| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 社會科教育學系碩士班 === 98 === 【Abstract】
The Changhua Plain became the leading and important rice production center in Taiwan when Shih-Pang Shih completed the construction of BaBao Ditch in 1719. As a result, Lukang also became a port second only to Tainan thanks to the export of rice. Shih’s success was exemplary; he was followed by Chih-Shen Yang, also from Changhua, who built Erbah Ditch to channel the water from Maoluo, irrigating over a thousand hectares of farmland which yielded some hundreds of thousands of kilo’s grain. After further building Fuma and Sen Ditches, Yang had developed lands that scattered across the regions of Hsientung and Hsiengsi. The Shih’s possessed a leading power in development in the plain of Changhus after they succeeded in the colonization, but they never extended their outward expansion only focused on the land business. On the other hand, far less achieving in the development of Changhua Plain, the Shih clan had to open up more uncultivated land. They began to colonize, moving on the way to Jijipu, a mountainous area east of the Bagua Tableland in 1760s, and had once invested and managed on the lands in certain northern areas of Taiwan such as Jialapu and Jinbaoli. They gradually surpassed the Shih’s descendents for the results of efforts, however, the development received few and vague accounts. This paper, thus, clarifies coverage of the Yang’s settlements anew.
While in the research in Taiwan’s clans, little has elaborated at the approach of colonization, this paper explores the development of local clans under some particular geographic and historical conditions through the study on the family of Chih-Shen Yang of Ching Dynasty in Changhua. This paper also makes on the association between clan development and the formation of regional social network. The main purpose of paper is to analysize the entanglement between local clans and the society, and the relationship of the interactive network, and of land exploitation. To be specific, this paper reviews the history of the Yang’s competition and collaboration with local clans while they were expanding their business territories.
Chih-Shen Yang, according to Lien Heng’s General History of Taiwan, had been parentless and poor and, together with his brother, rented and worked on aborigine’s farmland. Yet, he managed to build ditches and exploited over a thousand hectares of farmland which yielded hundreds of thousands of kilo’s grain just over a few decades—a big question. Was his achievement related to the land title transfer of the local Pingpu tribes? This study summarizes in respect to the history, scope and business distribution of the land exploitation of the Yang’s from Changhua. Hence, our present research is hoped to be recognized as the first chapter in the history of clans’ colonization in regions on both sides of the Bagua Tableland.
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