Land in Themiclesia
Land policy in Themiclesia has historically been accorded primacy, since the economy was predominantly agrarian. Political consequences and historical experience placed imperatives on the maintenance of a stable and sustainable land policy that supported a sedentary populus and created sufficient surplus for commerce and the governing apparatus attached to them.
Broadly speaking, land distribution was tackled both in isolation and as a tethered element to social stratification, sumptuary allowances, and population movement control. Both agricultural and housing land was subject to policy restrictions. During most periods in history, the state provided a "floor" to land holding for free commoners and a "ceiling" for the privileged, though in enforcement loopholes surfaced regularly, and government was not consistently able to prevent severe land aggregation, an acknowledged evil in the characterization of traditional philosophy.
Hexarchy
Before the Hexarchy, most embryonic states are best described as a network of settlements and their surrounding areas, whose leaders were connected to each other through bloodline, marriage, and political promises. Most settlements (邑, ′jip) were fortified, and some possessed a defensive wall (城, djêng); the area around the settlement was called the gwrên (寰). Before the 3rd c. BCE, most land between settlements was considered unowned and could be traversed and freely settled. The allegiances of the settlements was fluid, though there was generally a dynasty that controlled more population and resource than others in a given region. Territorial boundaries began to emerge towards the end of the 3rd c. between settlements as they multiplied during a widespread rush for colonization whose motivation remains elusive.
Within an area of relatively strong control, such as within the gwrên, land was often distributed to branches of the clan that dominated the settlement or to new settler clans that either possessed a valuable skill or posed a sufficient threat. Some authorities characterize this as a primitive form of feudalism, which later developed from this phenomenon, though a more modern interpretation provides that in an environment where land was extremely plentiful, land distribution was a matter of supporting a clan so as to live communally, rather than a clear quid pro quo between a lord and vassal. In the case of the widespread linh (甸), sometimes translated as "manor", a feudalistic relationship is obvious, where a clan lives without arms and focuses on agricultural production, under the protection of a nearby power in exchange for some of its surpluses.
By the end of the 3rd c. a better image emerges of the political geography of the states in modern-day Themiclesia. The successes in colonization have enriched metropoles and exaggerated the wealth differences between classes. Whereas the senior houses (公室, klong-stjit) seemed to be founded upon respect for tradition and mysticism of the ancestral and other cults before the 3rd c., the senior houses became much more resourcesful, reflected in the historical and archaeological record as grander residences that evolved into palaces, the founding of standing militaries, and the expansion of a geographic sphere of influence, though the precise outcome differed greatly between states.
It has been argued that the way in which colonial influence and wealth was distributed had an impact on the form of government that is difficult to overstate. Polities like Tsjinh that sent settlers to somewhat-populated areas tended to develop into hybrid states that encompassed existing structures and to divide resulting wealth and influence comparatively evenly, while those like Kem, which settled intensively and eradicated local structures, tended to enrich only the ruling house and became highly centralized. In the latter model, consanguineous aristocracies were dwarfed by the senior house, and the non-consanguineous were almost eliminated from existence. Through its colonization model, Kem became the foremost military power in Themiclesia.
It is also proposed by several scholars that freemen and nuclear families may not have existed before and during the earlier part of the Hexarchy, with most individuals belonging to a broader clan that was the basic political, economic, and military unit in most places. The modern Shinasthana word for "the public" literally means "the many clans" (羣姓, gjun-sjêngh). An opposing view is that most of the recoverable information depict the lives of what might be called a political elite, and that nuclear families are attested as counting units for slaves (臣, gjin) and captives (執, tjep), who are denied the ability to organize into clans for "pragmatic reasons". At any rate, a sizeable body of freemen has emerged by the 2nd century, in the archaeological record, even though political literature still gave primacy to clans.
During the 1st c. BCE, conflicting colonization efforts led to an early emergence of borders, hundreds of miles between metropoles, and during this century royal power experienced considerable growth not only due to colonial wealth, but subjugation of other settlements and the growth of freemen, whose labour and product was generally at the disposal of the central power rather than a clan leader. The Tsjinh curtailed the power of some of its largest clans, having grown during the colonial rush, that threatened royal dominance, though this process was restricted in scope; the Tsjinh king deposed threatening patriarchs and established more pliant ones, while the Kem king outright stripped them of their lands and wealth, turning them into his own lands and wealth.
