Before the Tang. Large landholdings were controlled by the great families in the later Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.). This concentration of land contributed to the collapse of the regime. Realizing that uneven land distribution was a key cause of dynastic decline, regimes that followed the Han implemented policies to solve this problem. One solution was to nationalize land and then distribute it to the taxpaying peasantry. The government of the Northern Wei (386- 535) first tackled this problem in 485, when it instituted an "equal field" system, which assigned agricultural lands in equal amounts to all adult peasants. Upon the death of a peasant or the passing of the age limit at around sixty, the land was to be returned to the government. The equal field system, though it was only...