萩藩財政収支と経済政策
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概要
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This article is a research into the han finance and its Policy of the Mid-nineteenth century Choshu. Although much work has been done, no quantitative study has made a significant contribution to our accurate understanding of this topic. This paper will, first, clarify problems of the data which preceding works depended on and point out some misunderstandings resulting from them, and then show new data for discussion As is well known the government of Hagi han kept many records of the taxes and other very detailed imformations about the finance toward the end of the Tokugawa period. These records include Onezumicho(1821), Fusaidan(1840), Shinchukengi (1842), Chushinan(1842) and others. The results estimated by these data show another explanation of financial conditions in Choshu and introduce us a different understanding of the han economic policy from those based on the old data. While it has been noted and accepted that the financial condition of Hagi han was unbalanced, which inevitably brought the Tempo-reformation in the han to improve the financial stringency and to rebuild the han economy, the new data will not. support this received version. The writer will show that the han kept a balanced finance, that is, an annual revenues could meet the working costs and extraordinary expenditures. It could cover even the financial investment mainly in thc land reclamation before 1800 and hozogin (asset as a form of money) in the nineteenth century. It is true that the han debt to Osaka merchants increased so rapidly that it reached the level threetimes as much as annual revenues at Tempo era. Needless to say, the aim of the Tempo-reformation was to negotiate for the reduction of interest rate and puting off the repayment of the principals. But our estimation shows that the sum total of the debt was almost as much as that of assets of the land and the money mentioned above. It must be emphasized that the han could have paid the debt to Osaka by those assets. But they left the assets untouched and made all effort to reduce the rate of interest and to put off the repayment of the principals in the Tempo-reformation.
- 1977-02-28