Kem's centralization created a powerful army and somewhat-united populace that terrorized other states, but many historians consider the most threatening feature of Kem rule was its annihilation of the aristocratic class. With the success of its model, Kem promoted the growth of the freeman class with great zeal and uprooted all clan-based structures in the lands it conquered. As a result, weaker states began to ally or even submit to more powerful ones for protection, and the Tsjinh royal house leveraged their demands to expand his own influence. With the support of an anti-Kem league in the early decades of the 1st century, the Tsjinh engaged in an expansionist campaign to settle its own bulgeoning freeman population, coming to dominate the entire southern bank of the River Kaung.
By the beginning of the common era, the Tsjinh had clear borders with four major states and encompassed, by some estimates, nearly half of the population of all the states combined. Internally, there was now a mixture of several political regions. There were directly-administered royal lands worked by freemen, which was the principle source of royal revenues. Like the area directly surrounding the Tsjinh settlement proper, these regions were called gwrên, giving rise to the use of gwrên-kwar (寰官) to refer to the entire royal domain. Many settlements were still dominated by clans that possessed their own client clans, economic means, and military force. The states that submitted to Tsjinh retained most of their resources. The result is what some have called a "peppercorn swiss cheese" state, where the royal house controlled a large portion of territories but significant pockets remained economically independent.
This assemblage of geographic interests is very evident in some bronze artifacts, which recorded the Tsjinh ruler's speeches to the leading men of his state:
公曰四方公、侯、邦君又寰內甸伯、羣公，曰惟徹公余賚，朕邦…
So the Parriarch spake to the parriarchs, earls, and lords of the four quarters, and within the gwrên the elders of the manors and the numerous parriarchs, saying, "It is only you, all the parriarchs, have granted unto me, that my territories...
Tsjinh period
For the Tsjinh state, the period from around the start of the common era to the conclusion of the Treaty of Five Kings was one of political maturity, especially viewed retrospectively from the less stable 4th and early 5th centuries. When the royal house's ability to command the confidence of the various magnates deteriorated due to the lack of a powerful enemy, a vast quantity of literature was written to give exposition to a political system they believed was worthy of emulation. However, the late 3rd and 4th centuries was not a period of decay as much as some of the literature depicts it; rather, the royal house sought to expand bureaucratic rule, which caused pre-existing tensions with sub-polities to surface.
In 265, the Tsjinh concluded the Treaty of Five Kings with the rulers of Kem, Pjang, Sjin, and Ngak, the latter four pledging allegiance to Tsjinh and to eliminate certain internal borders, while Tsjinh promised never to betray the four states when negotiating with alien states or "raise arms against them, for generations after generations, and never break this promise generation after generation" (世＝毋或又興兵于四邦晉王公子＝孫＝惟其世＝勿灋茲盟). A large variety of inscriptions bearing this phrase, in their thousands, were found across Themiclesia-proper. Even though war was indeed averted between the states for as long as the Tsjinh lineage was on the throne, regional lords often launched broad and deep intrigues at court to enforce their interests, and the Tsjinh king also attempted to enlarge his influence in the four other states.
In the late 3rd century, the Tsjinh monarch declared himself "king" (王, gwjang), a title used in parallel with "parriarch" (公, klong); the four major states quickly imitated him. The new title distinguished them over the parriarchs of minor states that came under their protection. Both the major states and their sub-states enfeoffed earls (侯), who were the remnants of earlier militarized colonization. However, though the constant warfare that dominated the late Hexarchy, many of the earls became more important to the kings than their parriarchs. Moreover, earls were culturally subordinates to sovereign lineages and thus did not generally pose natural threats to the king, unlike his parriarchs, who were in some sense his peers. King Snjang of Tsjinh (r. 280 – 316) encouraged earls to rebel against their parriarchs, with some success.
The inner royal demesne, during the Hexarchy and the 3rd century, was divided amongst or manorial elders (甸, linh), lords (邦君, prong-kljur), and directly-administered areas. Exchange in rights over these territories were frequent and not infrequently in the context of political turmoil, since these territories were smaller, traditionally more dependent, and less associated with militaries. In this period, the Tsjinh throne was powerful and disestablished some of the baronies close to itself, adding to the royal demesne; conspiracy was a frequent excuse, as the throne could thereby claim to be merely defending the alliance. The same process occurred against the manorial elders, forced to surrender political rights over their manors but retaining a considerable interest in revenues. By the early 4th century, the royal demesne encompassed a third of all land in the Tsjinh realm.
