasty.
The reason why the early Han Dynasty was able to implement the land grant system throughout the country was mainly based on the fact that the Han court inherited a large amount of state-owned land from the Qin Dynasty.
Yamabayashi Kawasawa. Since the Shang Zhou Dynasty, mountains, forests, rivers and rivers have been public resources and have always been directly controlled by the state. Although the Haomin of the Western Han Dynasty "benefits of Zhuanchuan Ze, manages the Rao of mountains and forests".
However, this does not mean that the people have ownership, and the ownership of the mountains and forests is still controlled by the state.
Forfeited land. Feudal land ownership is a relative right, not an absolute property right. When the private landowner violates the interests of the emperor or violates the decrees of the state, the state may confiscate the land of the private landowner.
For example, in order to curb the powerful and eliminate political hidden dangers, the Western Han Dynasty implemented measures to migrate the Hao family with the surname. The displaced are all owners of large estates everywhere.
After their relocation, the original land was taken over to the state. The "Two-Year Decree and Harvest Law" stipulates: Sinners who finish the city, those who are paid more than the wages of demons, and those who commit adultery shall receive their wives, sons, wealth, and land houses.
During the reign of Emperor Wudi of Han, Yang Ke's decree was implemented, and the government confiscated "hundreds of hectares in large counties and more than 100 hectares in small counties, as well as houses in small counties" from merchants who illegally occupied land.
Tojida. The Western Han Dynasty strictly managed the household registration, and granted fields according to the household registration, that is, the name was in the front and the field was in the back.
Judging from the Two-Year Decree, the criterion for returning land is whether the hukou can be established. If the old head of the household dies and someone takes his place, the land awarded does not need to be returned; If the family is extinct and no one inherits, then the land must be returned to the government.
Wasteland. The Book of Han and the Records of Food and Goods once recorded that "to the Qin Dynasty, otherwise, the law of merchant martingale was used to change the system of emperors, and the people could buy and sell except for the wells." ”
It shows that the Shang Martingale Law includes land sales within the scope of national legal protection. Since then, the system of "not cultivating in the field" has been abolished, and the act of buying and selling land has begun to enter the stage of history as a legal identity.
In 216 BC, the Qin government issued a decree to "make the head of Qian self-realized". This shows that the Qin Dynasty confirmed the private ownership of land nationwide, which means that the private ownership of feudal land was legalized and codified nationwide.
The Han followed the Qin system, and the private land ownership system was further developed in the early and middle Western Han Dynasty, so a large part of the land was privately owned.
However, due to famine, epidemics, famine, and chaos, the population of many places was scattered, and the original mature land became terra nullius. For these orphan wastelands after the chaos, they are naturally included in the category of state-owned land.
The above five types of land together constitute the total amount of state-owned land in the Western Han Dynasty, and the analysis of the source of state-owned land facilitates the following discussion of which state-owned lands can be bought and sold.
3. Expansion plan
Emperor Wudi of Han planned to expand Shanglinyuan, so he "ordered lieutenants and left and right inner history tables to belong to the county grassland, hoping to repay the people of Yandu". The grassland here means "grassland means barren land and uncultivated land".
The ownership of the grassland was owned by the state, and Emperor Wudi of Han intended to use it to compensate for the private land occupied by the expansion of the Shanglin Garden.
This type of land-for-land transaction also involves the ownership of the land, after which the landowner changes owners. Therefore, the wasteland of state-owned land can be used as a transaction object for land sales.
In 68 BC, Yang Yi, a native of Bazhou, purchased the land of Shanze from the Western Han government, worth tens of millions, which is the earliest land sale and purchase stele found so far.
Yang Yi wanted to pass on the purchased Shanze land to his descendants as a family inheritance through the method of historical carving stones, which meant that he had obtained the ownership of the Shanze land of the state-owned land, in other words, the Shanze land of the state-owned land could become the legal object of land sales.
In short, when the Western Han government was the legal subject of land sales, wasteland and mountain land could be used as objects of land sales.
"Hanshu Li Guang Biography" said: "Li Cai sat down with the prime minister and gave the tomb Yangling 20 acres, Cai stole three acres, sold it for more than 400,000 yuan, and stole one acre of land outside the Shinto to bury it, and immediately went to prison and committed suicide." ”
The "Hanshu Sun Bao Biography" recorded: "Emperor Shi's uncle Hongyang Hou Li Li Li envoy Yinnan County Taishou Li Shang occupied hundreds of acres of grassland, quite a few people fake young mansion Pize, a little developed, Shangshu is willing to enter the county official."
There is Zhao County Hirata Yunao, and the money is more than 10,000 yuan. When Bao Wenzhi heard of it, he sent the prime minister to follow the history, and sent him to commit adultery, impeached Zhuoli, and Shang Huai for treachery, and cunning. Shang went to prison and died. ”
From the point of view that they can sell state-owned land, it seems that state-owned land can be bought and sold. However, from "stealing" and "occupying", it can be seen that they are illegally buying and selling state-owned land, and the word illegal shows that under normal circumstances, state-owned land cannot be used as an object of sale.
The above contradictory discussion on the sale of legal state-owned land and the sale of non-French land shows that state-owned land is usually not allowed to be the legal object of land sale, and only when the state is the seller's subject can state-owned land be used as a transaction object.
Why is this the case? It is believed that it was determined by the Western Han government's widespread implementation of the land grant system. State-owned land is the source of land under the land grant system, and after the land is granted, it is owned by private individuals, and the land is then transferred, inherited, bought and sold in the circulation field.
In order to ensure land grants, the government must have a certain land reserve, and it is necessary to control the distribution of state-owned land.
It comprehensively and deeply analyzes the legal content of land purchase and sale in the Western Han Dynasty. Taking the land sale and purchase contract as the starting point, the legal content of land sale and purchase is discussed.
The land sale contract is formulated by the consent of the parties, and the content of the contract is the unity of the rights enjoyed by the parties and the obligations they bear.
epilogue
Once the four effective requirements of the land sale contract are met, the sale and purchase relationship is established, and the parties are bound by the content of the contract.
The role of the land sale deed is not only to prove the transfer of land ownership, but also to serve as the basis for the government to resolve land sale and purchase disputes.
The Western Han government also escorted land sale contracts in three aspects: registering land, formulating crimes, and accepting litigation over land sale disputes.