清代臺灣漢人移民開墾耕作的土地主要取自平埔族(熟番)。佔有與利用番地的安排不只是了解族群關係的重要關鍵，更由於清廷積極介入熟番地權的界定與保護，意圖型塑與規約族群關係，而構成了解臺灣統治的重要面向。過去日治時期有關平埔族與漢人間土地租佃慣習的權威性著作 ── 臨時臺灣舊慣調查會與臨時臺灣土地調查局的一系列著作──從事熟番地權(番租)的分類與解說時，過於概括的從現代產權的概念回溯逆推。這種作法忽略了番租形成的歷史過程以及社會經濟面向，因此做出了不少錯誤的歸類，也誤導了對番租性質的了解。本文透過釐清番租的類型試圖提供更精確與符合歷史事實的分類，同時帶出熟番地權演變的歷史過程。

In Qing Taiwan, Han settlers acquired farmland primarily from aborigine tribes. The land tenure system between Han and plains aborigines hence constitutes a key to the understanding of ethnic relationship in Qing Taiwan. Meanwhile, aiming to shape and reshape ethnic relationship to facilitate its rule in Taiwan, the Qing government actively involved in defining and enforcing aborigine land rights. For this reason, the aborigine land right also provides an important clue to the state-society relationship. Existing study on land tenure between plains aborigines and Han (the aborigine rents, fan-tsu, as termed in this article), mainly the works done by Japanese scholars of Research Committee on the Taiwanese Customs and Land Survey Bureau during the colonial period, is far from satisfactory. The Japanese scholars tended to shoehorn various types of aborigine rent into the modern forms of land rights and therefore misinterpreted their particularities. Besides reinterpreting the Han-aborigine land tenure data collected by the Japanese scholars, the author draws on abundant new materials discovered today to classify various aborigine rents and to elucidate the route of their transformation.