To maintain the monarch's waxing politial power, a bureaucracy developed around the throne. The bureaucracy was attractive to junior aristocrats as it meant achieving power and prestige over the largest of all land divisions—the royal demesne. One part of it originated as an supervisory organ for the small amounts of lands that the royal house held free of other hereditary interests, but as this territory grew either physically or in the form of royal access to private lands, so did the functions of the bureaucracy. Senior bureaucrats could be rewarded with their own hereditary interests on land, but without political rights over it. This form of land title suited bureaucratic rule, as it neither politically alienated land from the royal demesne nor saddled the same on the bureaucrat, but rewarded him with its revenues or part of it. Moreover, this also gave junior aristocrats an opportunity to obtain a title they were not entitled to inherit.
The following chart summarizes the principal interests in land recognized by the Tsjinh state during the early 4th century, at the height of central rule:
| Title | Number | Source | Political geography | Autonomy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parriarch | 公, klong | Several | Pre-existing | Large territories | High |
| Earl | 伯, brak | Several | Pre-existing | Large territories | Variable |
| Baron | 侯, go | Dozens | Granted | Militarized settlements typically distant from the capital | Medium |
| Elder | 甸, linh | Dozens | Granted | Agricultural areas typically near the capital | Low |
| Lord | 君, kljur | Over 300 | Granted | Individual settlements | Revenues only |
However, after 291, the royal house lost considerable amounts of power due to factors still poorly understood. This is deduced from the sharply-decreasing number of forfeitures for crimes. As the king's peer, the Parriarch of N.rang (唐公) led a party of barons to dominate the royal house and placed it under his wardship, pushing for the restoration of financial autonomy for the nobles. The chancellor and senior members of the bureaucracy formed another faction that opposed these changes, arguing that centralized rule is the only safe option for prolonged and mutual security. The aristocrats in the royal demesne, long accustomed to the central bureaucracy as a path to advancement, supported the civil servants. The remainder of the Tsjinh dynasty is usually analyzed as a back-and-forth game between these two factions, with periodic growth and waning of tensions.
In the final century of Tsjinh rule, the barons and their leaders could not argue to reduce the scope and strength of centralized rule to such a point that they would be wholly exposed to aggression from the Sjin, Pjang, and Kem states. Kem's military remained an existential threat to any lone baron or earl, who saw the virtues of a dependable central bureaucracy that could extract human and financial resources from its populace effectively. A number of modern historians have asserted that they wished to obtain a permanent voice in the central government to control the bureaucracy. From the demesne aristocrats' perspectives, the barons' limited ambitions and desire to protect their own territories were also useful for an anticipated invasion, since their household retainers could be called to battle almost immediately.
Sungh
Medieval land rights
Reforms of the early Mrengs
It is thought that paramount Themiclesian rulers in Antiquity collected no recurrent taxes from their subjects generally. Instead, royal revenual requirements were defrayed by both ordinary and extraordinary duties imposed on their nobles or leading citizens, whose possessions had variegated sources and conditions of holding. Nobles who refused royal commands were at risk of having their possessions "seized into the ruler's hands", but the precise mechanisms and limitations (which definitely exist according to Hri) of this royal action are yet nebulous.
After the Mreng restoration, successive generations of rulers attempted to reform the basis of royal finance with a preference for an unconditional, if modest, annuity, over large lumpsum grants for a particular use. There were two principle ways the Mreng ruler employed to create new rent—opening of new land with new terms of possession and reclaiming of productive lands with altered terms of possession. The former could take the form of a direct royal commitment to settlers or that of a royal license to a developer. Both processes led to the territorial augmentation of the qwang-kra (公家), or land on which the emperor was owed rent. The right to land opened in the first way was emphyteutic (guaranteed against arbitrary substitution provided a flat rent); this was attractive to dispossessed tenants, a class of "troublemakers" the crown sought to settle. However, where the developer was a licensee, only the developer's right was emphyteutic, and his subtenants were, usually, not given this right.
The objective of this land reform, according to Tap, is to break the lords' monopoly on land in many locales. She argues that the right to land was very restrictive in the Grang period, and around many cities the landlords colluded with each other to keep rents high, often as much as 50% of the crop, and given the artificially limited supply of land, tenants had few choices but to accept those terms of occupation or become vagrants. This oligopoly around cities was enforced by tolled roads and threats to seize vagrants outright as slaves.
A directive that scholars attribute to Emperor Hwan's reign (561 – 584) is "annexation by substitution".