阿片戦争後における銀価対策とその挫折
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概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
One of the contributing causes of the Opium War was price rise of silver in China, which began to show its sign in the late Chia-ch'ing period(嘉慶年代) and continued to rise through Tao-kuang period(道光年代). That price rise disturbed the Chinese economy, bringing about overall serious problems such as financial difficulties of the state government and impoverishment of peasantry. Confronted with them, the Chinese government officials detected that the reason for the rise of price of silver was the decrease of domestic silver in amount on account of its outflow from China through opium smuggling. They, therefore, turned to the measure to regulate opium trade. As to a concrete step, there was a difference of opinion between those who insisted on putting a stricter ban on the opium trade and those who thought it better to give official approval to it. But in dealing with this problem they were unanimous in their intention of resorting to the Canton Commercial System (広東貿易制度) which was the mainstay of the state control over the foreign trade. After all Lin Tse-hsu (林則徐) used armed forces in implementing the Canton Commercial System. The Loss of the Opium War, however, broke up that system, which gave the Chinese officials a great shock-a shock tremendous enough to make them change their policy. Since they were deprived of the control over the foreign trade, they gave up regulating the opium trade as a measure to check the silver outflow from their country, and began attempting currency reform instead. Obviously it was a drastic or rather a backward change of the measure to counter the silver problem. From then on, the Chinese government officials advocated to limit the use of silver, then to abolish it, and finally they came to look up to the currency system in the ancient China as an ideal. The content of their measure to counter the silver problem thus became conservative; they even sought after the illusion of reviving the acient currency system. So far, many of the studies on the Opium War have approached it mainly by analyzing exterior factors, and the studies of its interior factors have been comparatively few. This article attempts to grasp historical relevance of the Opium War in terms of domestic situation of China, by taking up mental sttitude of the Chinese government officials manifested in their measure to counter the price rise of silver.
- 社会経済史学会の論文
- 1976-11-30