ABSTRACT
Taiwan as frontier territory in the Qing dynasty was opened for cultivation in a process that involved migration of Han Chinese from the mainland, the inclusion of indigenous people into the frontier society that resulted, and the maintenance of indigenous reservations outside government rule. Land investigations conducted by the Qing dynasty government from the 1880s, and the Japanese colonial government mostly in the early 1900s, together with land reform measures, streamlined land ownership and abolished multiple ownership. Liu Mingchuan drew essentially from the repertoire of Qing officialdom. Except for Jiayi, Governor Liu Mingchuan ruled on beginning with household registration. To use the example of Xinzhu county as a guide, this meant that from May 1886, the county carried out the baojia census prior to opening the county land survey bureau in July. The land survey process was divided into several parts: declaration, measurement, large rental rights investigation, grades, and harvest conditions.
