<最終講義>徭役と人頭税・兵役の狭間
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概要
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By examining the replacement of the traditional corvee obligation by a modern capitation (poll) tax and universal military conscription in the beginning of the twentieth century, this essay attempts to show the change in the idea of a subject conceived by the Siamese elite at the turn of the century. Although the popular understanding of pre-modern Siam often claims that the king, at least in theory, controlled all human labor in the kingdom, there is no evidence, in the various royal edicts and proclamations issued before the late nineteenth century, to suggest the idea of a subject bound foremost to the king, or the idea of the sovereign king controlling all his subjects. The only order the king had to issue was to oblige the intermediary officials to perform the royal corvee (and its substitute) by mobilizing their own subjects. And the major royal concern evident in the pre-modern period was to know how much resources, either human or non-human, each of his intermediary officials could produce to meet the king's needs. The existence of each individual subject was never a matter of concern for the king. Such conception of a subject, or rather a lack of it, in pre-modern Siam, had to be changed when the idea of a nation-state accompanied by a new conception of its population was introduced in Siam in the late nineteenth century. One whole society came to be presumed, and the idea of the individual subject as a primary component of and agency in society concomitantly emerged. These subjects, moreover, were envisaged as the king's own resources, who were equally and universally subject to military and tax obligations for the king and the nation he now led. In order to administer this "one whole society", it became essentially important for the king to know the state of all the subjects. The census, a tool to scrutinize each individual subject in the society, thus became a new powerful technology of administrative control.
- 上智大学の論文
- 1999-12-27